On the surface, “The Wild Swans” is a fairy tale about cursed brothers who are saved by their sister. This is a common motif.
Closer examination led me to consider the creative power of words and of silence, and how we use and are used, by both.
I hope you enjoy the story. Feel free to post your thoughts and questions:).
Transcript of “The Wild Swans”: Powerful Words and Living with Wings
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and what myth can offer us today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
Today, I want to tell you a fairy tale called “The Wild Swans.” This story came up in a recent conversation about fairy tales. Thank you Amanda, for that talk. On the surface, this is a story about cursed brothers who are saved by their sister. Naturally, it speaks to many powerful themes. It got me thinking about the creative power of words, something we explored last month in the context of myth and poetry. I made a few other discoveries and will share those too, after I tell you the story.
My telling is based on a much longer and literary version of the story by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen was inspired by a story collected by Danish folklorist Mathias Winther called “The Eleven Swans,” published in 1823. Winther’s had a short career as a folklorist and interesting twist: he focused his collection on folktales from Odense, the town in which Hans Christian Andersen grew up.
We don’t know if Andersen heard Winther’s story in his childhood but a letter to a friend, written after he completed his fairytale “The Wild Swans,” makes it clear that the older story was his inspiration.
Andersen greatly embellished the story and while I find his telling beautiful and appreciate many of the flourishes, I’ve stripped it back down, closer to the traditional form of the old stories in my telling.
I invite you to relax and listen to the story. Notice the moment or the detail that catches your attention. This can be a great opening for reflections on your place in the story and the significance it holds for you right now.
“The Wild Swans”
There once was a King who had eleven sons and one daughter. The eleven brothers were handsome and intelligent. The sister was pretty and kind. They got along very well and had– for a time– a very happy childhood.
Their father the king was a widower and after some time he remarried. From day one, this stepmother did not treat the children well. On the day of the wedding, she forbade them from playing or eating any cake.
The new queen soon convinced the king to send the daughter to live in the country, and gave the girl to some peasants. As for the brothers, she told the king lies about their behavior and he gradually lost all interest in them. This made it easy for her to cast a wicked spell.
“Fly out into the world and make your own living,” the wicked Queen told them.”Fly away like big birds without a voice.” The eleven brothers turned into eleven white swans. With a weird cry, they flew out of the palace window and into the woods.
Their sister was asleep when they flew over the peasant hut where she was staying. They hovered over the roofs, flapping their wings, but nobody noticed them. In despair, they flew far away, to a dark forest on the edge of the sea.
The sister was returned to the palace when she was fifteen. She was beautiful and kind and the Queen hated her. She wanted to turn the girl into a wild swan but she didn’t dare, as the king wanted to see his daughter. She needed a different plan.
Very early in the morning, the Queen went to the young woman’s room. She grabbed her as she emerged from her bath and smeared the girl with muddy stains and foul-smelling ointments until she was unrecognizable. When her father saw her, he said that she could not be his daughter and had her cast out of the palace.
The sister had no idea where to go. She wandered, bereft, thinking about her beloved brothers, who must have been turned out by the wicked queen as well. She was in the forest when night fell and laid her head on the soft moss to go to sleep. She dreamt of her eleven brothers and their happy days.
The next morning, she wandered further into the woods. She came to a pool of fresh water and saw her reflection. It was horrible but she was able to wash off the stains and dirt and rinse her hair. She came to an old apple tree and ate some of the fruit for lunch. All was lost and yet the forest was beautiful. She decided to look for her brothers.
She walked along and an old woman stepped through the trees. She carried a basket of berries and gave some to the young woman. “Have you seen eleven princes riding through the woods,” the sister asked. “No,” the old woman said.,”But yesterday I saw eleven swans who wore golden crowns. They were swimming in the river not far from here.” The old woman led the sister to the river, who decided to follow it.
The sister walked a long time and reached the end of the river, the place where it flowed into the sea. Now what? The sea was vast, she had no boat, and she had seen no sign of her brothers. The waves rolled in to the beach. “I will be just as tireless,” she decided, and started walking down the shore. She found eleven white swan feathers in the seaweed and gathered them up.
