The Six Swans

"The Six Swans" (German: ''Die sechs Schwäne'') is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in ''Grimm's Fairy Tales'' in 1812 (KHM 49). It is of Aarne–Thompson type 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), commonly found throughout Europe. Other tales of this type include The Seven Ravens, The Twelve Wild Ducks, Udea and her Seven Brothers, The Wild Swans, and The Twelve Brothers. Andrew Lang included a variant of the tale in ''The Yellow Fairy Book''.

Origin

The tale was published by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of ''Kinder- und Hausmärchen'' in 1812, and substantially rewritten for the second edition in 1819. Their source is Wilhelm Grimm's friend and later wife Henriette Dorothea (Dortchen) Wild (1795–1867).

Synopsis

A King gets lost in a forest, and an old witch helps him, on the condition that he marry her beautiful daughter. The King suspects the mysterious maiden to be wicked, but agrees to marry her. He has six sons and a daughter from his first marriage, however, and fears that the children will abused by his new wife; so, he sends them away to a hidden castle and visits them in secret.

The new queen, who has learned witchcraft from her mother, finds out about her stepchildren and decides to get rid of them. She sews six magical white shirts, goes to the hidden castle, and tosses the shirts over the boys, transforming them into swans.

The princes' still human sister runs away, finding her brothers in a hunter's hut. The princes can only take their human forms for fifteen minutes every evening. They tell their sister that they have heard of a way to lift the curse: for six years, she mustn't speak while making six shirts out of star-flowers for her brothers. On the other hand, if she speaks before the end of the sixth year, the spell will never be broken. The Princess agrees to do this and, taking shelter in a tree, dedicates herself solely to gathering the star-flowers and sewing in silence.

At the beginning of the fourth year, the King of another country finds the Princess sewing, is taken by her beauty, and takes her into the court with the intention of making her his queen. However, the King's snobbish mother hates her and does not consider her fit to be a queen. When she gives birth to their first child, the wicked mother-in-law takes away the infant and accuses the Queen of killing and eating him, but the King refuses to believe it.

The young Queen gives birth to two other children, but twice again the mother-in-law hides them away and falsely claims that she has killed and eaten her babies. The King is unable to keep protecting her, and unable to properly defend herself, the Queen is sentenced to be burned at the stake as a witch. All this time, she has held back her tears and her words, and sewing the star-flower shirts no matter what.

On the day of her execution, the Queen has finished making all the shirts for her brothers. When she is brought to the stake, she takes the shirts with her and when she is about to be burned, the six years expire and the six swans come flying through the air. She throws the shirts over her brothers and they regain their human form, although the youngest brother's left arm remains a wing due to his own shirt missing a sleeve (in some variants, the sister is unable to finish the last shirt in time, leaving her youngest brother a swan permanently).

The Queen is now free to speak and, with her brothers' support, defends herself against the accusations against her. The Queen's three missing children are found alive and her evil mother-in-law is the one who is burned at the stake as punishment. In the end, the Queen, her husband, three children, and six brothers live happily ever after.

Analysis

Folklorist Stith Thompson points that the stories of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther ATU 451 tale-type follow a long literary history, beginning with the tale of the ''Dolopathos'', in the 12th century. The ''Dolopathos'', in medieval tradition, was later used as part of the Knight of the Swan heroic tale.

Fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes cites that the Brothers Grimm considered an origin in Greco-Roman times, with parallels also found in French and Nordic oral traditions.

The Brothers Grimm themselves, on their annotations, saw a connection of "The Six Swans" tale with a story of seven swans published in the ''Feenmärchen'' (1801) and the swan-ride of the Knight of Swan (Lohengrin). They also saw a connection with the swan shirts of the swan maidens of the Volundarkvida.

On his notes on '' Children of Lir'' tale, in his book ''More Celtic Fairy Tales'', folklorist Joseph Jacobs wrote that the "well-known Continental folk-tale" of ''The Seven Swans (or Ravens)'' became connected to the medieval cycle of the Knight of the Swan.

Variants

Distribution

The tale type is said to be "widely recorded" in Europe and in the Middle East, as well as in India and in the Americas. In Europe only, there exist "over two hundred versions" collected and published "in folktale collections from all parts" of the continent.

