The Boys with the Golden Stars

Andrew Lang was a Scottish prolific author, mostly known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. H “The Boys with the Golden Stars” is entered in “The Violet Fairy Book” that was published in 1901. A herdsman had three daughters. The youngest was the most beautiful. One day, the emperor was passing with attendants. The oldest daughter said that if he married her, she would bake him a loaf of bread that would make him young and brave forever; the second one said, if one married her, she would make him a shirt that would protect him in any fight, even with a dragon, and against heat and water; the youngest one said that she would bear him twin sons with stars on their foreheads. The emperor married the youngest, and two of his friends married the other two. But the emperor's stepmother had wanted him to marry her daughter and so hated his new wife. She decided to kill the children, who would be born soon…