At sunset, eleven white swans wearing golden crowns, flew toward the shore. The young woman hid behind a bush as they landed on the beach. When the sun went down, the swans threw off their feathers and she saw that they were her brothers. She was certain despite the long years of separation. She stepped out, crying their names.
Although she was grown, they recognized her and were overjoyed to see their little sister. They laughed and cried, and then spoke about their stepmother’s cruel treatment.
“We are forced to fly about disguised as wild swans as long as the sun shines,” the eldest brother said, “but when it goes down we take back our human form. At sunset we must always find a firm foothold so we don’t crash down out of the sky.”
“We don’t live on this coast,” he continued. “There is another fair land on the other side of this sea. It’s far away and we have to cross the vast ocean to reach it. There are no islands along the way, only a little rock that rises from the middle of the sea and there we spend the night. It is barely big enough to hold us and if there is a rough sea the waves wash over us. But we make this journey when the days are long, in order to visit our homeland. We are only allowed to come back once a year and we dare not stay more than eleven days. Those days we can fly over the palace and the town, we can fly over the forests and meadows where we used to roam, and now we have found you.”
The brothers could stay only two more days and the thought of separating once again pained them all. “How can I free you?” the sister asked. No one knew. They talked into the night. In the morning, the brothers rose up into the air as swans and she watched them circle overhead. One of them, her youngest brother, stayed with her and rested his head on her breast while she stroked his wings. They spent the whole day together, and toward evening the others returned.
As soon as the sun went down they resumed their own shape. “Tomorrow,” said one of her brothers, “we must fly away, but we cannot leave you like this. Do you have the courage to come with us? I could carry you through the forest in my arms; surely the wings of all of us are strong enough to carry you across the sea.” “Yes, take me with you,” said the sister.
They made a hammock of willow bark to carry the sister and the swans began their long journey at sunrise. All day they flew like arrows whipping through the air, yet, because they had their sister to carry, they flew more slowly than on their former journeys. Night drew near and a storm threatened. The sister looked down at the dark rolling waves. She knew her weight had slowed them down and that they might all drown. The sun sunk lower and she saw no sign of the tiny rock.
The sun was barely visible on the horizon when the swans shot down so fast that she thought they were falling, but the little rock was below them. It was tiny and darkness fell but her foot touched solid ground and her brothers stood around her, arm in arm. The waves beat upon the rock and washed over them in a shower of spray. The sister and the brothers held hands all night.
At dawn the air was clear and still. As soon as the sun came up the swans flew off with their sister, leaving the rock behind. They flew all day and the sea glittered beneath them. Near sunset, land appeared and the eleven brothers and the sister arrived safely. They took her to a cave where they lived in the forest of this foreign land.
The sister kept thinking about how she could save her brothers. She questioned them again when they regained their human form but they had no answer. That night, she lay down to sleep beside them and had a dream.
There was the old woman who gave her the berries in the forest and told her of the swans who wore golden crowns on their heads. “Your brothers can be set free,” she said, “but it will be very difficult. Do you see this stinging nettle in my hand? Many such nettles grow around the cave where you sleep. Only those and the ones that grow upon graves in the churchyards may be used – remember that! You must gather these nettles and crush them with your feet. Then you will have flax, which you must spin and weave into eleven shirts with long sleeves, one for each brother. Once you throw these over the eleven wild swans, the spell over them is broken.”
“The nettles will burn and blister your skin,” the old woman warned. “And if you decide to take up this task, there is one more condition. Once you begin, you must not speak until all eleven shirts are done. Even though it lasts for years, you must not say a word. The first word you say will strike your brothers’ hearts like a deadly knife and all of your effort will be for nothing.”
She touched the sister’s hand with nettles that burned like fire and awakened her.
The sun was shining and the brothers were gone. The young woman got up and began to gather the stinging nettles. They burned and burned in her hands. She crushed each nettle with her bare feet and spun the green flax.
