The Wild Swans

The Wild Swans

There once lived a king who had eleven sons and one daughter. The children were happy, but then their father married a wicked queen who did not love the children at all. Soon after the wedding, she turned the princes into eleven wild swans. With a strange cry, they flew through the windows of the palace, high up into the clouds, and away.

When the king asked the queen if she knew where the princes were, she merely smiled and shook her head. As for the princess, Eliza, all that day she looked for her brothers but did not find them. Then at dusk, she saw eleven white swans flying toward her bedroom window. They flew one behind the other, like a long white ribbon, through the open window and into her room.

As the Sun set, the feathers of the swans fell off, and Eliza's eleven brothers stood before her. " As long as the Sun is in the sky, we brothers fly about as wild swans, " said the oldest. “ Each night when the Sun sinks, we regain our human form. "

That night, Eliza dreamed that a fairy came to her. " Your brothers can be released, " she said, " if you have courage and perseverance. Do you see the nettle which I hold in my hand? Many grow in the nearby forest. These you must gather and spin into yarn. From this yarn you must knit eleven shirts with long sleeves. If they are thrown over the eleven swans, the spell will be broken. "

" Be warned, though, " the fairy added. " From the moment you commence your task until it is finished, you must not speak. The first word you utter will kill your brothers. Their lives hang upon your tongue. " Then she touched Eliza's hand lightly with the nettle, and a pain like that of burning fire awoke the princess. Close by her lay a nettle like the one she had seen in her dream.