The Six Swans

Once upon a time a king was hunting in a great forest. He chased a wild animal so hard that none of his men could keep up, and when evening came and he stopped to look around, he saw that he was lost. He searched for a way out but could not find one. Then an old woman came towards him, her head nodding and nodding without stopping. She was a witch.

“Good woman,” said the King, “can you show me the way out of this forest?”

“Oh yes, my lord King,” she answered, “that I certainly can. But there is one condition. If you do not keep it, you will never leave this forest, and you will starve to death in it.”

“What is the condition?” asked the King.

“I have a daughter,” said the old woman, “as beautiful as anyone in the world, and well worthy to be your wife. If you make her your queen, I will show you the way out.”

The King was so frightened that he agreed, and the old woman led him to her little hut, where her daughter sat by the fire. She greeted the King as though she had been expecting him, and he could see that she was very beautiful. Still, she did not please him, and he could not look at her without a secret shudder. He lifted the girl up onto his horse, the old woman showed him the way, and the King came home to his palace, where the wedding was held.

Now the King had been married once before, and his first wife had given him seven children, six boys and a girl, whom he loved more than anything in the world. He was afraid that their stepmother might treat them badly, or even do them harm, so he took them to a lonely castle deep in a forest. It was so well hidden, and the way to it was so hard to find, that even he could never have found it without a ball of yarn a wise woman had given him. When he threw it down in front of him, it unrolled all by itself and showed him the path.

But the King went off to see his dear children so often that the Queen noticed he was gone. She was curious to know what he did out there all alone. So she gave his servants a great deal of money, and they told her the secret, and told her too about the ball of yarn, the only thing that could show the way. After that she gave herself no rest until she had found out where the King kept the ball. Then she made some little shirts of white silk, and because she had learned witchcraft from her mother, she sewed a spell into each one.

One day, when the King had ridden out hunting, she took the little shirts and went into the forest, and the ball of yarn showed her the way. The children saw from far off that someone was coming. They thought it was their dear father, and ran out joyfully to meet him. Then she threw a little shirt over each of them, and the moment the silk touched them they turned into swans and flew away over the treetops.

The Queen went home delighted, sure she was rid of her stepchildren. But the girl had not run out with her brothers, and the Queen knew nothing about her.

The next day the King came to visit his children, and found no one but his little daughter.

“Where are your brothers?” he asked.

“Oh, dear father,” she answered, “they have gone away and left me all alone!”

And she told him how she had watched from her little window as her brothers flew off over the forest in the shape of swans, and she showed him the feathers they had dropped in the courtyard, which she had gathered up. The King grieved, but it never crossed his mind that the Queen had done this wicked thing. Afraid that his daughter might be stolen from him too, he wanted to take her home. But she was afraid of her stepmother, and begged to stay just one more night in the forest castle.

“I can’t stay here any longer,” the poor girl thought. “I will go and look for my brothers.”

When night came she slipped away and went straight into the forest. She walked all night and all the next day without stopping, until she was too tired to go another step. Then she came upon a hut and went inside. There she found a room with six little beds, but she did not dare to lie in any of them, so she crept underneath one and lay down on the hard floor for the night.

Just before sunset she heard a rustling, and six swans came flying in through the window. They landed on the floor and blew on one another, and blew all their feathers away, and their swan skins came off them like shirts. The girl looked at them and recognized her brothers. Overjoyed, she crawled out from under the bed, and her brothers were just as happy to see their little sister. But their joy did not last long.

“You can’t stay here,” they told her. “This is a robbers’ den. If the robbers come home and find you, they will kill you.”

“But can’t you protect me?” asked their little sister.

“No,” they said. “We can take off our swan skins for only a quarter of an hour each evening and be human again. After that we turn back into swans.”

The little sister cried and said, “Is there no way to set you free?”

“Oh, no,” they answered. “The conditions are too hard. For six years you may not speak and you may not laugh, and in that time you must sew six little shirts out of starwort for us. If a single word crosses your lips, all your work will be lost.”

And when the brothers had said this, the quarter of an hour was over, and they flew out of the window again as swans.

But the girl made up her mind to free her brothers, even if it cost her her life. She left the hut, went deep into the forest, climbed a tree and spent the night there. The next morning she came down, gathered starwort and began to sew. She could not speak to anyone, and she had no wish to laugh. She sat in her tree and looked at nothing but her work.

She had been there a long time when the king of that country came hunting, and his huntsmen came to the tree where she sat.

“Who are you?” they called up to her.

But she gave no answer.

“Come down to us,” they said. “We won’t hurt you.”

She only shook her head. When they kept asking, she threw down her golden necklace, hoping that would satisfy them. They did not give up, so she threw down her belt, and when that did no good either, her garters, and little by little everything she had on that she could do without, until she was left in nothing but her shift. Still the huntsmen would not be put off. They climbed the tree, brought the girl down and led her to the King.

“Who are you?” the King asked. “What were you doing up in that tree?”

She did not answer. He asked her in every language he knew, but she stayed as silent as a stone. She was so beautiful, though, that the King’s heart was moved, and he fell deeply in love with her. He wrapped his cloak around her, lifted her onto his horse and carried her home to his castle. There he had her dressed in fine clothes, and she was lovelier than ever, but no one could get a single word out of her. At dinner he sat her beside him, and her modest, gentle ways pleased him so much that he said, “She is the one I want to marry, and no other woman in the world.” And a few days later they were married.

But the King had a wicked mother who was unhappy with the marriage and said spiteful things about the young Queen.

“Who knows where this creature comes from, who can’t even talk?” she said. “She isn’t fit for a king!”

A year later, when the Queen had her first child, the King’s mother took the baby away from her while she slept, and smeared her mouth with blood. Then she went to the King and accused the Queen of eating people. The King would not believe it, and he would not let anyone lay a hand on her. And all this time the Queen sat sewing the shirts and cared for nothing else.

The next time, when she gave birth to a fine baby boy, the wicked mother-in-law played the same cruel trick, but the King still could not bring himself to believe her.

“She is too good and too devout to do anything like that,” he said. “If only she could speak and defend herself, her innocence would come to light.”

But when the old woman stole a newborn child away for the third time and accused the Queen again, and the Queen said not one word in her own defence, the King had no choice but to hand her over to the judges, and she was sentenced to be burned to death.

The day set for the burning was the last day of the six years in which she was not allowed to speak or laugh, and so she had freed her dear brothers from the spell. The six shirts were finished, except that the sixth still had no left sleeve. When she was led to the stake, she laid the shirts over her arm. She stood high on the pile of wood, and the fire was about to be lit, when she looked around and saw six swans come flying through the air towards her. Then she knew that she would soon be saved, and her heart leapt for joy.

The swans swept down so close to her that she could throw the shirts over them, and as soon as the shirts touched them their swan skins fell away. There stood her brothers in their own bodies, strong and handsome. Only the youngest was missing his left arm, and in its place he had a swan’s wing on his shoulder. They hugged and kissed one another.

Then the Queen went to the King, who was deeply shaken, and at last she began to speak.

“Dearest husband,” she said, “now I may speak, and tell you that I am innocent and have been falsely accused.”

And she told him how his mother had deceived him, and how it was his mother who had taken away their three children and hidden them. Then, to the King’s great joy, the children were brought back, and as punishment the wicked mother-in-law was tied to the stake and burned to ashes. But the King and the Queen and her six brothers lived for many years in happiness and peace.