The Story of Pretty Goldilocks or The Beauty with Golden Hair is a French literary fairy tale written by Madame d'Aulnoy.

This type is generally called "The Clever Horse," but is known in French as La Belle aux cheveux d'or, after this tale.

[7] The heroine's lack of agency has been noticed and called into question: despite being part of Madame d'Aulnoy's cast of heroines and princesses with agency in her literary fairy tales,[8] Princess Goldilocks still needs the intervention of a third party (the loyal ambassador) in order to ensure her happy ending at the end of the tale.

In many variants, the last item the hero must quest for is the "milk of fiery mares", which will grant beauty, strength and vigour after a special ritual.

[20] When the emperor or king uses the ointment or magical water, a mix-up happens: the maid or a lady-in-waiting accidentally breaks the flask and, in a hurry, unknowingly substitutes the broken vial with poison.

When the dame is brought before her would-be suitor, she seizes the opportunity to dispose of him, by performing an elaborate ritual involving the holy water, or bath.

[26] A quantitative study, published by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and anthropologist Jamshid J. Tehrani in 2016, seemed to indicate that the tale type shows a certain antiquity: based on a phylogenetic model, both researchers estimated that the ATU 531 type belongs to an ancestral tale corpora of the Indo-Iranian languages and the Western branch of the Indo-European languages.

[27] Folklorist and comparative mythologist Alexander Haggerty Krappe, in a 1925 article, argued that the myth of Jason and Medea was a reworking of the widespread folktale The Quest of the Princess with the Golden Hair, by illuminating parallels between the Greek myth and the tale type: the hero is helped by a talking horse (or mule, or donkey, given by a spirit, God, Virgin Mary, or the Devil), so - Krappe deduced - the Argo ship must have been originally given by a deity, and served to warn Jason against dangers.

Lastly, the princess of the tale type submits the hero and the king to an experiment of rejuvenating, which involves both men entering a burning oven, or bathing in boiling milk or oil.

Krappe, to conclude his comparison, cited that ancient authors Pherecydes of Syros and Simonides reported variations wherein Medea applies a similar rejuvenating treatment to Jason himself, instead of Pelias.

They argued for the presence of motifs of the tale type in Tristan and Isolde: in some versions of the Celtic romance, a little bird (a swallow) flies to King Mark's castle with a strand of golden hair in its beak; he then becomes interested in finding its owner.

[31][32][33] German folklorist Felix Liebrecht seemed to agree with Köhler's assessment of the connection between the chivalric romance and the tale type, but complemented his analysis.

Liebrecht located the motif of the lock of golden hair in the Ancient Egyptian story, Tale of Two Brothers: after being exiled from home, Batu is given a wife by the gods.

In the Indian work Singhasan Battisi ("Thirty-Two Tales of the Throne"), a princess sets a challenge for any suitor: they must jump into a vat of boiling oil before they have a chance to court her.

[34] Another connected story, ascribed to a Jewish legend contained in the Ma'assebuch [de], was published by German theologian Christoph Helvig, in 1602.

In this tale, titled an impious king is advised by his councillors to take a wife, when a bird appears with a golden hair in its beak.

In this story, in the first part, Jochanan helps a man who brings him a mystical cup that has a scorpion inside; Jochanan raises the scorpion, which can talk and is immortal; in the second part of the tale, a king is pressed to marry and sire an heir, when a raven brings a strand of golden hair that belongs to a princess.

[50] The character of the lovely maiden with golden hair also appears in Slavic fairy tales, with the name Dieva Zlato Vláska or simply Zlatovláska, meaning Goldenhair.

[53] The tale has been translated into English and published in Andrew Lang's The Orange Fairy Book, with the name The Princess Bella-Flor.

Some time later, she reveals her husband the location of the fabled lump of earth: at the bottom of a lake, guarded by "ferocious Watery Horses tall as Mares".