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Fortunatus is a German proto novel or chapbook about a legendary hero popular in 15th and 16th century Europe, and usually associated with a magical inexhaustible purse. The plot of the novel also appears in variants from oral tradition across Europe, Asia, Americas and Africa, which are classified in the international Aarne Thompson Uther Index as tale type ATU 566, "The Three Magic Objects and the Wonderful Fruits".

The tale follows the life of a young man named Fortunatus from relative obscurity through his adventures towards fame and fortune; it subsequently follows the careers of his two sons. Fortunatus was a native, says the story, of Famagusta in Cyprus, and meeting the goddess of Fortune in a forest received from her a purse which was continually replenished as often as he drew from it. With this he wandered through many lands, and at Cairo was the guest of the sultan. Among the treasures which the sultan showed him was an old napless hat which had the power of transporting its wearer to any place he desired. Of this hat, he feloniously possessed himself and returned to Cyprus, where he led a luxurious life. On his death he left the purse and the hat to his sons Ampedo and Andelosia; but they were jealous of each other, and by their recklessness and folly soon fell on evil days. Like Miguel de Cervantes' tale Don Quixote, Fortunatus is a tale which marks the passing of the feudal world into the more modern, globalised, capitalist world. Not quite a morality tale in the purest sense, it nonetheless was clearly written in order to convey lessons to the reader. The moral of the story is obvious: men should desire reason and wisdom before all the treasures of the world. It is far too easy, without wisdom, to lose one's fortune, no matter how it was acquired.

The author is not known; it has been suggested that he may have been Burkhard Zink (1396 1474/5), an Augsburg merchant, councillor, chronicler and traveller. His Augsburg chronicle covers the years 1368 1468 and comprises four books, of which the third, an autobiography, is considered the best, and he is praised for giving "Einblicke von seltener Eindringlichkeit in die Lebensrealität des SpätMA" ("outstandingly penetrating insights into the reality of life in the late Middle Ages"); The most plausible suggestion to date is that Johannes Heybler – the publisher – was himself the author.

The earliest known edition of the German text of Fortunatus appeared at Augsburg in 1509, and the modern German investigators are disposed to regard this as the original form. Karl Simrock reproduced this version in his Deutsche Volksbücher (3 vols., Frankfort, 1846). In 1530 an edition was published entitled Fortunatus von seinem Seckel und Wunschhütlein. Innumerable versions occur in French, Italian, Dutch and English. The story was dramatized by Hans Sachs in 1553, and by Thomas Dekker in 1600, titled Old Fortunatus; and the latter's comedy appeared in a German translation in Englische Komodien und Tragodien, 1620. Ludwig Tieck has utilized the legend in his Phantasus, and Adelbert von Chamisso in his Peter Schlemihl; and Ludwig Uhland left an unfinished narrative poem entitled Fortunatus and his Sons. 19th century theologue Johann Andreas Christian Löhr wrote an abridged and moralizing tale (German: "Fortunat mit seinem Säckel und Wünschhütlein"; English: "Fortunatus with his bag and wishing cap"), using as basis the story of Fortunatus. An anonymous English compilation of French fairy tales written by Charles Perrault and Madame d'Aulnoy published the story as Fortunatus, or the Wishing Cap. A later publication renamed it Fortunatus and the Wishing Cap. Andrew Lang included it in The Grey Fairy Book as "Fortunatus and his Purse". A fairy tale compilation by English novelist Dinah Craik included the tale, under the name Fortunatus, following an 1818 publication by Benjamin Tabart, who included an homonymous tale. In the same vein, Ernest Rhys edited a collection of English fairy tales and included one version of tale, named Old Fortunatus after the English play. A third English version exists, titled The History of Fortunatus.

In folkloristics, the gifting of a never emptying purse by a magical being is part of a series of tales later classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as ATU 566, "The Three Magic Objects and the Wonderful Fruits". In several variants, the goddess of Fortune of the original tale is replaced by an old lady, a princess or other supernatural being. Scholarship points that the hero of the tale is sometimes an only child who is given the three objects, or one of three brothers or friends who are each given one of the items. Folklorist Joseph Jacobs also noted that the protagonists of the story were "generally three soldiers, or often brothers, but more frequently casual comrades."

