The Three Sisters (fairy tale)
[10] Author Rachel Harriette Busk collected a tale from Rome with the title Il Vaso di Persa or The Pot of Marjoram: a rich merchant has three daughters.
During his journey home, a strange-looking man accosts the merchant and offers him the flower pot, for a hefty price of three hundred thousand scudi.
When he returns home, he gives his daughters the presents, and the youngest takes the flower pot to her room, shutting herself for quite some time.
She wanders off until she meets a "fairy" (Busk's translation for the original "fata"), who gives her male clothing and provisions for the road.
[11] In an Iraqi folktale, collected by E. S. Drower with the title The Crystal Ship, a merchant has to travel and asks his daughters what presents he can buy them.
[12] In the Turkish tale Yeşil İnci (The Green Pearl), originally collected by Naki Tezel [tr] and translated by German folklorist Otto Spies [de] with the title Die Grüne Perle,[13][14] a merchant prepares to go on a business trip, and asks his three daughters what he can bring them.
They converse about how to cure prince Green Pearl: the fat from the neck (oil from the hair, in Margery Kent's translation) of a Dew that sits under the tree.
Green Pearl appears on a horse, sword in hand and poised to strike her, but she shows him the ring and the prayer beads, and he understands she was the one that cured him.
[15] In an Iranian tale titled The "Pink Pearl" Prince, a merchant lives in Persia with his three daughters, Razia, Fawzia and Nazneen.
One day, deep in the forest, she stops by a Kainya tree and listens to the conversation of the Jipillima birds; one of them says their droppings can cure the king.
The prince comes again and hurts himself in the thorns, enters the girl's house and can only spit blood instead of gold, then goes back to his kingdom.
The next day, the girl shaves her head, takes a small bowl and drinking gourd with her and travels to the prince's kingdom to cure him.
They meet in secret, but rumours of their rendezvous reach the ears of her sisters, who plot against her: pretending their days of jealousy are over, the elder two pay a visit to their cadette and invite her for the hammam, a public bath house.
Suddenly, the sultan's son begins to traverse the tunnel - made entirely of glass -, and the princess's sister throws a stone at him.
The princess returns to her palace to wait for the prince, but, since he does not show up, she suspects something afoul, so she goes to check on the glass tunnel, and finds blood there.
[21] Muhammad El Fasi and Émile Dermenghem [fr] collected a Berber tale from Fez with the French title Perle dans sa branche ou la jeune fille intelligente et le roi des ogres (Berber: Ej-Jaouhar feghçanouh; English: "Pearl on a Branch, or The Smart Girl and the King of Ogres").
The youngest takes the box to the now empty robbers' den, opens up the first and burns its contents in a fire: several Black slavewomen appear and prepare the place for their master.
After she returns from the hammam and puts on new robes, she opens up the second box and a small Black slave appears and explains she has married the king of ghouls, and that she is not to leave their manor.
At night, the Black slave gives her a soporific drink and she falls asleep, allowing her fiancé, Pearl on a Branch, to come to their house via a glass entrance (tuyau).
Some days later, a pair of doves perch on their window, and the male slave interprets their chirping as that her family is missing their youngest daughter.
The next day, the sisters are ready to go to the female hammam, when one of them pretends to have forgotten her comb, and goes to the robbers' abandoned den in search of any clue to the mysterious lover.
Thinking his human lover betrayed him, he orders his Black slave to kill her in the desert and bring back her bloodie shirt.
The Black slave believes the rooster was a divine sign and considers the grisly order fulfilled, and leaves her mistress naked in the desert.
The girl wanders through the desert until she finds a shepherd and fashions a cap out of a sheep's stomach, and puts on some rustic clothes, then goes on her journey.
[24] In a Sudanese tale collected by Ahmed Al-Shahi and F. C. T. Moore with the title Green-Beans, from El-Barsa, a man is married to two wives, the first named Hadariya.
Later, everything is cleared up, and Nayya marries Green-Beans, but her jealous half-sisters, envying her happiness, convince her to ask their brother-in-law how the men in their country can be killed.
Nayya's half-sisters follow Green-Beans's instructions and place the resulting powder on his mat; the youth becomes sick and has to be taken back home.
She takes his old man's skin and wears it, then stops by a tree, where she overhears two birds talking about the cure for Green-Beans's ailment: their livers and wings.
Nayya returns home and places his objects on a wall, so that, when Green-Beans appears, he sees them and realizes his wife cured him.
When the prince does not appear in the following nights, the girl decides to journey in search for him, and stops to rest by a fig tree.
