In exasperation, the king calculates an impossible task to rid himself of his new son-in-law; instructing the boy to travel into Hell and return with three of the Devil's golden hairs.

Having assumed the pain was part of his dreams, he recounts his visions to his grandmother - a dried-up well in a town square with a toad underneath blocking the flow of liquid, a tree that does not sprout fruit or leaves because of a mouse gnawing at its root, and a ferryman who can be freed merely by placing his oar in the hands of another man on the river's bank.

The story ends with the king crossing the river with the ferryman, who hands him the oar upon reaching the other side, condemning him to a life of ferrying travellers back and forth forever.

[6] Scholar Kurt Ranke stated that the tale type was a European combination of "two very old stories": the "child of fate" that appears as early as the 3rd century CE in Indian and Chinese literature, associated with the motif K978 ("Uriah letter"); and the hero's journey to the other world bearing questions, a narrative contained in the Avadana and in the Tutinama.

[9] According to Thompson and Tille, tale type 930 shows 4 literary redactions: Indic (the oldest), Ethiopic, Western European and Turkish.

[14][15] Willem de Blécourt registers that the tale Li sette palommelle ("The Seven Doves"), in the Pentamerone, shows as its second part the heroine's quest to a creature named Chronos, the one who can give her the answers to rescue her brothers.

[16] In this tale type, after the lowly hero marries the princess, her father sends him to the Devil or another creature, on a dangerous quest designed to kill him.

[18] The motif of the old man ferrying the poor boy/hero across the sea to the Devil (in Grimm's version; a giant, ogre, in other variants) parallels the mythological journey to "The Otherworld" (Hell) on the boat.

[22][23] Lang suggests this motif may descend from the ancient Indo-European myth of a hero or thunder god slaying a serpent or dragon that blocks the flow of waters.

Because the dean had prevented innocent blood to be shed, he was made chancellor and it was also because of this action, the imperial burial vault was constructed in Speyer.

[25][26] The Brothers Grimm collected a tale in the first edition of their compilation with the name Der Vogel Phönix (English: "The Phoenix Bird"), where the hero was found by a miller in a box cast into the water and he is tasked with getting three feathers from the "Phoenix Bird", who lives in a hut atop a mountain in the company of an old lady.

[28] Francis Hindes Groome collected a Transylvanian-Romani variant with the title The Three Golden Hairs of the Sun-King: the charcoal-maker's son is prophesied by three ladies in white to marry the king's daughter.

[29] In a South Slavic variant collected in Kordun and published in 1927, the hero is a soldier, the antagonist is his captain and the rower who never rests his oar is a sentry holding a gun.

[30] In a Georgian variant translated into Hungarian with the title A megkövült fiú ("The Boy of Stone"), a king and queen have a son they love so much, they try to protect him from the evils of the world by locking him in a tower.

On his journey, he is asked questions: why the harvesters cannot plow the land, why the shepherds' flocks of sheep are dying, and how the stag can shed its antlers.

[31] "The Devil with The Three Golden Hairs" is noted to have been one of many possible influences for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Tale of Beren and Lúthien, in which the elf-king Thingol sets an impossible task for his daughter's mortal suitor: to obtain one of the three Silmarils from the Iron Crown of Morgoth.