With his faithful fox companion, which transforms into a replica of the fairy maiden to trick her mother, the prince obtains the fairy maiden. In a tale collected by Andrew Lang and attributed to the Brothers Grimm, The Golden Mermaid, the king's golden apples are stolen by some creature or thief, so he sends his sons to find it. The youngest son, however, is the only one successful: he discovers the thief is a magic bird that belongs to an Emperor; steals a golden horse and obtains the titular golden mermaid as his wife. The tale is actually Romanian and was collected by Arthur and Albert Schott from the Banat region with the title Das goldene Meermädchen ("The Golden Sea-Maiden"). In a collection of Upper Silesian fairy tales by Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (unpublished at the time, but in print only later by his descendant containing the tale Der Vogel Venus ("The Bird Venus") or Das Märchen vom Vogel Venus, dem Pferd Pontifar und der schönen Amalia aus dem schwarzen Wald ("The Tale of the Bird Venus, the Horse Pontifar and the beautiful Amalia of the Dark Forest"), the king wants the bird Venus to regain his youth. The prince also quests for the horse Pontifar and lady Amalia, a mysterious maiden who lives in a dark castle in a dark forest, guarded by wolves, lions and bears. When the hero is ready to take her on his journey back, she is seen at the castle's gates wearing a black dress. The story is a combination of types: ATU 506, "The Grateful Dead", since the fox helper is the spirit of a dead man; ATU 551, "The Water of Life", and ATU 550, "Bird, Horse and Princess". Other interpretations A mythological interpretation of the tale type suggests an approximation of the Golden Bird with a peacock, a bird with astral and solar symbolism in world cultures. Likewise, the hero of the tale also rides a golden horse and rescues a beautiful maiden, which can be equated to Venus (the Morning Star) - or, according to Lithuanian scholarship, its Baltic counterpart, Aušrinė. Historical linguist Václav Blažek argues for parallels of certain motifs (the night watch of the heroes, the golden apples, the avian thief) to Ossetian Nart sagas and the Greek myth of the Garden of the Hesperides. Variants Scholarship acknowledges that the character of the "magic bird with glowing feathers"