The tale is close to "The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn" (KHM 54 and ATU 569), where three brothers are given the magical objects. In the same vein, scholarship points to some relationship between tale types ATU 563, "The Table, the Ass, and the Stick", ATU 566 and ATU 569, a relationship already noticed by scholar Reinhold Köhler (de). Despite their proximity, these tales differ in that in the ATU 566 the adversary is a cunning princess who acquires the magical objects, but gets her just desserts with magical fruits that grow horns or other deformities when eaten. The usual deformities are horns, instead of the nose (as in Grimm's version). In tale type ATU 563, the hero regains the magical objects by a third magical item, usually a stick. William Alexander Clouston, Scottish folklorist, published an essay in which he compared the magic objects of the Fortunatus tale with many tales featuring similar items. Professor Michael Meraklis noted that the usual objects in Greek variants are a hat that grants invisibility, a rifle that shoots in any direction, a sheet that makes the user fly and a tobacco pipe that summons a servant.

Folklorist Stith Thompson suggested that the ATU 566 tale is "essentially west European folk tradition", following professor Antti Aarne's study on some 145 variants (most of which are European). On the other hand, French scholar Claude Bremond put forth a theory that tale types 566 "Fortunatus", 567 "The Magic Bird Heart" and 938 "Placidus"/"Eustacius" are related and derive from a single source, possibly Indian. A third position, by Hans Jörg Uther, argues that, due to the proximity between tale types ATU 566, ATU 567, ATU 567A, the type ATU 567 may have originated from a combination with type ATU 566. In this regard, scholar Christine Ohno's analysis of all three tale types suggested a combination of the Indian version of ATU 566 and ATU 567A, "The Magic Bird Heart and the Separated Brothers", gave rise to the South Asian story of Saiyid and Said and from the latter originated the "West European" version of the tale type ATU 567, where the magical bird falls into the hands of a sole hero, instead of two brothers as in other variants. Emmanuel Cosquin noted, in his time, two distinct groups of stories: the first one, where the hero regains the magical objects with the use of the fruits; and the second one, close to the tales later classified as ATU 567, "The Magic Bird Heart". Stith Thompson mentioned that Aarne's folktale study pinpointed its origin as Asiatic, possibly originating in Persia, and Richard MacGillivray Dawkins remarked that variants are found in Turkey, south Siberia and in Persia itself. Regardless, the tale can also be found throughout India and versions of it are attested in ancient Buddhist and Jain literature. Similar stories are attested in historical Burmese anecdotes and as an ancient tale from the Jatakas, with a magical rooster, or a pair of birds named Bihangama and Bihangami. French man of letter, Comte de Caylus wrote a version of the tale of the Magic Bird Heart, titled L'Oiseau Jaune ("The Yellow Bird") and inserted the story in the narrative of his tale Sylvain and Jocosa. "The Yellow Bird" shows heavy Eastern influence.

Johannes Bolte and Jiří Polívka list as early literary parallels an Italian story from the 16th century (Historia di tre giovani e di tre fate) and a French literary story from Le Cabinet des Fées with an oriental flair (French: Histoire du Prince Tangut et de la princesse au pied de nez; English: "The History of Prince Tangut and the princess with a nose a foot long"). Another literary predecessor pointed by both scholars is Die Prinzessin mit der langen Nase, penned by Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedel, whose work was published in the collection Dschinnistan (1789), by Christoph Martin Wieland. This tale was also adapted to the stage as Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel (1823) (de). David Blamires points that the tale of Jonathan, in the Gesta Romanorum, is a version of the folktype later classified as ATU 566. Spanish scholarship recognizes La ventura en la desdicha, one of the works of Zaragozan religious writer Ana Francisca Abarca de Bolea (1679), as containing an incarnation of the story of Fortunatus written as a moralizing tale.

