A king who has three sons and is losing his eyesight has a vision in a dream that says that only the titular moramar apples and the little bird can restore his sight.
Each of the three princes takes a fine horse, sets out on a journey, and separately meets an old woman begging for alms.
Finally, the prince arrives at a beautiful garden, where Ileana sleeps with her twelve fairy handmaidens, and two flowers under her head.
She is told the whole story, and agrees to join the prince, but asks him to get a letter from her brother, Măr Rotat, in the underworld.
The prince gathers cartloads of bread, cows, and barrels full of wine, mounts on the eagle, and begins his flight back to the surface.
So, the prince cuts off pieces of flesh from his own body to feed the eagle one last time, and they complete the journey.
After the prince wakes up, the fox admonishes him for choosing to revive his brothers, gives him a magic cloak, and departs.
Ileana sees the object from her window and smiles, the bird begins to sing, and the moramar tree shakes a bit.
The princess is overjoyed, and so are the other objects he procured during his quest: the horse neighs in response to its master, the bird sings, and the moramar tree dances.
Scholars Stith Thompson and Hans-Jörg Uther remarked on the similarities between these plots and the likeness of their motifs, which make it difficult to index this tale as either one type or the other.
The two elder sons fail, being turned to stone or distracted partway through their journey, and only the youngest prince perseveres.
At the end, the young prince is saved by his animal helper and returns to the kingdom to unmask his traitorous brothers.
[4][5][6] In tale type ATU 551, "The Water of Life", the king is going blind and asks his three sons to fetch him a remedy.
[10] The animal companion gives advice to the hero, encourages him to continue on the quest, and even revives him after his brothers betray and kill him.
The prince then quests for the golden bird, the white saddle-horse with golden-bridle of another Emperor, and the golden-haired "divine Craiessa" ("queen").
When the king's other sons kill the prince, the apple wilts, the dove becomes a black raven, and the horse and the princess vanish into the sky.
[15] In a variant from Bukovina translated into German as Der närrische Prinz (The Foolish Prince), a king has three sons: the elder two smart, but the third one considered a fool.
One day, the golden fruits begin disappearing, and the emperor orders his three sons to guard it at night.
[17] In a Moldavian tale published by author and folklorist Grigore Botezatu [uk] with the title Break-of-Day, an emperor has no children but is told that his empress is to walk an untrod path in the woods, where the dew is untouched.
Break-of-Day keeps the last apple with him and plucks a feather from the white bird, then climbs down the tall tree for another seven years.
Break-of-Day goes on a journey and meets a "thick-lipped" man named Black Arab, who possesses magic powers.
The Black Arab tells Break-of-Day about the golden-tailed white bird: it is an enchanted maiden that the Devil keeps in a cradle.
At the end of the tale, they release Ilyana Kosinzyana from the Tartar's grasp and disenchant the golden-tailed white bird by killing the Devil.