The six swans
The six swans is a fairy tale ( ATU 451). In the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm, it is at position 49 (KHM 49).
content
A king who got lost while hunting in the forest has a witch show him the way out and has to marry her daughter. To protect his six sons and daughter from his stepmother, he takes them to a castle in the forest, to which he finds the way with a magic thread. When the queen finds out, she sews magic shirts out of them, transforming the brothers into swans. The sister walks through the forest at night and meets her brothers in a robber's hut, who can shed their swan skin for a quarter of an hour every day. To redeem her, she is not allowed to speak or laugh for six years and has to sew six shirts out of star flowers. A hunting king finds her and marries her, but his mother slanders the silent woman by stealing her newborn child three times and smearing her mouth with blood. When she is about to be burned at the stake, the six swans come flying. She redeems them with the shirts, one of which is still missing the sleeve. The mother-in-law is burned and they live happily.
Explanations
The fairy tale is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 1st edition of 1812 as No. 49. It is very similar to the Twelve Brothers (No. 9) and the Seven Ravens (No. 25). In the former, white lilies appear in connection with the brothers , which are perhaps meant here by the star flowers . According to Grimm's comments, it comes from Hesse . They explain the difference to the black ravens through the complete innocence of the children in this version. They give another story from German Bohemia :
The sister with the golden cross on her forehead comes to a lock that she only finds empty, only with food on the stove. She cooks and tries something. Then the ravens come, noticing that it is a little less, but as if cooked by human hands. After you first curse it, then long for it, it shows itself. She has to sew the clothes in silence for seven years on a high tree in the forest so that they don't harm her. A prince with his hunters and dogs finds them and marries them. She had three children when he was at war, she had his mother murdered by the servant in the forest and wrote to him that the child was a dog. But the servant leaves her with a lioness who is raising her and makes a dog's tongue appear as a landmark. When she is about to be burned, the redeemed brothers come through the forest, where they also find the children. The notes enumerate other versions and note that they all show great age .
The oldest literary version of the swan children's fairy tale is that of Johannes de Alta Silva in Dolopathos around 1300. The six swans are counted as subtype 1 of narrative type AaTh 451. The twelve brothers belong to subtype 2, the seven ravens to subtype 3. Hans Christian Andersen wrote his art fairy tale The Wild Swans after the first two (with the island in the water perhaps after The singing, jumping lion ). Very similar is already in Basiles Pentameron IV, 8 The seven pebbles , including the detail of the "flowers equal stars".
See also Marienkind (KHM 3), The Girl Without Hands (KHM 31), Allerleirauh (KHM 65), Dat Erdmänneken (KHM 91), De Drei Vügelkens (KHM 96), Prince Swan (KHM 59a), The Three Sisters ( KHM 82a). The motif of the poor girl, who finds friendly refuge in a robber's den, comes among others. a. also with Snow White . Lutz Röhrich compares the motif of killing and resuscitation with a small loss (of a bone) to the Greek myth of Pelops , and also an Alpine saga of the hazel witch (cf. also KHM 25 , 47 , 126 , 129 ). Cf. The seven swans and the boys with the golden stars in Ludwig Bechstein's German book of fairy tales . Udea and her seven brothers (from Hans von Stumme : Fairy Tales and Poems from the City of Tripoli ) is also fairy tale type 451.
interpretation
According to Wilhelm Salber , it is about metamorphoses between too much and too little, with opportunities for new things, but also aberrations. The fairy tale characterizes the shifts and cracks in our works in times of upheaval with an uncertain outcome. Such people are often between 30 and 40 years old and seem elusive for a long time during treatment.
Modern receptions
Daughter of the Forest , the first part of Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters Trilogy , is a retelling of the fairy tale in a Celtic setting. Black Feather by K. Tempest Bradford (in Interfictions anthology , 2007) has similarities with The Six Swans , The Seven Ravens and The Twelve Brothers , with the sister's new plot. Rafe Martins Birdwing , a novel, centers on a youngest brother who remains with a single wing.
Film adaptations
- 1977: The Wild Swans (Sekai Meisaku Dōwa: Hakuchō no Ōji) , Japanese cartoon, director: Nobutaka Nishizawa, production: Tōei Doga
- 1987: Gurimu Meisaku Gekijō , Japanese cartoon series, episode 34: The six swans
- 1988: The storyteller , English-American television series, season 1, episode 6: The three ravens .
- 1999: SimsalaGrimm , German cartoon series, season 2, episode 10: The six swans
- 2012: The six swans , Germany, fairy tale film of the ZDF series Märchenperlen
literature
Brothers Grimm
- Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales . Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. 19th edition. Artemis & Winkler / Patmos, Düsseldorf / Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-538-06943-3 , pp. 275-281.
- Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales . Last hand edition with the original notes by the Brothers Grimm. With an appendix of all fairy tales and certificates of origin, not published in all editions, published by Heinz Rölleke. Volume 3: Original Notes, Guarantees of Origin, Afterword. Pp. 93–97, p. 463. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 .
variant
- The fighting brothers . In: August Löwis of Menar (ed.): Finnish and Estonian fairy tales . Düsseldorf / Cologne 1962, pp. 279–282.
Secondary literature
- Christine Shojaei Kawan: Girl is looking for her brothers . In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales . Volume 8. Berlin / New York 1996, pp. 1354-1366.
Interpretations
- Ulla Wittmann: I fool forgot the magic things. Fairy tales as a way of life for adults . Ansata-Verlag, Interlaken 1985, ISBN 3-7157-0075-0 , pp. 103-110.
Web links
- The sister is looking for her brothers AaTh 451. Märchenlexikon.de
- Illustrations, text versions and interpretations of Six Swans at SurLaLuneFairyTales.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lutz Röhrich: fairy tale - myth - legend . In: Wolfdietrich Siegmund (Ed.): Ancient myth in our fairy tales . Kassel 1984, ISBN 3-87680-335-7 , p. 15 (publications of the European Fairy Tale Society, Volume 6)
- ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 114-116.