Celtic Engagement Rings

Yeats Irish Fairy Tales

Yeats Irish Fairy Tales

Legends of Wild Swans

LEGENDS OF WILD SWANS

The Wild Swans at Coole

W.B.Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a clear sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

...

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? (s. link).

One of the best known swan stories is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Wild Swans (s. link below). In it, a widower king had eleven sons and one daughter, Eliza. He marries a wicked sorceress who resents the children, and turns the boys into swans who fly away. The Princess goes out to look for them, and on the way she cries so much she creates a lake of tears. On the bank of this lake she finds her Swan brothers, and a fairy appearing in her dream tells Eliza the secret of their release: if she gathers enough nettles to make eleven shirts, when they wear the shirts they will be released from the magic. The girl collects the nettles, and sits in a cave in a forest to do her sewing. (It is clear that the cave in the forest, as well as the young men turned into swans, transport the girl and her brother to a place outside the realistic, civilized world into the realm of Nature and myth). Eliza is found by a young king who had been hunting; he falls in love with her beauty and takes her to his palace as his wife – nettles and all. During her stay in the palace, many jealous people tell the king wicked stories about her, calling her a witch, and in the end he is forced to burn her on the stake. While Eliza continues, even in prison, to sew her brothers’ shirts, they come to visit her in the shape of swans. At last, when she is taken out to be burned, they fly over her; she throws the finished shirts at them, and they return to their forms of eleven princess, except the youngest whose shirt is not finished and he retains one wing instead of an arm – thus retaining some remnant of the world of Nature within civilization.

Similar stories appear in Grimm with some variations, although in one story the girl has only six brothers instead of eleven. In all these cases, the swans are male; the situation is reverse, however, in Chaikovski’s beautiful music to the ballet Swan Lake (s. link below). That story tells of a wicked sorcerer, who turned Princess Odette into a white swan; all day she flies in the company of her girl swans, and only at night she lands on the bank of a lake and returns to her form as a woman. (The lake, by the way, was formed from the mother’s tears shed over her daughter’s fate; we have here a double figure of mother/daughter of a Water goddess). The story says that only if a young virgin man swears eternal faith to her love and marries her, she will be released from the magic; but if the prince betrays his oath, she will dies. Prince Siegfried of the story indeed falls in love with the Swan princess, but the sorcerer entices him to betray her by making him show his love to the dark, artificial figure of Odile he himself had created. Odile, actually, beside her opposite color, is the splitting image of Odette (here is a double image of white/black, light/darkness, or good/evil). After the betrayal is discovered, Odette prepares to die; but then the Prince comes and tries to save her. His love releases her from the magic, but they drown together in the lake.

Details shared by the two stories are turning humans into swans by sorcery; the hunting king/prince; and the lake of tears created by a female. The main differences between the two are the genders of the bewitcher and the humans turning into swans. It may be noted that both Eliza and Siegfried are names taken from Germanic mythology; the lake created by a female’s tears makes her a Water goddess. It may be assumed, then, that both fairy tales are based on much earlier European mythology connected with swans. In order to understand their basic meaning, then, it may be interesting to turn to such ancient myths.

It seems that many similar stories are common all over the continent, wherever swans appear. Such tales are known from Sweden, Germany, Romania and others, (similar to such where the swans are replaced by seal, bears or other animals), that in some cases shed their outer skin and take human shape; it is significant that in some of these stories, like in Andersen’s and Chaikobski’s, these people are bewitched, but in others they do it of their own free will. In an Online site called Swan Maiden (s. link below), a hunter encounters a swan or a group of swans, fly onto the bank of a lake; they shed their feather cloaks, turn into human maidens and go swimming. The hunter snatches one of the cloaks and hides it, thus trapping her owner to come and be his wife. They live together until she finds her cloak again and flies away. The stories end in various ways, from tragedy to happy ever after.

It is highly significant that all these stories involve females as swans, not males. But an old Irish stories tells it in a different way (s. link below). Angus son of the Dagda falls in love with a swan-girl who appeared in his dream. Afterward, he meets a group of 150 swans, flying in pairs, which are tied together with a chain of silver; but his girl wears a crown and a chain of gold. When Angus calls out to that particular swan, she leaves the group, turns him into a swan and they fly away together, tied with a golden chair. It is clear here that the swan maiden has her own power to change at will, and is bound by any male sorcerer; what is more – she has the power to change her lover as well into a swan, which makes her a veritable Swan goddess. This is a hint at the initial function of the swan in European mythology.

