Swan Maiden's Feathered Robe III

Some swan maiden tales celebrate the powerful connections between the human world and the fantastic. A number of Mongolian creation tales trace the origin of clan heroes to their powerful swan mothers. Among Siberian tribes, the hunting and killing of swans is considered a sin and an offence against this first mother. A Buryat swan maiden tale tells how the swan maiden patiently waits for her chance to recover her feathered skin only after she has produced eleven children for her hunter husband. When she asks her husband if he remembers where he hid the old skin, the husband, trusting her after so many years, obligingly shows it to her. She immediately slips it on and flies up to the roof vents. From there she declares her intention to return to heaven, and commands her children to perform special ceremonies in her honor every spring and autumn when the swans migrate. The narrative also offers one small etiological detail: A daughter with sooty hands reaches up to grab her mother's disappearing feet; the soot wipes off on the webbed feet, leaving swans with black feet ever since.

In his article "A Note on the Demon Queen Eleanor," Robert Chapman notes that Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine herself became the subject of an unflattering swan maiden legend. "Eleanor was the kind of person who would attract legend in any age. She had an uncanny ability to get and keep the upper hand, she had sway over powerful men, her management was firm and aggressive." The monk Richard of Devizes described her as "Queen Alienor — an incomparable woman." But, as can be expected, along with her many admirers Eleanor also attracted detractors who propagated quite a few nasty tales about her.

Walter Map, a member of Henry II's court and definitely not one of Eleanor's admirers, was probably trying to insult her when he related the tale of "Henno–With–The–Teeth," the story of the demon countess of Anjou. The story follows the structure of a swan maiden tale. Henno meets a beautiful princess on the Norman shore, the intended bride of the King of France. Henno marries her instead and begets a number of children. He then loses her after he spies on her bath and sees her in her true dragon form. Chapman argues that this Demon Queen tale, told during Eleanor’s life, quickly embedded itself as the basis for further unsavory legends shortly after her death. Philippe Mouskes, in his chronique rime (ca 1240), provides a terse list of the "facts" about Eleanor's birth, claiming that her father, the Count of Aquitaine, met a beautiful lady near a fountain; they married and had children, including Eleanor. After a space of time, the Countess, when confronted by the Christian sacrament, transformed into a swan and flew away through the church roof.

The figure of Eleanor of Aquitaine continued to ignite popular imagination so that some fifty years after her death she was transformed again from the daughter of a swan maiden to a swan maiden herself. In Richard Coeur de Lion, a Middle English romance of the 13th century, the hero's mother is a beautiful stranger named Cassodorien, daughter to the King of Antioch. At the wedding ceremony to Henry II, Cassodorien faints during the consecration of the host and deftly manages to avoid the sacrament. Some fifteen years later, Henry bows to the pressure of a suspicious earl that Cassodorien be forced to view the host. Like all the previous swan maiden husbands, he is shocked when she transforms into a swan, taking her daughter with her and knocking Prince John over so hard that he breaks his arm. The poet–author must have been confident that listeners would have substituted Eleanor's name for Cassodorien, keeping alive Eleanor's reputation as a demon queen well after her death.

There was considerable renewed interest in the swan maiden tales in Europe throughout the late 19th century. For the English Victorians it was the era of the "Married Woman's Property Acts" and of the "New Woman." Marriage roles, divorce, and the appropriate role of a wife were being re–examined and questioned. The swan maiden, with her ability to effectively fly away from her marriage and her children, became a fascinating study for Victorian folklorists, who saw in the narrative the evolution of the institution of marriage. According to Carole Silver in her illuminating article "East of the Sun and West of the Moon": Victorians and Fairy Brides, the interpretations of the tale varied widely, and depended on one's attitudes toward women's role in marriage, an imbalance of power between the sexes and women's sexuality.