Her brothers returned at sunset. They were alarmed by her activity and by her silence, and feared this was another curse cast by the evil queen. But she made them understand that she worked to save them.
She toiled through the night, for she could not rest until she had delivered her beloved brothers from the enchantment. During the next day, while the swans were gone, she sat all alone but her work made the hours pass quickly. One shirt was made and she set to work on the second one.
Then she heard the blast of a hunting horn on the mountainside. “What good can come of this?” she thought, and she bundled together the nettles she had gathered and ran into the cave to hide.
The hunting dogs led the king and his huntsmen to the cave. The king was taken with her beauty and asked her, “How did you come to be in this cave all alone?” She didn’t answer. “A life in the palace with me will be much better than this,” the king told her, “I know that I can make you comfortable and happy.” The young woman remained silent. “Someday you will thank me for doing this” said the king, and he carried her away to his palace.
The king gave the sister beautiful clothes and fed her well. He was very kind. Everyone in the court admired her, everyone except the archbishop, who shook his head and whispered that this lovely maid of the woods must be a witch, who had blinded their eyes and stolen the king’s heart.
But the king would not listen to him. He threw a lovely banquet for the sister and when it was done, he showed her to her beautiful room. He opened the door to a small chamber adjoining the bedroom. There was the finished shirt and the nettles and flax that she had gathered. “Here is the work that you were doing in that cave” he told her, “now that you have comfort and splendor, it may amuse you to think of those times.”
She could keep working! All was not lost! For the first time, the sister smiled. This made the king so happy that he decided to make her his queen.
Their marriage was not unhappy. The king loved her, and although she did not speak, he could see the growing love in her eyes. She wished that she could confide in him, but she did not. Every night, she slipped away from his side into her little chamber. She wove one shirt after another, but when she set to work on the seventh there was not enough flax left to finish it.
She knew that the nettles she must use grew in the graveyard, but she had to gather them herself. How could she go there alone at night? She set aside her fears and went. She picked the stinging nettles growing among the tombstones and carried them back to the palace.
The archbishop was awake when she slipped out of the palace. He followed her to the graveyard and now had proof of what he had suspected. There was something wrong with the new queen. She was a witch, and that was how she had duped the king and all his people.
The next morning, the archbishop told the king what he had seen and what he feared. He reminded the king of all that was strange about this mute young woman found alone in a cave in the woods.
The king was suspicious despite his love. What did he really know of this girl? At night he pretended to sleep and secretly watched her as she went into her private room. He grew more and more unhappy. The young woman saw this and added the new sorrow to her grief for her brothers.
She had almost completed her task. Only one shirt was lacking but she was out of flax and not a single nettle was left. She must go to the graveyard one more time.
The king and his archbishop followed her. The archbishop insisted that only an evil witch would behave as she did, and lacking any other explanation, the king agreed. The sister was brought before the people and they condemned her to death. She was taken to the dungeon along with her shirts and her nettles, and although her future was grim, she thought at least she might finish her task.
Her fingers blistered and burned from the sting of the nettles but the eleventh shirt was almost complete. Toward evening she heard the rustle of wings close to her window and hoped that her brothers were nearby.
An hour before sunrise, the eleven brothers reached the palace gates and demanded to see the king. The guards told them this was impossible, it was still night and the king was asleep. They begged and threatened to no avail, and when the sun rose they turned into swans and had to fly away.
A large crowd gathered that morning to see the witch burned. The sister was carried to the place in a cart, the ten finished nettle shirts at her feet, the eleventh in her hands, not quite complete.
The people mumbled among themselves that the witch persisted in her craft until the end and surged around the cart, intending to tear the shirts to bits. But eleven white swans descended on the crowd and frightened the people away.
As the executioner seized her arm, the sister threw the eleven shirts over the swans. Her brothers were instantly transformed into their human form. Eleven handsome princes. But the eleventh shirt was missing a sleeve, so the youngest brother had a swan’s wing in place of one arm. Everyone was amazed.
