The Brothers Grimm Tales

Swan Lake

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Six Swans (Swan Lake)

A king was once hunting in a great wood, and he hunted the game so eagerly that none of his courtiers could follow him. When evening came on he stood still and looked around him, and he saw that he had quite lost himself. He sought a way out, but could find none. Then he saw an old woman with a shaking head coming towards him – but she was a witch.

"Good woman," he said to her, "can you not show me the way out of the wood?"

"Oh, certainly, Sir King," she replied, "I can quite well do that, but on one condition; which if you do not fulfil you will never get out of the wood, and will die of hunger."

"What is the condition?" Asked the king.

"I have a daughter," said the old woman, "who is so beautiful that she has not her equal in the world, and is well fitted to be your wife; if you will make her lady-queen I will show you the way out of the wood."

The king in his anguish of mind consented, and the old woman led him to her little house where her daughter was sitting by the fire. She received the king as if she were expecting him, and he saw that she was certainly very beautiful; but she did not please him, and he could not look at her without a secret feeling of horror. As soon as he had lifted the maiden on to his horse the old woman showed him the way, and the king reached his palace, where the wedding was celebrated.

The king had already been married once, and had by his first wife seven children, six boys and one girl, whom he loved more than anything in the world. And now, because he was afraid that their stepmother might not treat them well and might do them harm, he put them in a lonely castle that stood in the middle of a wood. It lay so hidden, and the way to it was so hard to find, that he himself could not have found it out had not a wisewoman given him a reel of thread which possessed a marvellous property – when he threw it before him it unwound itself and showed him the way. The king went so often to his dear children that the queen was offended at his absence. She grew curious, and wanted to know what he had to do quite alone in the wood. She gave his servants a great deal of money, and they betrayed the secret to her, and also told her of the reel of thread which alone could point out the way. She had no rest now until she had found out where the king guarded the reel, and then she made some little white shirts, and as she had learned from her witch-mother, sewed an enchantment in each of them.

When the king had ridden off she took the little shirts and went into the wood, and the reel showed her the way. The children, who saw someone coming in the distance, thought it was their dear father coming to them, and sprang to meet him very joyfully. She threw over each one a little shirt, which when it had touched their bodies changed them into swans, and they flew away over the forest. The queen went home quite satisfied, and thought she had gotten rid of her stepchildren; but the girl had not run to meet her with her brothers, and she knew nothing of her.

The next day the king came to visit his children, but he found no one but the girl.

"Where are your brothers?" Asked the king.

"Alas! Dear father," she answered, "they have gone away and left me all alone." She told him that looking out of her little window she had seen her brothers flying over the wood in the shape of swans, and she showed him the feathers which they had let fall in the yard, which she had collected. The king mourned, but he did not think that the queen had done the wicked deed, and as he was afraid the maiden would also be taken from him, he wanted to take her with him. But she was afraid of the stepmother, and begged the king to let her stay just one night more in the castle in the wood. The poor maiden thought, "My home is no longer here; I will go and seek my brothers."