Irish folklorist Patrick Kennedy listed an Irish variant titled Gilla na Gruaga Donna ("The fellow with the brown hair"), and noted, in his commentaries, that the tale was known in Germany as Die Drei Soldaten ("The Three Soldiers"). Author Seumas MacManus published an Irish tale titled The Wishing Chair of the Lord of Errigal. In this tale, the Lord of Errigal dies, and his heirlooms are bequeathed to his son Cormac, a handsome fellow, but also a spendthrift. Part of the inheritance is a normal looking armchair that is actually a magical wishing chair. He decides to have the daughter of the Lord Mayor as his wife (and her fortune). Unfortunately for him, she is also a skilled gambler, and beats him in a game, leaving him penniless. Later, Cormac meets some hunters on a hunt for a specific hare, the White Hare of Glen na smoil, whose right paw grants infinite money. With this new source of money, Cormac regains his wealth, to the Lord Mayor's daughter's interest: she plays with him again and steals from him the hare's right paw while he is asleep. Next, Cormac finds another source of wealth, an egg from the Blackbird of Glen na smoil, which is also stolen by the Lord Mayor's daughter. Falling into poverty twice, the youth goes to rest on his father's unsuspecting armchair, and utters loudly he wishes to be in the Lord Mayor's daughter's house. It happens thus: the Lord Mayor's daughter finds out about the Wishing Chair, and goads Cormac to wish them away to the "Isle of Loneliness". He fulfills her request, and both are teleported to the island. The girl takes the opportunity to caress his hair and stick a bioran suan (a sleeping pin) on his head, sits on the chair and wishes her away, abandoning Cormac on the island. The youth wakes up and notices he all alone in the island, then goes to find some food source: green apples that make horns appear on the head, and red apples that make it fall. The next year, Cormac waits for a ship to rescue him and takes the apples with him to teach the Lord Mayor's daughter a lesson. Irish author Edna O'Brien published an Irish variant in her book Tales for the Telling, with the title The Magic Apples. In this tale, a very lazy boy named Marty welcomes a beggar and his daughter, Sinead, to his house and gives them manna as food. Marty and Sinead marry and have a son named Marteen. Years later, Marteen decides to earn his fortune, and meets a pedlar on the road, who tells him of a rich lord and his daughter in Limerick. Marteen decides to go there to impress the lord's daughter with his acrobatics and tricks, and meets three beggars on the road (who are the same person), to whom Marteen gives his money. In gratitude, the beggar takes Marteen to an inn and gives the youth a magic ring that always produces money. Marteen goes to Limerick, buys some fine clothes and introduces himself to the lord and his daughter. Marteen falls asleep and his ring falls from his pocket, which the lord's daughter fetches, but her stepsister snatches from her hand and runs to her room. The stepsister sees the ring in action when it provides bars of gold, and lies to the girl the ring fell in a pond. Marteen learns of the ring's loss, then goes home despondent. Some time later, after an episode with the lord himself and four talking cats, Marteen cures the lord with water from the boundary well of Coolawn, and asks him again about the ring. Later, Marteen meets in the woods three brothers boxing over their inheritance: a teleporting ring, a self filling goblet and a harp that plays every tune. Marteen tricks the boys, unburies the objects and goes again to Limerick to impress his beloved. Again, Marteen drinks from the self filling cup and falls asleep; the stepsister steals the second ring, the cup and the harp. Marteen wakes up and, not seeing the objects, leaves. He then goes to an orchard where he eats red apples (which make horns grow on his head) and golden apples (which breaks off the horns). Marteen takes both types of fruits with him to the lord's house in Limerick and offers them to the inhabitants: horns grow on their heads, and Marteen promises to reverse the change if he gets the objects back. His beloved, the girl, points to her stepsister as the culprit, and Marteen gives them the golden apples, as he promised.

A Scottish variant, titled The Three Soldiers, was collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands. He also collected and transcribed a version in Gaelic (Ursgeul), as well as a version with Coinneach Buidhe ("Kenneth the Yellow"), from Dibaig, and a version from Castle Bay, Barra, involving swan maidens. He also compared it to The Krautesel, or Donkey Cabbages, where the characters are transformed into donkeys. Campbell's tale was translated by Loys Brueyre as Les Trois Soldats.