Now, the young woman could speak. “I am innocent,” she told the crowd. Her brothers told their story. The people shook their heads in wonder. The king cried grateful tears, and all was well as the sister and her brothers were together again.
the end.
The Brothers Grimm collected variants of this story and I’ve told some of them in past episodes: “The Twelve Brothers,” “The Six Swans,” and “The Seven Ravens'” Each is a bit different and different things strike me in each telling. If there are elements in this story that intrigue you: the sibling relationship, the wild birds, the silent process, for example, you might listen to those other episodes. I’ll post the links on the Mythic Mojo website to make them easy to find.
My starting point today is the creative power of words. First, the queen curses the brothers and turns them into swans. And you notice that she’s turning them into something without voice. She intends to do them ill, so here’s an example of the power of words, right? Straight forward. There’s a similar curse in the fairy tale “The Seven Ravens,” but in that story the father inadvertently turns his sons into ravens in a moment of anger and exasperation. He says the words but he doesn’t mean them. At least, he’s surprised and upset when his sons fly away.
Which makes me wonder about the common emphasis on “intention” as a way of making things go according to your conscious wishes and plans. Intention matters and at the same time, it’s not the only force at work. Certainly not equal to what stirs in the unconscious and in what I call “the mystery.” And words have a power, a history and autonomy. We use them and they use us. In the space between these two stories we say that if we take the creative power of words seriously, we say what we mean and we reflect on what words do, on their impact and what they manifest.
The silence imposed on the sister gives us more food for thought. This difficult task is added to the burden of the sister in other stories, “The Six Swans,” for example. I think it is both a burden and a protection, a protection of her mission, of her creative process, of the soul work that she must complete. Her silence leaves her vulnerable to the evil words of others and yet, these words don’t stop her work, do they?
Imagine that she had told the king her sad story and explained her devotion to the nettle shirts. There are many things that he could have said to dissuade her and discourage her, ostensibly out of a desire to limit her suffering because he thinks he knows best. Our personal visions, the work we’re called to perform, often needs protection from skepticism and ridicule and also the “support” of others until it is formed enough to hold its own in the world.
The creative power of words is also the creative power of silence. These are powers that require respect and skillful use.
My mediation with the story has taken me in another direction that I want to share with you.
The primary focus of this story is the difficult task that must be performed by the sister, one that causes a great deal of suffering and almost gets her killed. We don’t know much about the brothers’ experience. What it was like to go back and forth between the human and the swan form daily, their grief, the nature of their exile. How they found their sister in that foreign kingdom in time to save her. I’d like to share a few thoughts about these brothers.
Swans are symbols of grace and beauty, loyalty and strength. In Greek mythology, the swan is associated with Aphrodite, goddess of love and also with the god Apollo god of music. In Celtic mythology, the swan belongs to Brigid, the goddess of love who supplies inspiration to writers and poets. They are connected with intuition and the evolution of the spirit, and also with inner beauty.
White swans suggest purity. I think about the innocence of these cursed young men, and the fact that the queen could change their outer form but not their essence, their love for each other and their sister, and for the homeland. The queen’s attempted transformation of the sister, while less profound- she didn’t turn her into a swan–was also temporary and did not change her character.
Swans are creatures of air and water, of the union of these foreign realms. They are otherworldly. A swan is comfortable in the air, on land, and in the water, and because they can inhabit all of these elemental realms, people have assumed that those who cross over from one realm to another, and from other realms to this world, assume the form of a swan. In Norse mythology, for example, the Valkyries appeared as swans. The Valkyries were a group of beautiful warrior goddesses who traveled into battle with Odin. They chose which of the fallen warriors would go to Valhalla with Odin and be remembered as heroes.
I sense this, in the story, the otherworldliness and not quite belonging on this plane, the eleven brothers were compelled to fly far away, into exile. They couldn’t be here too long. Maybe you wondered about that too.
