The Swan Maiden's Feathered Robe II

At this point it is interesting to examine the divergent solutions to such an untenable relationship. In many narratives there follows a second half to the story (in fact some scholars argue that the swan maiden narratives exist merely as a prologue to the second half of the tale): the chastened husband's search to regain his fantastic wife. The husband, now charged to prove he is worthy of a fantastical marriage, must undertake a perilous journey to reach the home of his former wife. The locations are always in the realm of the fantastic or the celestial, such as "East o' the sun, West o' the moon," or "through a dark, wild forest to a Crystal Palace high atop a glass mountain." In the Haida story, the Chief's son must climb a ladder of human bones to reach the fantastical world above. Along the way he encounters various people to whom he offers assistance, and for each one of these acts of generosity he receives a magic object to help him complete his journey. In a similar Serbian version, a husband frees several animals — a fish, a fox, and a wolf — and gathers a magic token from each one that will insure his later success.

It is interesting to note that many of these versions also include events that show the husband to be something of a trickster character, which may be a way to reconsider or re–frame his trickster–like behavior at the beginning of the tale when he steals the swan skin. In these stories, the husband outwits various powerful figures to gain a series of magical objects. One husband, for example, encounters a pair of brothers arguing over their inheritance: a cap of invisibility and magic boots that will transport the wearer anywhere he desires. When the brothers ask for help in settling the argument, the husband slyly suggests a race — and then, when the pair is off and running, he puts on the cap and boots himself and makes his get–away. In the Haida story, the Chief's son uses the magic gifts he has collected on his way up the bone ladder to trick celestial beings into giving him much needed advice on where to find his wife's village.

So how successful are these "Johnny–come–lately" heroes? The outcome varies from version to version, many of which do not end happily. The husband has undertaken a rite of passage that usually belongs to a younger, single man — not one who has already married and lost his wife through selfishness or immaturity. Added to this, his swan wife has now returned to her original form. She seems barely touched by her years of human marriage. It is as though both husband and wife exist in a permanent adolescence. Perhaps, then, what is at the heart of these tales is the recognition that marriage cannot succeed without maturity, without completion of the rites of passage that signal the movement from adolescence to adulthood — and, particularly, without the implicit involvement of families and communities. The hunter acts like a child, snatching for himself a prize in the youngest sister — a prize he can only keep through deception. But the swan maiden's immaturity and rebellion is also highlighted in tales. In some versions she has made herself vulnerable to this fate by leaving the security of her sisters and swimming alone. In a version from Romania, for example, a swan maiden leaves her fairy mother's house and swims alone, even though she has been explicitly warned that it is dangerous. Impulsive behaviors have problematic consequences for young swan maidens and hunters alike.

Thus, the ultimate success of the marriage union in these tales often depends on the willingness of both husband and wife to undergo transformations that signal their maturation as adults. In a complicated German story, the husband manages to get inside the castle walls separating him from his former wife by hiding in a bag of flour. Delighted that he has come to "redeem" her, she tells him the secret to the tasks he must complete. Each day, for the next three days, three dragons will appear to torment him — but he must not cry out or make a sound. If he succeeds, she'll then return home to her human marriage. The dragons come, and on the final day they swallow the husband whole. Three hours later, he's released unharmed in an act of rebirth and transformation that echoes his wife's shape–shifting. The dragons dissolve, revealing three swan sisters transformed into noblewomen. They praise the husband for "redeeming" them through his acts of love and sacrifice. Now that both husband and wife have creatively and fantastically changed each other into something new, a "happily–ever–after" ending is possible for this couple.

But when there are failures, they are both miserable and spectacular. In such versions, either the husband can never quite rise above his immaturity or the swan maiden, once freed, refuses to surrender her power again to a man not worthy of it. These tales of irreconcilable marriage offer a stark contrast to the more familiar body of folk and fairy tales in which the successful initiation of a hero or heroine is followed by a long and happy union.

