Swan maiden
[7][8] In folktales of this type, the male character spies the maiden, typically by some body of water (usually bathing), then snatches away the feather garment (or some other article of clothing), which prevents her from flying away (or swimming away, or renders her helpless in some other manner), forcing her to become his wife.
[50] In that regard, Norwegian folklorist Reidar Thoralf Christiansen suggested that the presence of the Swan maiden character in tale type ATU 313 "could be explained by the circumstance that in both cycles a woman with supernatural powers plays a leading part".
[74] Czech author Bozena Nemcova published a tale titled Zlatý vrch ("The Golden Hill"), wherein Libor, a poor youth, lives with his widowed mother in a house in the woods.
An inversion of the story (humans turning into swans) can be found in the Dolopathos: a hunter sights a (magical) maiden bathing in a lake and, after a few years, she gives birth to septuplets (six boys and a girl), born with gold chains around their necks.
[111] Another theory was supported by Charles Henry Tawney, in his translation of Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara: he suggests the source of the motif to be old Sanskrit literature; the tale then migrated to Middle East, and from there as an intermediate point, spread to Europe.
Jörg Backer contrasts between northern and southern areas where tales appear: swans and cranes in Hungary, Siberia, China, Korea, and Japan; wild geese among the Paleoasian and Eskimo (Inuit) peoples and across Northwestern North America; Peris in form of doves in Iran.
[132] In this regard, according to researcher Serinity Young, she also represents an image of the feminine divine that the male character tries to capture, since she brings prosperity and can lift the latter to "higher states of being, including immortality".
[141] Professor Hazel Wigglesworth, who worked with the many languages of the Philippines archipelago, stated that the character of the mortal male is sometimes named Itung or Beletamey, and he represents a cultural hero or ancestor of the Manobo people.
[142][143] English folklorist Edwin Sidney Hartland mentioned a tale about a divine ancestress of the Bantik people (of the Celebes Island, modern Sulawesi) who comes down to Earth with her seven companions to bathe in a lake.
[151] Among the Buryat, the swan maiden ancestress marries a human man and gives birth to eleven sons,[152] the founders of the future clans of the Khori: Galzuud, Khargana, Khuasai, Khubduud, Baganai, Sharait, Bodonguud, Gushad, Sagan, Khuudai, and Khalbin.
[173] Researcher Rosanna Budelli also argues for "shamanic reminiscences" in the Arabian Nights tale of Hasan of Basrah (and analogues Mazin of Khorassan and Jansah), for example, the "ornitomorphic costume" of the bird-maidens that appear in the story.
There are also a number of Japanese stories about men who married kitsune, or fox spirits in human form (as women in these cases), though in these tales the wife's true identity is a secret even from her husband.
[199] In another tale, from Tirol, collected by Christian Schneller (German: Die drei Tauben; Italian: Le tre colombe; English: "The Three Doves"), a youth loses his soul in a gamble to a wizard.
[226] In a third tale, Az örökbefogadott testvérek ("The adoptive brothers"), the main protagonist, Miklós, dreams that the Queen of the Fairies and her handmaidens come to his side in the form of swans and transform into beautiful women.
The rest of the story follows tale type ATU 301, "The Three Stolen Princesses": descent into underworld by hero, rescue of maidens, betrayal by companions and return to the upper world on eagle.
[275] In a Kabylian tale collected by ethnologist Leo Frobenius with the title Die Taubenfrauen ("The Dove Maidens"): a young hunter journeys and meets two women who invite him to live with them as their brother.
[293] In a tale from the Tewa, collected by Elsie Clews Parsons, the youth Powitsire hunts a deer, which suggests the boy find a wife and reveals that three duck girls come to bathe in a nearby lake.
[298] German ethnologue John Bierhorst [de] locates the story of the Vulture Wife in Guyana and northern South America, among the Warrao, Arawak, Camaracoto, Taulipang, Makushi, Carib, and the Caliña of Suriname.
In this story, which he titled Der Besuch im Himmel ("A Visit to Heaven"), after a war between rival tribes Kuyalakog and Palawiyang, only a man named Maitchaule (in another translation, Maitxaule) survives.
[332] In an Austrian (Tirol) tale collected by Joseph and Ignaz Zingerle, Der gläserne Berg ("The Glass Mountain"), a forester's son, while hiding in the bushes, sees three maidens bathing, and fetches their cloaks.
The man declares he will only leave the land of jinn with his wife, and his father-in-law orders him on three tasks: to drink up a whole lagoon, carry up a mountain a goblet of oil and not spill any drop, and lastly eat up three camels.
[352] A second format of the supernatural wife motif pertains to tales where the maiden isn't a shapeshifting animal, but instead a creature or inhabitant of Heaven, a Celestial Realm, or hails from the place where the gods live.
[154] Korean scholarship supposes that the bird wife and the animal transformation were replaced by a human-looking supernatural woman with a pair of wings or a magical garment in regions that lacked contact with swans, for instance, India, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan.
[371] Professor Margaret Kartomi stated that "countless versions" of the tale of the human male who marries one of seven heavenly females (or angels) after stealing her clothing appear in "insular and mainland Southeast Asia".
He obtains information from a peri that Princess Gemala Ratna Suri and her seven nymph attendants will come in seven days to bathe in the lake, and he should steal the flying jackets of the maidens to advance in his quest.
These figures are known in South Slavic areas (namely, Slovenian, Slovak, Serbian and Croatian) as víla, in Bulgarian as samodiva and in Macedonian as samovila - all of them described as beautiful, otherworldly maidens who dance in groups in the forests.
After being captured, the Kush-Pari reveals to the king she transforms into a maiden after undonning her feather cloak and proposes she becomes his queen after his servant rescues her maid and brings back the fiery mares.
[525][526] Russian Romantic writer Vasily Zhukovsky developed the theme of the bird maiden in his poem "Сказка о царе Берендее" [ru] ("The Tale of Tsar Berendey"), published in 1833.
[527] Victorian novelist and translator William Morris wrote his poetic ouvre The Earthly Paradise, in which there is a narration by a bard of the romance between a human and a swan maiden, comprising an episode of the poem The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon.
Princess Pari Banu from the 1926 German silhouette animation film The Adventures of Prince Achmed appears very similar to a swan maiden, having a peacock skin that transforms her and her handmaids, though she is referred to as a fairy or genie, in the original 1001 Nights.
