The Real Mother

The Real Mother is an Indian folktale collected by Alice Elizabeth Dracott from Simla, wherein a childless king gives mangoes to his co-wives in order to cure their barrenness, and only the youngest queen bears him children, to the others' jealousy. The co-queens decide to kill the children, which are buried and from their graves flowers and fruit trees sprout.

The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". These tales refer to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother. Many variants of the tale type are registered in India, although they comprise specific cycles in this country. In one of the cycles, the king's children are buried and transform into flowers or trees whose flowers only their mother can pluck.

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