The Swan Prince

The status of **the Swan Prince** is unknown. Julvia Dubna Vajat swears by 'the name of the Swan Prince', so he appears to have some importance in swan shifter culture.

## Folklore/Mythology

A version of the *Knight of the Swan* tale was included in 'Johannes de Alta Silva's *Dolopathos sive de Rege et Septem Sapientibus* (ca. 1190), a Latin version of the *Seven Sages of Rome'.* In the tale, a human lord 'becomes lost in the hunt for a white stag and wanders into an enchanted forest where he encounters a mysterious woman (clearly a swan maiden or fairy) in the act of bathing, while clutching a gold necklace. They fall instantly for each other and consummate their love. The young lord brings her to his castle, and the maiden . . . gives birth to a septuplet, six boys and a girl, with golden chains about their necks. But her evil mother-in-law swaps the newborn with seven puppies. The servant with orders to kill the children in the forest . . . abandons them under a tree. The young lord is told by his . . . mother that his bride gave birth to a litter of pups, and he punishes [the bride] by burying her up to the neck for seven years. Some time later, the young lord while hunting encounters the children in the forest, and the wicked mother's lie starts to unravel. The servant is sent out to search [for] them, and find the boys bathing in the form of swans, with their sister guarding their gold chains. The servant steals the boys' chains, preventing them from changing back to human form, and the chains are taken to a goldsmith to be melted down to make a goblet. The swan-boys land in the young lord's pond, and their sister, who can still transform back and forth into human shape by the magic of her chain, goes to the castle to obtain bread to her brothers. Eventually the young lord asks her story so the truth comes out. The goldsmith was actually unable to melt down the chains, and had kept them for himself. These are now restored back to the six boys, and they regain their powers, except one, whose chain the smith had damaged in the attempt. So he alone is stuck in swan form. The work goes on to . . . obliquely hint that this is the swan in the Swan Knight tale, more precisely, that this was the swan “*quod cathena aurea militem in navicula trahat armatum* (that tugged by a gold chain an armed knight in a boat).'

'The story of the Knight of the Swan, or Swan Knight, is a medieval tale about a mysterious rescuer who comes in a swan-drawn boat to defend a damsel, his only condition being that he must never be asked his name.'

'The Six Swans (German: *Die sechs Schwäne*) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in *Grimm's Fairy Tales* in 1812.' It was provided by Henriette Dorothea Wild. In the tale, a 'King gets lost in a forest, and an old woman helps him, on the condition that he marry her beautiful daughter. The King . . . accepts . . . He has six sons and a daughter from his first marriage, however, and fears that the children will be targeted by his new wife; so he sends them away and visits them in secret.

The new queen and now stepmother, who has learned witchcraft from her mother, finds out about her six stepsons and decides to get them out of her way. She sews six magical shirts and goes to the hidden castle where the children are hidden for safety, then tosses the shirts over the boys and transforms them into swans.

The brothers can only take their human forms for fifteen minutes every evening. They tell their still human younger sister that they have heard of a way to break such curses: she must make six shirts out of nettles and can't make a sound for six years or the spell will never be broken and she will transform into swan forever. The girl agrees to do this and runs away, hiding in a hunter's hut and dedicating herself solely to gathering the nettles and sewing in silence.

Years later, the King of another country finds the girl doing this, 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 child 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, sewing and sewing the nettle 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 in some versions, the youngest brother cannot reverse the transformation completely and his left arm remains a wing due to the missing sleeve in the last shirt sewn by his sister.

The Queen is now free to speak, and she can defend herself against the accusations. She does so with the support of her brothers. In the end, the evil mother-in-law is the one who is burned at the stake as punishment.'

## References

1. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 1 - The Forest of Fire.” *Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 1 December 2017. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036105/chapters/29432541. Chapter 9: A Meeting.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Knight of the Swan, Dolopathos". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight\_of\_the\_Swan#Dolopathos. Accessed 3 May 2021.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "The Six Swans". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Six\_Swans. Accessed 3 May 2021.