French scholar Nicole Belmont identified two forms of the tale type in Europe: one "essentially" present in the Germanic area and Scandinavia, and another she dubbed "western version". She noted that in this western version, the youngest sister, after she settles with the brothers, asks for fire from a neighbouring ogre, and a tree sprouts on their yard and bears fruit that causes the transformation.

Variants have also been collected in Japan with the name 七羽の白鳥 (Romanization: ''Nanaha no hakuchō''; English: "The Seven Swans"). However, Japanese scholarship acknowledges that these tales are restricted to Kikaijima and Okinoerabujima. Japanese folklorist Keigo Seki also found variants in Kagoshima.

Literary predecessors

A literary predecessor to the tale is ''The Seven Doves'' (Neapolitan: ''Li sette palommelle''; Italian: ''I sette colombi''), in Giambattista Basile's ''Pentamerone'', where the brothers are transformed into doves.

Number of brothers

In the tale from the Brothers Grimm, there are six brothers and they are transformed into swans.

In other European variants, the number of princes/brothers alternates between three, seven or twelve, but very rarely there are two, eight,Bolte, Johannes; Polívka, Jiri. ''Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- u. hausmärchen der brüder Grimm''. Erster Band (NR. 1-60). Germany, Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1913. pp. 227-234. nine, ten or even eleven,Bolte, Johannes; Polívka, Jiri. ''Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- u. hausmärchen der brüder Grimm''. Erster Band (NR. 1-60). Germany, Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 1913. pp. 70-75. such as the Danish fairy tale collected by Mathias Winther, ''De elleve Svaner'' (English: "The Eleven Swans"), first published in 1823, or Ligurian tale ''Les onze cygnes''.

Hungarian folk tale collector Elisabeth Sklarek compiled two Hungarian variants, ''Die sieben Wildgänse'' ("The Seven Wild Geese") and ''Die zehn Geschwister'' ("The Ten Siblings"), and, in her commentaries, noted that both tales were related to the Grimm versions. A third Hungarian is titled ''A tizenkét fekete várju'' ("The Twelve Black Ravens").

Ludwig Bechstein collected two German variants, ''The Seven Crows'' and ''The Seven Swans''.

Commenting on the Irish variant collected by Patrick Kennedy, Louis Brueyre indicated as another variant the Indian tale of ''Truth's Triumph'', or ''Der Sieg der Wahrheit'': in the second part of the tale, the youngest child, a girl, witnesses the transformation of her one hundred brothers into crows.

In a Lithuanian variant, ''Von den zwölf Brüdern, die als Raben verwandelt wurden'' or ''The Twelve Brothers, Twelve Black Ravens'', the witch stepmother asks for her husband to kill his sons, burn their bodies and deliver her the ashes.

In the Hungarian variant ''A tizenkét koronás hattyu és a csiháninget fonó testvérkéjük'', the boys' poor mother curses her twelve sons into the avian form, while also giving an escape clause: after their sister is born, she should sew twelve shirts to save them.

In a Sudanese tale, ''The ten white doves'', the titular white doves are ten brothers transformed by their stepmother. Their sister has a dream where an old woman tells her the key to reversing the curse: weaving coats with leaves from the acacia tree she is placed on by her brothers after fleeing home.

Results of transformation

The other variation is in the result of the brothers' transformation: in some versions they are ducks, in others ravens, and even eagles, geese, peacocks, blackbirds, storks, cranes, jackdaws or rooks.

The eagle transformation is attested in the Polish tale ''Von der zwölf Prinzen, die in Adler verwandelt wurden'' (English: "The Twelve Princes who became Eagles"), translated as ''The Eagles''. A similar transformation is attested in a Romanian tale, which was also compared to the Grimm's tale.

The geese transformation is present in the Irish variant ''The Twelve Wild Geese'', collected by Irish folklorist Patrick Kennedy and compared to the German variants ("The Twelve Brothers" and "The Seven Ravens") and the Norse one ("The Twelve Wild Ducks").

In a tale attributed to Northern European origin, ''The Twelve White Peacocks'', the twelve princelings are transformed into peacocks due to a curse cast by a troll.

The blackbird transformation is attested in a Central European tale (''The Blackbird''), collected by Theodor Vernaleken: the twelve brothers kill a blackbird and bury it in the garden, and from its grave springs an apple-tree bearing the fruit the causes the transformation.

The avian transformation of storks is present in a Polish tale collected in Kraków by Oskar Kolberg

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