On their husbands' return they deny their disobedience; but, being found out, they obtain leave to return, and are wafted thither during the night. These two women, who are described as water fairies, are doubtless equivalents of the Swan-Maidens of the eastern hemisphere. Except in the mode of capture, however, the true Swan-Maiden story has little in connection with this tale, which may yet serve to remind us that some of the Swan-Maiden variants belong to the Forbidden Chamber class. The best known of these is perhaps that of Hasan of El Basrah.[1] Here the hero dwells for a time in a palace with seven maidens, who treat him as their brother. They at length leave him for two months, giving him the keys of their rooms, but begging him not to open a certain door. He disregards their injunction, and finds within (among other things) a pool of water, to which ten birds come, and, pulling off their feather dresses, descend to bathe in the pool as women. He falls in love with one of them, and on the return of the maidens who dwell there he confesses to one of them what he has done. She informs him who the supernatural women are, and instructs him to watch when they come again and seize the feather dress of the one whom he desires to wed, and he will then obtain power over her. He thus gains her; but his marriage with her ends in her recovery of the feather dress and flight, an incident that starts him on a new series of adventures for the purpose of regaining her. We found a version of this new series in a story of the Marya Morevna type. In the present case, however, there is no further reference to the Forbidden Chamber, and we therefore need not pursue the tale further. This is not the only Arabian tale in which the Swan-Maiden is discovered by opening a forbidden door[2]; but without stopping to examine others I will content myself with mentioning one of Von Hahn's Greek stories, where a similar event occurs.[3] It is a variant
- ↑ Lane's One Thousand and One Nights, vol. iii, p. 352.
- ↑ This form of the Swan-Maiden story seems a special characteristic of Arabic folk-lore. See Lane, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 479; Dr. Steere's Swahili Tales, p. 355.
- ↑ Von Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Märchcn, vol. ii. p. 207. The heroine is called a swan-maid in the title; but her clothes are not expressly mentioned as a swan-plumage.