Hispanist Ralph Steele Boggs listed the occurrence of the tale in two compilations: one in A. de Llano Roza de Ampudia's Cuentos asturianos ("Las tres prendas de Pedro"), and other in A. M. Espinosa (Sr.)'s Cuentos populares españoles ("El tonto lagañoso, magañoso"). Aurelio M. Espinosa, Jr. in a 1993 article, analysed the tale collection of Castilla y León, and affirmed that the tale type AT 566 is "muy difundido" ("widespread"). A Galician version titled Un novo papa en Roma e un novo rei en España (English: "A new Pope in Rome and a new king of Spain") was collected in late 20th century.

Majorcan writer Antoni Maria Alcover, in the tradition of Catalan rondayes, collected three variants of ATU 566: Fruita fora temps: figues flor per a Nadal (in Volume X), La Reina banyuda (in Volume 11) and Dos fiis de viuda (in Volume 15). In another variant from Mallorca, Sa Cadeneta (Das Kettchen), is singular in that the peasant brother uses the fruits (pears and figs) before the count's daughter (the princess like character in this variant) steals the magical items. Actually, there is no stealing in this version: the brother uses the items to impress the count and ask for his daughter's hand in marriage.

Johann Georg von Hahn collected a tale from Zagori, in Epirus, Greece (Von den Feigen, die Hörner erzeugen und Hörner vertreiben), and compared the characters in the tale to a Servian variant and a Romanian one. Richard M. Dawkins collected a variant from Phloïtá (The Magic Bird) in which the hero forces both the horns and the donkey transformations on the characters. In the 20th, scholar Georgios A. Megas collected another variant (Das Pfeifchen und das Mützchen).

In a Lithuanian variant (Lithuanian: Stebuklingi obuolėliai; English: "Wonderful apples"), the wonderful fruits that cause the bodily transformation are apples. Professor Bronislava Kerbelyte states the existence of 114 variants collected from all over Lithuania, several of them with contamination from other tale types.

In a Latvian variant collected in 1877, "О царѣ и трехъ унаслѣдованныхъ вещахъ" ("The tsar and the three inheritances"), a tsar dies and leaves to his three sons three relics: a belt that transports the wearer where he wishes to go; a purse that grants an unlimited amount of coins, and a horn that summons an army. With the belt and the purse, one of the king's sons travels to a princess's bedchambers. She manages to trick him into giving her the objects. Later, he returns with the horn, which the princess also manages to take from him. After he is expelled from the palace, the tsar's son finds a tree with nose enlarging fuits.

Andrew Lang collected an Estonian variant, titled Tiidu the Piper, in The Crimson Fairy Book. The story tells of a piper who, at a later point in the tale, gets stranded on an island after a shipwreck and eats the nose enlarging fruits. A previous English version (1895) was published as Tiidu, the Flute Player by William Forsell Kirby, which had even noted the effects of the Nose tree fruits. The tale was first published by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald in Ehstnische Mährchen (1869), named Dudelsack Tiddu. Kreutzwald even noticed the similarities of the episode with the fruits to that of Fortunatus.

A Finnish tale, collected in Karelia (Das Teufelsschiff; English: "The Devil's Ship"), begins with a poor farmer finding a self moving golden ship in the forest with devils. He distracts them and takes the marvellous objects for himself, setting sail for a king's castle, where he invites the princess on a ride on the magical ship. When they arrive on an island, the princess abandons him and takes the objects, while he finds the horn growing berries. The tale was first collected by Eero Salmelainen, titled Hiiden laiva, and translated int English editions with the name Hidden Laiva (sic) or the Golden Ship.

A variant titled Svend's Exploits was translated by Benjamin Thorpe, from the work of Carit Etlar. A second variant, De lange Næser (English: "The long noses") was collected by Evald Tang Kristensen and included in his folktale collection Tales from Jutland.

The Icelandic variant (German: Die ungetreue Dienerin; English: "The unfaithful servant") was given by Adeline Rittershaus in abbreviated form: the hero is a prince (son of a king), and the objects are lost due to the carelessness of a servant.

