Sun, Moon and Morning Star (German: Sonne, Mond und Morgenstern; Greek: Ήλιος, Φεγγάρι και Αυγερινός, romanized: Helios, Phengari kai Augerinós) is a Greek folktale collected and published in 1864 by Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn.
[1] It is related to the folkloric motif of the Calumniated Wife and classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
While he is away, the queen mother replaces her three grandchildren for a puppy, a kitten and a little mouse, and orders the nurse to cast them in a box in the sea.
The prince complains that it is impossible to eat such a dish, and the bird retorts that so is a human woman to give birth to animals.
[7] Professor Michael Meraklis commented that some Greek and Turkish variants have the quest for an exotic woman named "Dunja Giuzel", "Dünya Güzeli" or "Pentamorphé".
[11] In the same vein, professor Michael Meraklis argued that the contamination of the "Cinderella" tale type with "The Three Golden Children" is due to the motif of the jealousy of the heroine's sisters.
She marries the prince and gives birth to twins, but the queen mother replaces them for a puppy and a kitten and casts them in the sea.
The mother-in-law takes the boy and hides them in the chicken coop and replaces them for animals (a puppy, a kitten and a snake).
Soon enough, a magician spurs Moon, the sister, to send her brother, the Sun, on a quest for "the magic apples, the birds which sing all day and Dünya-Güzeli, the Fair One of the World".
[15] Scholar and writer Teófilo Braga points that a Greek literary version ("Τ' αθάνατο νερό"; English: "The immortal water") has been written by Greek expatriate Georgios Eulampios (K. Ewlampios), in his book Ὁ Ἀμάραντος (German: Amarant, oder die Rosen des wiedergebornen Hellas; English: "Amaranth, or the roses of a reborn Greece") (1843).
[21][22][23][24] Nonetheless, the tale's formula is followed to the letter: the wish for the wonder-children, the jealous relatives, the substitution for animals, exposing the children, the quest for the magical items and liberation of the mother.
In keeping with the variations in the tale type, a tale from Athens shows an abridged form of the story: it keeps the promises of the three sisters, the birth of the children with special traits (golden hair, golden ankle and a star on forehead), and the grandmother's pettiness, but it skips the quest for the items altogether and jumps directly from a casual encounter with the king during a hunt to the unveiling of truth during the king's banquet.