The swan maiden stories suggest that there are marriages that will themselves to dissolution because of the inability of the pair to mature and to integrate into each other's world. In the human world, the swan maiden loses her fantastic nobility and is subjected to the daily labors of a human wife – including childbearing, which is portrayed as so distasteful the swan wives often seem to have few qualms about leaving their children behind the moment they recover their skins. The husband either cannot find her world (and dies of melancholy), or, when he does succeed in arriving in her domain, he cannot accept the fantastical world on his wife's terms. These are, at best, temporary reunions. The Chief's son, dissatisfied with life in the goose–wife's village, eventually asks to be returned home. Each one of the birds debates as to who is strong enough to carry him down, until at last the task falls to Raven. But on the journey, Raven grows weary of his burden and drops the man — who promptly transforms into a noisy seagull the moment he hits the rocks. There are other husbands who consent to live a long time in their wives' domains, only to leave and return home alone before the end of their lives.

A fascinating Irish–American version of the tale suggests that these unbalanced unions have a great potential for destruction — not just for the hapless couple but for the larger community as well. In "Why the Irish Came to America," collected from an Irish settlement in the Ozark Mountains, the King of France goes hunting and stumbles upon a flock of white swans. An old monk warns the king not to kill the swans, for they are swan maidens. The king watches them transform and steals their skins, refusing to return them unless the maidens promise to carry him up to their enchanted domain. Each sister agrees, and one by one they haul the king into the sky, the youngest sister being the last. The king marries the youngest, and appears to live quite happily, but he eventually grows homesick and wants to return for a visit. His wife builds him a flying boat, but tells him he must not set foot on human ground or he will die. Of course, as soon as he arrives back in his homeland he breaks this taboo, and Death is there to greet him. The king (displaying little nobility here) suggests that Death harvest all the old men standing around, but Death insists it's the King of France he wants.

The king, in classic trickster fashion, tricks Death into getting into a box, slams the box shut, and flies home to his wife. Upon his return, his swan wife warns him never to open the box or they will die. Not wanting to keep such a dangerous object, the king waits for the next big storm and drops the box into the ocean — where it floats for a long time until it reaches the shores of Ireland. Two fisherman scoop it out of the waves, releasing a very cranky Death, who begins killing people all over Ireland to make up for lost time — thus inciting the mass migration of Irishmen to America.

In most versions of the tale, we know very little of a swan maiden's life as a human woman, only her persistent longing to return home. Across Siberia and Mongolia, sullen geese–wives watch wild geese migrating home with burning sorrow. A Chinese swan wife weeps uncontrollably until her mother–in–law, unable to stand it any longer, gives away the skin's hiding place. The swan woman leaves. . .and then returns, missing the child she's left behind. But when she sees the boy, she is too ashamed to admit she is his mother and flies away once more. In Greek stories, the freed swan wives return in secret afterwards — cleaning house and sewing for their children, as if unable to break the domestic habit.

And then there are the feisty swan maidens who harbor serious grudges over the temporary loss of their skins. There are no second chances for the foolish husbands who imprisoned them in the mundane world. In her book The Women of Turkey and Their Folklore (1890), Lucy Garnett provides a boisterous example of a swan maiden known as a Samodiva. The Samodiva resolutely despises her forced domestication. At a party intended to celebrate the birth of their son, her drunken husband asks her to dance. She agrees, but argues that the dance would be much better if she could wear her feathered gown. Her fool of a husband, intending to impress his fellow hunters, agrees and retrieves the hidden garment. Changed back into her original form, the Samodiva maximizes the humiliation of her husband by taunting him with a song:

"Hear my words, O Stotian; seek not
For thy wife a Samodiva —
Samodivas are not thrifty,
Know not how to tend the children.
Said I not to thee, O Stoian,
Samodivas are not housewives?"

The Volundarkvida, an ancient Nordic edda, offers another type of independent swan maiden. In this prose poem, three swan women fly up from the south to spin fine linen on a beach. There, they are met by three hunters who take them home as wives. But after seven years, the women, who are actually Valkyries (the supernatural battle–maidens who attend Odin) grow restless and return home to the battle–fields. Even as human wives, they had not given up much of their fantastic nature, for their spinning connected their domestic activity to a more magic one: that of the Fates spinning the length of a man's life.

 

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