A variant named The Magic Apples was collected by Klara Stroebe. In this variant, the protagonist just happens to previously own a self setting tablecloth, the purse and a wishing cap. Ornul Hodne, in his 1984 publication of Norwegian folktales, classified Underepla as ATU 566.

Author Frédéric Macler translated into French an Armenian variant titled La belle de Tiflis, further translated into English as by folklorist Lucy Garnett as The Princess of Tiflis, and A. G. Seklemian as The World's Beauty. In this tale, the hero is the son of a rich merchant and is instructed never to reveal the secret of the family's wealth: the magical purse. In another Armenian tale, The Peasant's Son and the King's Daughter, a peasant rescues the son of the King of Snakes (a snake) and is gifted a fez, a fife and a tobacco pouch. The peasant dies and his son inherits the objects. When he uses them for the first time, the fez grants invisibility, the fife summons an army and the tobacco pouch always replenishes itself with money. The King's daughter steals the items, but the hero wins them back with white and red grapes that transform one into a buffalo.

Georgian scholarship registers variants of type 566, "The Horns", in Georgia. According to their tale index, the objects that cause the physical transformation are "wonderful plants".

In a tale from the Tatar people titled "Младший сын" ("The Youngest Son"), a father, on his deathbed, asks his three sons the youngest considered a fool to hold a vigil on his grave for three nights, one son on each night. The eldest son goes first and his father's spirit gives him a cloak of invisibility. Next, the middle son gets a cow horn that summons an army, and the youngest a magic purse. Later, the local padishah announces a challenge: anyone is to have a contest in measuring fortunes with him, and he who proves he is richer than the padishah, shall marry his daughter. The youngest son goes to the padishah's palace with the magic purse and produces an infinite amount of coins. The youngest son marries the padishah's daughter, who dislikes her husband and, out of curiosity, asks him the secret of the purse. The youngest naïvely answers her, and she plots with some guards to steal the purse, beat the man and expel him from the palace. It happens thus. The youngest brother asks the middle one to borrow the army summoning horn to get his revenge on his wife. She also steals the horn. Lastly, he borrows the cloak of invisibility and sneaks into the castle, but he also loses the cloak. After the third time, the padishah's daughter orders her husband to be abandoned in some remote remote island. The man is left to die on an island, and finds three trees: one whose fruits make one beautiful, another whose fruits make expensive clothes appear, and a third whose fruits make large horns appear on the head. By listening to two birds, he learns of a fourth tree whose fruits make the horns disappear. The birds also talk about how the leaves of the fourth tree have buoying properties. The man gathers the fruits and uses the leaves to cross the sea back to his wife, so he can use the fruits on her. Author James Riordan translated another Tatar tale with the title The Tale of the Three Talismans. In this tale, a poor father lives in an aul by the margins of Lake Baikal with his three starving sons. One day, he takes a hunting gun to shoot some game. He sights a strange, large bird by a tree. The bird begs the man to be spared and gives him a magic cloth that produces food. Some time later, the khan stops by their hunt on a hunt and asks for food. The man waves the cloth and produces a feast before the khan. The khan returns to his palace and learns he has to host foreign envoys, so he sends for the same peasant man that prepared the feast before him. The peasant man sends his son Osman in his stead with the magic cloth. After the feast, the khan plans to discover the peasant's secret, and goads him into marrying his daughter, princess Isharad. The princess marries Osman and he shows her he cloth. She steals the object for her father, and the khan orders Osman to be locked in prison. Back to the peasant, he goes to hunt again, meets the same bird and is given a magic purse that produces golden coins. He loans the purse to his second son Mustafa, who goes to the khan's court to finance a new palace for him. Mustafa also marries princess Isharad, who steals the purse for her father. Lastly, the peasant meets the bird a third time and is given a golden arrow that always lands on its target. The peasant gives it to his youngest son, named Taz Oglan, who uses the golden arrow to defeat an enemy army and marries Isharad. Once again, the princess learns the secret of her husband and steals the object for her father. Taz Oglan, in desperation, flees his spouse's palace into the forest. There, he eats any type of berries and fruits, including ripe figs that make horns grow on his head. By using leaves from a bush, the horns fall off. With his newfound knowledge, Taz Oglan goes back to the khan, punishes him and the princess, releases his brothers from prison and becomes the new khan.