***

It seems that, in the Hindu-European tradition, there a number of Swan goddesses. Some of these goddesses were connected with death, and others with some qualities of the Underworld (where dead people go), like wisdom and prophecy. Robert Graves has defined the swan as a bird of Death, and the three Greek figures of Graeae, or Gray Ones, clearly demonstrate this idea: they were described as "fair-faced and swan-like". They had gray hair from birth and shared one eye and one tooth which, according to Graves, they used for prophecy. Their genealogy goes back to the early descendants of the Earth and Sea, and their separate names were Enyo (“horror”), Deino (“Dread”), and Pemphredo (“Alarm”).

A Celtic Swan goddess was Brigit, to whom this bird was sacred; she was in charge of the Underworld qualities of Wisdom and Crafts. In Hindu mythology, the swan was sacred to Saraswati, goddess Wisdom and Learning, who sat on a throne made of two swans.

Other deities are connected with the swan through its shining white beauty. Such figures are Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus, to whom the swan was sacred. But another symbol of beauty, much more complicated to these Love goddesses, takes this connection much further. That was Helen, who was the daughter of Leda and the Swan – or, in another interpretation, Leda as a Swan; after all, she was the one who laid the Swan egg, which the two pairs of twins sprung out: Helen and Clytemnestra; Castor and Polydeuces (known as Pollux) – the Dioscuri (“twins”) who “embodied the two halves of the year”.

The multiplicity of the swan’s image – Death, Wisdom, Motherhood, Beauty and Love –

is well represented in the figure of Helen, and is connected with another trait of that bird. The swan is a migratory bird, as is well expressed in both Yates’ poem and in Lemke’s painting. It is actually seen not only in autumn and the dying of the year – hence its connection with Death, but also in springtime, connecting him with idea of revival. It is, then, a symbol of the Great Nature Goddess who was in charge of the yearly dying and resurrection.

According to a site called Goddesses and Priestesses Connected with Hera (s. link below), Helen's name means “bright one, light, Sun, fair;” it refers to her as a Harvest goddess, when the Sun is at its peak (in the Mediterranean area). Another title of Helen’s is Dendritus – “she of the trees”, referring to her as a Fertility goddess in charge of fruit trees; her tree festival was celebrated annually in the isle of Platanistas, where she was worshipped until late 19th cent.. By another title, Rhigidenes, meaning “rigidity”, Helen was in charge of death in various forms, including the orgasmic death of the penis. This combination of characteristics suggests she may have begun as a Pillar Goddess like Asherah or Aphrodite, worshipped with ecstatic dance and sexual rites.

This idea is the basis of the theory of the swan being a symbol of the dying year in autumn, that comes after Midsummer, the peak of the sun and harvest time, to be resurrected again in spring. The Dioscuri, swan born, were kings of the two halves of the year, annually dying and resurrected. Their mother, then, either Leda or in her embodiment as Helen, was actually the Great Mother Goddess, in charge of Life and Death, symbolized by the swan, appearing regularly in Spring and Autumn. Graves connects this myth in his book The Greek Myths with the idea that “at midsummer, they (the swans) flew north to unknown breeding grounds, supposedly taking the dead king’s soul with them.”

The swan appears also as Laima, a Lithuanian Mother Goddess (who is also represented as a Goddess of Fate, determining the life and death course of human beings), who was in charge of “blessing, unity, destiny, love, luck and magic”, according to the site by her name. Her symbol is said to be a wreath, and her totem is the swan. As a Mother, it may be noted that the Hindu god Brahma hatched from a swan’s egg. The swan was also sacred to the Christian Mary, Mother of Jesus. Male individuals could become swans only by her grace, either when she grants them her love as a maiden, or when she takes their souls away in death. Such Death goddesses were the Valkyries, who flew in the shape of swans when looking in the battlefield for warriors who died bravely, to take their souls as a reward to the Paradise of Valhalla.

However, Death goddesses of ancient myths turned into wicked witches in fairy tales. Thus, it was the same goddess in Andersen’s tale who, as the Sorceress Queen turned the boys into swans, and as the Maiden turned them back into humans; the young fairy in the story is another appearance of the Princess herself. Such an equation of Old Witch = Young Maiden appears in Chaucer’s poem The Knight’s Tale.

The swan, then, is one of the manifestations of the Goddess as a Maiden, Mother, and Death Crone, who causes her male charge to be born, to grow to a young handsome hunter, to make love, to die and descend to the Underworld, and finally to come back to life and begin the cycle all over again, as a symbol for the ever changing and circulating year. But the power of that goddess was taken from her with changes of social structure by “a wicked sorcerer”, who put himself in charge of her and of everything on earth, to destroy at will, as we can see in Chaikovski’s magnificent ballet.

http://www.northendgallery.ca/autumnswans.html - Autumn swans

http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/064.html - Lohengrin

http://hca.gilead.org.il/wild_swa.html - Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans

http://www.abt.org/education/archive/ballets/swan_lake.html - Chaikovski’s Swan Lake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mute.swan.cygnets.750pix.jpg - About swans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan - Swans in human culture, wikipedia

