Serendipity language was by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a (lost) painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, "The Three Princes of Serendip". The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". The name comes from "Serendip", an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence "Sarandib" by Arab traders. It is derived from the Sanskrit "Siṃhaladvīpaḥ" (Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka + dvīpaḥ, island).
The King of England and his Three Sons The King of England and his Three Sons The King of England and his Three Sons is a Gypsy fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in "More English Fairy Tales". He listed as his source Francis Hindes Groome's "In Gypsy Tents", where the informant was John Roberts, a Welsh gypsy. A version of this tale appears in by Ruth Manning-Sanders, under the title "An Old King and His Three Sons of England". An old king could be cured only by golden apples from a far country. His three sons set out to find them, and parted ways at a crossroads.