from the kingdom with his mother and take refuge with an old couple. His mother breaks his shell. He departs and is taken in by a giantess. One day, he jumps into a golden well and his body acquires a gilded appearance. He disguises himself with "an ugly mask", calls himself Chao Ngo and goes to the Samon Kingdom. He marries the seventh daughter of King Samon, named Rodjana, who sees his through the disguise, but everyone else sees him as an ugly person. The king banishes his daughter after their marriage. At the end, prince Sangthong saves the Samon Kingdom. Variants Distribution This particular type of tale is well known, being particularly found in Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltic, but also throughout Europe, and appears in Asia down to Indonesia and also in Africa. Hasan El-Shamy indicated that the tale type is "widely spread" in North Africa. Europe Lithuania Lithuanian folklorist , in his analysis of Lithuanian folktales (published in 1936), listed 37 Lithuanian variants of type 314, Magiškas bėgimas arkliui padedant ("Magical Escape with the Help of a Horse"). In the updated Lithuanian Folktale Catalogue, by professor , the tale type is indexed as type 314, Arkliu paverstas jaunuolis ("Youth Transformed to a Horse"), totalling 62 variants and 58 combined with other tale types. Albania Slavicist , in his study on Balkan folklore, collected an Albanian language tale he translated as Le Chauve ("The Bald One"). In this tale, God grants a couple a son. A strange merchant comes and takes the boy as his apprentice, but he abandons the boy in the mountains to die. The boy, however, is saved by three fairies that live in the mountain; they feed and raise the boy until he is old enough. They give him a set of keys and forbid him to open a certain door while they are away, but he does exactly that after they depart; he finds a winged horse inside. The boy rides the horse away from the fairies and manages to escape from the three of them. Despite his escape, the elder fairy advises him to take on a shabby disguise and pluck three hairs from the horse to summon it. The boy then finds work as a king's gardener in a distant city. One day, he summons the horse to trample the garden, and the youngest princes witnesses him. Some time later, the