sentences:  The opening sequence, of a woman promising to bear fabulous children and their kidnapping, is a common fairy tale motif, but in most such tales – "Ancilotto, King of Provino", "The Three Little Birds", "The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird", "The Wicked Sisters" – the children are abandoned, rather than murdered.The villains are overwhelmingly the heroine's jealous sisters, or her mother-in-law, rather than a rival as in this tale.The transformation chase described here is found in another Romanian tale of this type, "The Boys with the Golden Stars".