I remember as a child being fascinated by a small aspect of a much larger fairy tale in Jack and the Beanstalk. I guess I have never really been enamored with conquest and really thought that Jack was a thief, but I loved the hen that laid the golden eggs.
The original source of course was Aesop, who told a tale with a moral core in The Goose that laid the golden egg. A man and his wife had the good fortune to possess a goose that laid a golden egg every day. For a while …