In a tale from the Karachay Balkars with the title "Пасынок" ("Stepson"), a man remarries, and his new wife hates her young stepson, so the youth asks his sister to prepare some food for the road, for he will try his luck in the world. He journeys alone and meets three giants emegen quarreling about their inheritance, three magical objects: a wagon that takes the user where he wishes to go, a cap of invisibility, and a "sakis", a type of chewing gum that, when spat out, produces gold. The youth tricks the giants and steals the objects, then goes to a royal city. He sees the city's beautiful princess from a distance, and falls in love with her. Because she has been kept hidden from the world, many would pay to see her. The youth then spits out gold with the sakis and pays some maidservants to be allowed access to the princess. They enjoy each other's company, but the princess gets him drunk and he reveals the secret of his fortune: the sakis. She steals the sakis and tosses the youth out of the city with the wagon and the hat. Eventually, she repeats her trick and steals the remaining objects from him. He decides to leave the city and finds work with some stupid giants. He helps them in harvesting their grains and is allowed to eat some fruits from their orchard: pears, carobs and apples. He picks and eats them: the pear turns him into a buffalo, the carob enlarges his horns, and the apples restore him to human form. Inspired by the transformation, he takes some of the fruits and goes back to the city to sell them to the princess.

Folklorist Stith Thompson analysed a variant collected among the native North Americans ("The Magic Apples"). In a Penobscot tale, Story of Jack the Soldier, a soldier named Jack defects and is joined by a captain and a corporal. They see an illuminated house in the distance. After spending he night, they see three enchanted maidens who give them three gifts: a food providing tablecloth, a money providing wallet and a cap of transportation. Jack uses the cap and takes them to London. He falls in love with a woman of status and tries to woo her by using the objects. She steals the items and abandons him. Jack finds magic apples that grow a tree on his head. He returns to London on a ship and uses the apples on the woman. She returns the items and is left to die. Jack and his companions return to disenchant the maidens.

French folklorist Henry Carnoy obtained a variant titled Les Figues Merveilleuses ("The Wonderful Figs") from Canada. Marius Barbeau collected a variant titled La Princesse de Tomboso, from a man named Joseph Mailloux, and a second variant, unpublished at the time. In a Woods Cree tale, The Man and the Berries, a man who was studying to be part of the Anglican Church decides to abandon his studies after a prank by some students. He meets an old woman on his journey. They eat and drink together and she gives him a box that provides money and a belt of transportation. After arriving at a town, he decides to play cards with a local woman. He loses the belt and the box, but decides to use the belt to transport them to an island. The woman steals the belt and returns to the city. The man finds the berries that grow horns and builds a raft to return to the city. He uses the berries on the woman to make grow horns on her head, and, after restoring her to normal, marries her.

A version was collected among German speaking populations living in Pennsylvania, being a unique composition of types made by the storyteller. A variant was collected by researcher Susie Hoogasian Villa amongst Armenian descent populations of the United States, in Detroit: The Magic Figs.

Professor Stanley Robe collected, in 1947, a variant named La fruta extranjera (English: "The foreign fruit") from a 24 year old housewife from Tepatitlán de Morelos, Jalisco who provided many tales, later published in 1970. In this version, the hero inherits a little sombrero and the purse, and the pair of magic fruits are bananas and prunes.

British traveller Rachel Harriette Busk registered a version from Matanzas, in Cuba, about a family man named Perrico, who is given the purse, a tablecloth and a stick from a sprite (a goblin). In a variant collected in Costa Rica with the name Prince Simpleheart, the magical objects are an invisibility cloak, the money knapsack and a violin that forces people to dance. Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons recorded a tale from Saint Lucia titled Petit fille mangé pomme la, y tou'né yun choval (English: "The young woman ate a fruit and became a horse").

Scholar Ulrich Marzolph points that Maronite storyteller Hanna Diyab had in his repertoire of narratives according to Antoine Galland's diary an as of yet unpublished version of type 566: The Purse, the Dervish's Horn, the Figs, and the Horns. A variant in the Mehri language (German: Die Stiefmutter und der Vogel; English: The stepmother and the bird) was collected and published at the turn of the 20th century.

