The Golden Bird (French: L'oiseau d'or) is a Berber tale from Kabylia, collected by author Mouloud Mammeri.
It is related to the theme of the calumniated wife and classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
In this tale, three sisters express their wishes to marry the king, and boast about their abilities: the elder boasts she can prepare crêpes for the king with a single grain of wheat; the middle one that she can sew a beautiful coat with a single fleece, and the youngest that she will bear twins, a boy and a girl, with golden forehead.
The elder sisters feel threatened by their cadette's success and bribe a midwife to replace the children for puppies and throw them in the water in a box.
Despite their poor situation, Aziz and Aziza play games with a king's son and win louis and enough gold for their adoptive parents.
Aziz agrees to fetch her the milk, and consults with the local wise men how to approach the lioness: take seven sheep and throw them to the lioncubs in their den while their mother is away.
Lastly, the old woman tells Aziza to seek the Golden Bird that can sing melodious songs and can predict the future.
When Aziz does not return at the appointed time, Aziza goes after him, captures the bird and restore her male twin and other petrified people.
Meanwhile, the king, their father, goes with his retinue to the twins' palace to see for himself Aziza's beauty and the bird's singing, but the animal stops its song.
[4] French ethnologist Camille Lacoste-Dujardin [fr], in regards to a Kabylian variant, noted that the sisters' jealousy originated from their perceived infertility, and that their promises of grand feats of domestic chores were a matter of "capital importance" to them.
[5] Hasan El-Shamy remarked that in Middle Eastern tales the royal children, born of the third sister, are a brother-sister twin pair.
[6] In an Algerian variant collected in Blida by Joseph Desparmet from informant Fatma bent Eldjennâdî, titled La Ghoule Secourable, a king announces his plans to marry, and orders every possible maiden to pass by his window.
The Settout tells her first about the Les Pommes de Senteur et L’Eau qui rend la vie (Algerian: Etteffâḥ ennifouḥ ou elmâ llî irodd errouḥ, English: “Scented Apples and Water of Life”); then about Le Basilic qui claque et L’eau qui ulule (Algerian: Elḥbeq elli iseffeq ou el mâ llî iouelouel; English: “The Basil that claps and Ululating Water”).
When the brother brings the basil and the ululating water, they do not move at all, which the Settout attributes to the absence of their master, L’Aigle Vert (“The Green Eagle”), a little bird in a cage.
At the end of the tale, Lalla Loundja marries the brother, and suggests the siblings invite the king and his viziers to a banquet, during which she reveals the truth and reunites the family.
The sultan asks his minister to bring the first girl (the pacha's daughter) to prove her skills; she fails and is sent back to her father.
Next, the middle one boasts to her mother she is a skilled seamstress, and tells the king she can sew clothes for the entire army with a single piece of fabric.
The twins ask their hosts about their sadness, and the woman tells them about their daughter locked in the chicken coop as punishment for bearing puppies.
As soon as her promised children are born, her jealous elder sisters, with the help of an old witch named Séttoute, throw them in the sea and replace them for puppies.
Years later, the fisherman, on their deathbed, gives the children a magic object which the archangel Gabriel gave him, as his last gift.
The elder brother fetches the mare with the help of an old man named Baba-Mordjan, and fights Hadd-Ezzine for forty days before she admits defeat and accompanies him.
Years pass, and the aunts' accomplice, an old witch, convinces them to search for the Tär Lemeghani ("The Singing Bird") and water from the fountain located where the rocks collide.
[18] In the second, Die goldhaarigen Kinder ("The Golden-Haired Children"), which was identified by Frobenius as a variant of the former, the youngest sister promises to give birth to twin boys with golden hair on the front (taunsa-ne-d'hav).
Each of the seven brothers fail in getting the bat, for the animal uses its magical powers to turn their guns into pieces of wood and to reduce their sizes.
[21] In a late-19th century study, scholar W. A. Clouston related this tale to other variants of The Sisters Envious of Their Cadette, from the compilation The Arabian Nights.