Type: The Bird That Made Milk

Today's story — "The Fairy Bird" — is from Fairy Tales from South Africa by Mrs. E. J. Bourhill and Mrs. J. B. Drake, published in 1908 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 10 in the audiobook playlist:

The fairy tales in this book are based on Swazi and Zulu stories from Swaziland (now Eswatini) and from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. 

The book is illustrated by W. Herbert Holloway, and here is his illustration for this story, showing the angry mother throwing the children off a cliff, punishing them for having lost the bird.

This story type is The Bird That Made Milk. This is a story widely told throughout southern Africa. In the version told here, the children are abandoned by their parents, but then the fairy bird comes and helps them in thanks for having let him go.

To see another story of this type, take a look here:

"The Bird That Made Milk" in A Comparative Grammar of the South African Bantu Languages by J. Torrend. A version in Xhosa and English which includes music for the singing.

"The Bird That Excretes Milk" in The Treasury of Basuto Lore by Edouard Jacottet. The story in both Sesuto and English. 

"Story of the Bird that Made Milk" in Kaffir Folk Lore by George McCall Theal, who reports two versions of the story.