It is related to the cycle of the Calumniated Wife, and is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
[1] His book was translated into English as The treasury of Ba-suto lore (1908), and referred to the tale as Ngoana ea Khoeli-Sefubeng.
When Morongoé, the queen, is ready to give birth to her son, the second co-wife tells the midwife to get rid of the boy and replace him for a puppy.
One day, the new queen walks by Morongoé's hut and sees a boy with the full moon on his chest, playing with the rats.
The same events happen: the second wife sees the boy playing with the mouse and orders the hut to be burnt down to kill both.
Bulane takes the boy to his village and places him in his hut, and summons a great meeting, with slaughtered oxen and beer.
After many trials and tribulations, the children reunite with their parents, the jealous relatives are punished and the disgraced woman (usually a queen) is restored to her position and status.
[7] In a 1921 article, anthropologue Samuel Shaw Dornan [de] noted that the Sotho tale showed "an extraordinary resemblance" to the Bengali folktale The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead, collected by Lal Behari Day.
In the first, a woman gives birth to twin boys in the likeness of their father, a king with the mark of a moon on his chest, but a jealous servant casts them in the water.
Later, they return to their father's castle and a jet of milk leaks from their mother's breast to their mouth, confirming the boys' parentage.
The elder wife wants wants the younger's hut to be burnt down, then the kraal, but the rat hides the child away from both perils, and lastly takes him to another village, where he grows up.
Tale type 707, in this system, was numbered KH 1125 and named "The mother of the boy(s) with a moon on his chest or forehead was banished but finally she was allowed back".
In the Namibian variants, a king wishes to have a son with astral birthmarks: the moon, the sun, or Zodiac signs either in the boy's head or chest.
After being cast away from home, he returns to his father's house years later and his mother's breastmilk flows from her body to his mouth, signifying their parental connection - a motif that Schmidt links to Indian variants.
Mokete, the new wife, sees the boy survived and asks her husband to kill the pigs and burn down the kraal.
One day, when passing through a village, he stops by the well and sees a woman named Ma Thabo ("mother of joy"), who gives him some water to drink.
[24] Another African variant was collected from a Xhosa storyteller named Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, recorded from a performance on September 13, 1967, in her home located in Nkanga, Gatyana District, Transkei.
In this variant, titled The Child with the Star on His Forehead, a man marries his wife's sister as another spouse to father a son.
The sister gives birth to a boy "with a star on his forehead [and] the crescent of a moon on his chest, just like his father", but is replaced by a cat.
[27] Two other tales from the Xhosa people were identified by scholarship: Chief Bulane and his Heir and The Child with the Moon on his Forehead.