This Italian folk tale (AT type 707) is a good example of the kind of complex narrative that may be created by combining various common motifs, and shows distinct signs of its oral origin - e.g., in the threefold repetitions.   Stith Thompson says at least 50 versions are known from India, and it is popular in Europe, Asia, and the New World.

Motifs:

• Boastful dispute: “what I would do if I were married to a member of the court.”
• Bride test (on the two older sisters).  Note their tasks are appropriate to their prospective husbands – serving water/butler, sewing clothes/wardrobe master.  In passing the bride tests, they fulfill their boasts.  Furthermore, their passing the bride tests provides a warrant for their younger sister, who must marry the king before she can fulfill her boast - and who faces a much more severe penalty (death) if she fails.  Bride tests also appear in spinning tales such as "Rumpelstiltskin" (spinning straw into goal) and cognate tales from other cultures.
• Special children marked by a physical sign (apples in boys’ hands, star on girl’s brow).
• Abduction/abandonment of the children/substitution by beasts (puppies).  Child abandonment also occurs, most famously, in "Hansel and Gretel" and in the ballad of "The Babes in the Wood," which was extremely well known during the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Fairy gifts:
• A deer to nurse them (this seems pretty unique, but see next item)
• A purse which is always full of money
• A ring that indicates misfortune has occurred to loved ones (see, e.g., "Beauty and the Beast")
• Children reared by animals.  (See the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus, the story of Mowgli in Kipling's The Jungle Book, etc.)
• Children mature unusually rapidly.  (This is a component of many American tall tales and legends, such as the story of John Henry.)
• Jealous sisters create desire (sense of lack) in favored sister.  (Again, we see this in some versions of "Beauty and the Beast.")
• Magic helpers (fairies/hermits).
• Enchanted castle guarded by magic creatures.
• Prohibition (don’t make a mistake in following instructions to enter castle; don’t answer the bird).
• Transformation: men into statues (here as punishment for violating prohibition).
• Recognition through dinner, signs. (Most famously in the "Cinderella" stories.)

• Three daughters of the herb-gatherer (the youngest makes the most advantageous marriage, to the king);
• Three children of the youngest sister (two boys, one girl; the youngest, the girl, succeeds in the quest when her two brothers fail);
• Three fairies, granting three gifts;
• Three quests (unusually, the eldest brother succeeds in the first two quests – it is only on the third quest that he, and then his brother, fails by violating the prohibition);
• Three hermits (the three fairies in disguise).