A splendid wedding feast appeared out of nowhere, served on golden dishes, and the women realized it was from the old woman.

They took the children, including Brunette's, and gave them to a maid, who scrupled to kill them, but put them in a boat, with necklaces that might pay for their support if someone found them.

Belle-Etoile fell ill from her distress at his absence, and Petit-Soleil set out to find Chéri, but suffered the same fate, and then Heureux did the same.

[3] The story is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children" or, in French-language sources, L'Oiseau de Vérité ("The Bird of Truth").

[4] 19th century scholar Francis Hindes Groome noted that the tale could be found in Brittany and Lorraine.

[5] A similar assessment, by researcher Gael Milin, asserted that the tale type was bien attesté ("well attested") in the Breton folklore of the 19th century.

[6] François-Marie Luzel collected from Brittany Les trois filles du boulanger, or L'eau qui danse, le pomme qui chante et l'oiseau de la verité[7] ("The Baker's Three Daughters, the Dancing Water, The Singing Apple, and the Bird of Truth")[8] - from Plouaret -,[9] and Les Deux Fréres et la Soeur ("The Two Brothers and their Sister"), a tale heavily influenced by Christian tradition.

[10] He also provided a summary of a variant from Lorient: the king goes to war while his wife gives birth to two boys and a girl.

The queen mother exchanges her son's letter and orders the children to be cast in the water and the wife to be mured.

[12][13] This tale preserves the motif of the wonder-children born with chains of gold "between the skin and muscle of their arms",[14] from Dolopathos and the cycle of The Knight of Swan.

[19] Emmanuel Cosquin collected a variant from Lorraine titled L'oiseau de vérité ("The Bird of Truth"),[20] which is the name used by French academia to refer to the tale.

[21] A tale from Haute-Bretagne, collected by Paul Sébillot (Belle-Étoile), is curious in that if differs from the usual plot: the children are still living with their mother, when they, on their own, are spurred on their quest for the marvelous items.

[23] A variant from Provence, in France, collected by Henry Carnoy (L'Arbre qui chante, l'Oiseau qui parle et l'Eau d'or, or "The tree that sings, the bird that speaks and the water of gold"), has the youngest daughter, the princess, save an old man she meets in her journey and who gives her advice on how to obtain the items, and who turns out to be an enchanted youth.

[25] The tale is curious in that, being divided in three parts, the story takes its time to develop the characters of the king's son and the peasant wife, in the first third.

[26] Two variants were collected by Charles Joisten from Dauphiné: L'oiseau de vérité ("The Bird of Truth") and La pomme d'or, l'oiseau des quatre vérités et l'eau qui fait revenir les morts ("The Golden Apple, the Bird of Four Truths and the Water that Brings Back the Dead").