A Persian variant, The Story of Magic Bird, mixes the motif of the ATU 567 with the magical objects the hero steals from his step brothers by trickery.

Reverend James Hinton Knowles collected a variant from Kashmir titled Saiyid and Said: two poor brothers eat the head and breast of a golden bird and gain special abilities. They go their separate ways: one becomes a king; the other gets romantically involved with a beautiful woman who betrays him twice (the second time, she steals the magic objects and, as a payback, is turned into an ass for her troubles). A Bengali variant was collected by Wiiliam MacCulloch, titled Learning and Motherwit: the princess is transformed into a monkey by the use of special leaves in her bath. A variant was collected from India in the 20th century, by tale collector A. K. Ramajunan, with the title Three Magic Objects, originally in the Kannada language. Writer Adeline Rittershaus pointed to the existence of an "Hindustani" version published in the 1865 edition of Revue orientale et americaine: L'Inexorable Courtisane et Les Talismans, whose translation was provided by Garcin de Tassy. Natesa Sastri registered a Dravidian variant where twins brothers eat the peel and seed of a special fruit, thus setting each of them on a grand destiny. The younger of the two collects the four magical items a dying sage left to his disciples, but loses them to the trickery of two courtesans. He eventually discovers a four branched mango tree, a fruit of each branch causing a transformation: black ape, kite, old woman and back into his normal self.

Folklorist Joseph Jacobs saw a parallel of the tale of Fortunatus in a Chinese translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, where the monk is given a magic jug. Chinese folklorist and scholar 丁乃通 established a second typological classification of Chinese folktales (the first was by Wolfram Eberhard in the 1930s). In his new system, he noted other magical items (e. g., hoe that produces silver from the ground, a cloak that helps cross water safely), and there are other types of fruits that cause the transformation. Missionary Adele M. Fielde transcribed a Chinese tale from Guangdong (The Three Talismans) where a poor man goes to an island and is gifted a cap of invisibility, a cloak of transportation and a basket that replenishes itself with jewels, and the horn growing fruits are bananas.

In a Korean tale, The Long Nosed Princess, a mother, on her deathbed, divides the family's heirlooms among her three sons: a gold producing marble to the eldest; a flute that summons a regiment to the second eldest and a ragged cloak of invisibility to the youngest. A princess becomes aware of the treasures and decides to have them all. She invites the first two brothers to her palace, steal the items and throws the brothers in the dungeons. The third brother enter the palace with the cloak of invisibility and discovers in the palace gardens red apples that grow horns and yellow apples that make them disappear. This tale is classed KT 282 in the Koran tale type index.

A Vietnamese variant is reported to have been collected by F. Zuchelli and published in 1968, in a compilation of Vietnamese folktales.

Professor Dean Fansler collected two variants from Philippines (The charcoal maker who became king and Pedro's Fortunes), and suggested its entry in the archipelagical oral tradition from an external source.

A version from Kabyle, Ahmed, le fils du charbonnier, is related to the ATU 566 cycle. A second variant (Die kostbaren Eier) was collected by German archeologist Leo Frobenius. A variant from Egypt (Histoire du musicien ambulant et de son fils) was collected by Guillaume Spitta Bey in the 19th century and classified by scholar Hasan M. El Shamy as belonging to the ATU 566 tale type. Professor Hasan El Shamy also states the tale type is distributed throughout Egypt, such as in a New Valley variant where the objects are a magic carpet, a tray and a stone, and the fruits, in two versions, are dates and carrots.

Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons collected an untitled variant from the Cape Verde Islands that she dubbed Horns from Figs, where the soldier uses the magical objects to kill the princess and the royal family and make himself king of the realm.

In a variant from East Africa, written down by linguist Carl Velten, protagonist Mohamedi obtains cucumbers that grow horns. In a Swahili variant, The Magic Date Trees, one of two brothers, seduced by a charming woman, is robbed of all his fortune by the woman and abandoned in an island. There, he finds two date trees whose fruits cause the appearance of tusks on one's face.