Seven-league boots are an element in

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boot A boot is a type of footwear. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf. Some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearly ...

s allow the person wearing them to take strides of seven leagues per step, resulting in great speed. The boots are often presented by a magical character to the

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Sweetheart Roland "Sweetheart Roland" (german: Der Liebste Roland) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm (KHM 56). It combines several Aarne-Thompson types: type 1119, the witch killing her own children; type 313A, the girl helps the hero flee; ...

Adelbert von Chamisso Adelbert von Chamisso (; 30 January 178121 August 1838) was a German poet and botanist, author of '' Peter Schlemihl'', a famous story about a man who sold his shadow. He was commonly known in French as Adelbert de Chamisso (or Chamissot) de Bo ...

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Goethe's Faust ''Faust'' is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as '' Faust, Part One'' and '' Faust, Part Two''. Nearly all of Part One and the majority of Part Two are written in rhymed verse. Although rarely ...

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Hop o' My Thumb Hop-o'-My-Thumb (Hop-on-My-Thumb), or Hop o' My Thumb, also known as Little Thumbling, Little Thumb, or Little Poucet (french: Le petit Poucet), is one of the eight fairytales published by Charles Perrault in ''Histoires ou Contes du temps pass� ...

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In Search of Lost Time ''In Search of Lost Time'' (french: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French ...

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Etymology

From the context of English language, 'Seven-league boots' originally arose as a translation from the French , popularised by Charles Perrault's fairy tales. A league (roughly ) was considered to represent the distance walked in an hour by an average man. If a man were to walk seven hours per day, he would then walk seven leagues, or about . In the 17th century, post-boys' boots were called 'seven-league boots'. While some suggest that the 'seven leagues' references the distance between post houses (post-boys would only have their boots touch the ground at every coach inn, when changing the horses), this is inaccurate: the distance between coach inns was fixed at no more than five leagues.

Other variations

In fiction

Folklore

Russian folklore Folklore of Russia is folklore of Russians and other ethnic groups of Russia. Russian folklore takes its roots in the pagan beliefs of ancient Slavs and now is represented in the Russian fairy tales. Epic Russian bylinas are also an important pa ...

has a similar magic item called ''Сапоги-Скороходы'' (fast-pace boots), which allows the person wearing them to walk and run at an amazing pace. * In Finnish and Estonian translations of stories with seven-league boots, they are often translated as (Finnish) and (Estonian), literally 'boots of seven

Scandinavian mile A Scandinavian mile ( Norwegian and sv, mil, [], like "meal") is a unit of length common in Norway and Sweden, but not Denmark. Today, it is standardised as 1 being , but it had different values in the past. The word is derived from the same ...

s'. * Japanese scholar

Kunio Yanagita Kunio Yanagita (柳田國男, Yanagita Kunio, July 31, 1875 – August 8, 1962) was a Japanese author, scholar, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a ...

listed a tale titled ''The Thousand-ri Boots'' from Yamanashi, and wondered about its great similarity to a tale in the ''

Pentamerone The ''Pentamerone'', subtitled ''Lo cunto de li cunti'' ("The Tale of Tales"), is a seventeenth-century Neapolitan fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile. Background The stories in the ''Pentamerone'' were collec ...

'' with a pair of seven-league boots.Yanagita, Kunio; Translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer (1986). ''Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale''. Indiana University Press. p. 97. .

References

External links

* {{Authority control Boots Mythological clothing Recurrent elements in fairy tales Magic items Fictional footwear