There’s so much tension in the story once the swan brothers take their sister up in their wings, and set off for that tiny rock in the sea, the only place where they can stop, the only safe haven for them as humans. The sun moves lower and lower in the sky, sunset approaches. Will they make it? We have the sister’s thoughts and worries about her additional weight, how that has slowed them down. Another interesting thing about swans; they are relatively heavy to be able to fly, hence their admired strength.
Imagine being one of the brothers, standing on the beach that first night before the journey began, deciding to carry her, already knowing the implications of the sister’s added weight and agreeing to undertake a trip that might be impossible.
And yet, having reunited, they couldn’t leave her behind. This is a decision from the heart that defies reason, right? A combination of love and courage that lent them strength.
I’ve gone in search of the great wild birds, geese and cranes in particular, during their migrations. It’s difficult to describe the experience, the vibrating sensation of thousands of whirring wings, the immersive sounds of their calls, the soaring energy. The presence of large wild birds can boost your soaring spirit. If you need the tenacity to fly for hours, for miles, on a path laid down by intuition and instinct, ask the wild birds. Better yet, become their champion.
I discovered a contemporary fairy tale based on “The Wild Swans,” written by Michael Cunningham. Cunningham won a Pulitzer for his novel The Hours, which was the basis for the movie of the same name. And Cunningham also meditates on the fairy tales that intrigue him and writes short fairy tales from the contradictions and empty spaces that he finds in the old standards.
The story is part of a collection titled A Wild Swan. The illustrations by Yuko Shimizu are pretty cool. I’ll post a link to them on the Mythic Mojo website if you want to check them out.
Cunningham’s story, “A Wild Swan,” is about the eleventh brother, the one is left with one human arm and one swan wing. The other brothers are fully restored and everyone is happy– but what happens to this guy? He’s not going to live a completely normal life with the usual hassles. Cunningham writes, “The wing was awkward on the subway, impossible in cabs. It had to be checked constantly for lice.”
There’s dark humor in this story, so appropriate for fairy tales, and Cunningham explores the problem of the wing, ignored in the other stories. He quickly moves from consideration of how this brother lives with one arm and a wing, to thoughts about how the brother relates to the wing, to this part of himself that is both self and alien.
A swan wing is pretty freaky, and yet the question of how to relate to the lasting effects of our traumas and transformations (which are so often the same thing), is one that most of us must answer. The answer changes as we change. You might read the story and you may have a different interpretation so I’ll leave you with this: do you live a better life by making your “wing” useful to the ego’s desires and the conditions of a normal life, or is something gained by respecting it as both self and Other, letting its strangeness become part of your life?
Which is closer to the truth of our existence I wonder? The autonomous beauty and power of the wing, the autonomous beauty and power of the word. To be in conversation with forces that we fool ourselves into thinking are merely artifacts or tools here for our manipulation. I found Cunningham’s book in the library. It may be available in yours too.
I have a poem for you before we part ways but first, a big welcome to new email subscribers: Andrew, Lisa, Tim, Phuong, Giselle, and Matt. Welcome to Myth Matters! If you’re new to Myth Matters, I invite you to head over to the Mythic Mojo website. You’ll find a transcript of this episode and information about Story Oracle readings, my consulting services, and other offerings. You can also join the email list, if you’d like to receive links to new Myth Matters episodes in your inbox.
Thank you to the patreon patrons and bandcamp supporters of Myth Matters and a shout out to Mark, Jorge, and Celene for their longtime support of the podcast. If you’re finding something of value here at Myth Matters, I hope you’ll consider joining me on patreon. If a one-time tip is more your style, you’ll find a link to “buy me a coffee” on the Mythic Mojo website. Scroll down to the end of the transcript for this episode.
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In closing, a poem by William Butler Yeats called “The Wild Swans at Coole.”
“The Wild Swans at Coole”
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
Links to the other episodes mentioned:
Six Swans and the Power of Silence
Twelve Brothers and Threads of Destiny
Other useful links:
A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham, New York Times review
Gustavo von Bischoffshauen
Thanks you as always. It is a balm. Gustavo