Joseph Jacobs, editor of English folktales for children, felt that the reader's sympathy lay with the abandoned husband, not the swan maiden as representative of a matrilineal society with "easy and primitive" marriage bonds that could be more easily broken. Silver reports that Jacobs believed "that the 'eerie wife,' in separating from her mate, forfeited the audience's respect; her behavior reinforced the listener's sympathy with the husband. 'Is he not,' Jacobs asked, to be 'regarded as the superior of the fickle, mysterious maid that leaves him for the break of a taboo?'" Silver argues that folklorists like Jacobs were expressing anxiety over the emerging institution of divorce, believing that the looseness of the marriage bond was a trait among "savages." Silver continues: "Clearly, free and easy separation was associated with primitive societies and savage eras. Complex and difficult divorce, on the other hand, was the hallmark of a highly evolved society. . . .By diminishing the claims to superiority of the fairy bride, neutralizing her sexuality, and limiting or denying her right to divorce, Victorian folklorists rendered her acceptable to themselves and their society."

If the swan maiden in Victorian folklore studies was to be relegated to an outmoded and primitive expression of marriage and dreaded matriarchy, popular imagination found in her a powerful call to transformation. English women were jolted by the appearance of Nora, the heroine of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House. Torvald, Nora's patronizing husband, calls Nora a "skylark," and "an elf." In a plot twisted by threats of blackmail, Nora tries to prevent Torvald from discovering the blackmailer's letter by putting on a ruffled costume kept in a closet and "dancing a tarantella" for her husband. It is a swan maiden gesture worthy of a Samodiva, or of the Japanese crane wife whose dance mesmerizes her hapless husband as she tries to manufacture her escape. But Nora is not successful and, later, a frightened Torvald unfairly blames Nora for the blackmail, verbally attacking his wife and accusing her of being unfit to raise their children. When the blackmail is withdrawn, Torvald forgives his wife — but it is too late. The final scene is not one of reconciliation, but of the slam of the door as Nora leaves. It is the modern version of divorce swan–maiden style.

Can we love the swan maiden? She seems to offer both an image of feminine power and feminine weakness: a girl who submits to the deceptions of a suitor and a woman who rejects the terms of an unfair marriage. She is at once a doting mother and one who will happily abandon her children in favor of her own needs. Her ambiguous tale can be read as the suppression of women's rights and women's creative power through enforced domestication, but it can also show such a woman's resolve to not only survive a questionable marriage but to remain true to her nature. When given the chance, no amount of suppression can keep the swan maiden down. I feel a terrible tenderness for the youngest swan–girl, abandoned by her sisters to her fate on the ground. I want to shelter her from the routine ordinariness of her human marriage, given over to the demands of others. And I want to cheer, relieved and inspired, when she finds her own true self again, and rises to soar.

 

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Further Reading

Nonfiction

"A Note on the Demon Queen," by Robert Chapman in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 70, No 6 (1955).
"The Swan Maiden: A Folktale of North Eurasian Origin?" by A. T. Hatto in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, (1961).
In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender by Barbara Leavy, NYU Press (1995).
"The Swan–Maiden Revisited: Religious Significance of 'Divine–Wife' Folktales with Special Reference to Japan" by Alan L. Miller in Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 (1987).
"Why the Irish Came to America," by Charles Neely in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 46, No. 179 (1933).
"Mongol Creation Stories: Man, Mongol Tribes, the Natural World, and Mongol Deities" by Nassen–Bayer; Kevin Stuart in Asian Folklore Studies, Vol 51, No. 2 (1992).
"'East of the Sun and West of the Moon"': Victorians and Fairy Brides" by Carole Silver in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol 6, No.2, Woman and Nation (1987).
He Who Hunted Birds in his Father's Village by Gary Snyder, Grey Fox Press, 1979.
"An Early Chinese Swan–Maiden Story" by Arthur Waley in Journal of the Waburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 22, No. 1 / 2 (1959).

Fiction

Murkmere by Patricia Elliot, Little Brown Young Readers (2007).
Swan Maiden by Heather Tomlinson, Henry Holt & Co. Young Adult (2007).

 

Text copyright © 2007 by Midori Snyder.

Art: page 1 "The Swan Princess" by Russian symbolist Mikhail Vrubel, page 2 Europa's Fairy Book (1916) New York ; London, page 3 "Swan Maiden" by Midori Snyder