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/swan.html - Swan Maidens tales

http://www.swansongs.org/swanmyths.htm - Irish myths and legends

http://www.swansongs.org/swanmyths.htm - Swans in shamanism

http://www.hindudevotion.com/saraswati.html - Hindu Saraswati

http://www.artofeurope.com/yeats/yea4.htm - WB Yeats’s poetry

http://www.moonspeaker.ca/hera/helen.html - Helen

http://findagoddess.com/display.php?HERNAME=Laima - Laima

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/graeae.html - The three Gray Ones

About the Author

I live in Israel and I hold an M.Phil. Degree in literature from the London University,
having studied both Hebrew and English languages and literature. I taught these subjects before I became a full time writer. My main interest is mythology, but I write also fantasy and science fiction stories, novellas and books, and had many of them published in print and on the Net, both in Hebrew and English. Among works of mine published on the Net and in print are Minstrel in the Forest and The Myth of Tristan and Isolde. editor@thewriterseyemagazine

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales By Yeats, W. B. $20.07 Author: Yeats, W. B. Publication Date: 2003/02/01 Number of Pages: 400 Binding Type: Paperback Language: English Depth: 1.00 Width: 5.00 Height: 11.50

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales $23.23 Gathered by the renowned Irish poet, playwright, and essayist William Butler Yeats, the sixty-five tales and poems in this delightful collection uniquely capture the rich heritage of the Celtic imagination. Filled with legends of village ghosts, fairies, demons, witches, priests, and saints, these stories evoke both tender pathos and lighthearted mirth and embody what Yeats describes as“the very voice of the people, the very pulse of life.”“The impact of these tales doesn’t stop with Yeats, or Joyce, or Oscar Wilde,” writes Paul Muldoon in his Foreword,“for generations of readers in Ireland and throughout the world have found them flourishing like those persistent fairy thorns.”

The Collected Works of W.b. Yeats (Paperback) $40.43 Prefaces and Introductions, Volume VI of The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, brings together for the first time thirty-two introductions by Yeats to the works of such literary greats as William Blake, J.M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Oscar Wilde, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Lionel Johnson, and Rabindranath Tagore. The introductions, which span the Nobel laureate`s entire career, reflect the broad reach of Yeats`s literary and cultural interests. Writing of fairies, ghosts, and witches in his introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, Yeats discovers that they were still extant in Ireland, at least in 1888, "giving gifts to the kindly, and plaguing the surly." In his preface to Stories from Carleton he tells of that sweetest ginger of Gaelic tunes, Mary Carleton, who was once asked to sing the air "The Red-haired Man`s Wife" and replied: "I will sing for you, but the English words and the air are like a quarreling man and wife. The Irish melts into the tune: the English does not." And in distinguishing the Irish from the English poets of his day in A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue, Yeats remarks: "Contemporary Irish poets believe in spiritual life, invisible and troubling, and express their belief in their poetry. Contemporary English poets are interested in the glory, the order, the passion or the pleasure of the world." Always insightful and often charming, Prefaces and Introductions reveals the breadth of Yeats`s talent as essayist, critic, folklorist, and raconteur.

Irish Fairy Tales $3.99 A collection of classic Irish Fairy Tales retold by James Stephens which includes the following: The Story of Tuan Mac Cairill, The Boyhood of Fionn, The Birth of Bran, Oisin's Mother, The Wooing of Becfola, The Little Brawl at Allen, The Carl of the Drab Coat, The Enchanted Cave of Cesh Corran, Becuma of the White Skin, and Mongan's Frenzy.

Fairy Tales by W. B. Yeats [Paperback] $38.74 This is a facsimile reprint of the original book by W B Yeats, rebuilt using the latest technology. There are no poor, missing or blurred pages and all photographic images have been professionally restored. At Yokai Publishing we believe that by restoring this title to print it will live on for generations to come. Author: W. B. Yeats Binding Type: Paperback Number of Pages: 242 Publication Date: 2010/09/09 Language: English Dimensions: 5.51 x 8.50 x 0.55 inches

The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. VI: Prefaces and Introductions $24.99 Prefaces and Introductions , Volume VI of The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats , brings together for the first time thirty-two introductions by Yeats to the works of such literary greats as William Blake, J.M. Synge, Lady Gregory, Oscar Wilde, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Lionel Johnson, and Rabindranath Tagore. The introductions, which span the Nobel laureate's entire career, reflect the broad reach of Yeats's literary and cultural interests. Writing of fairies, ghosts, and witches in his introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantr y, Yeats discovers that they were still extant in Ireland, at least in 1888, "giving gifts to the kindly, and plaguing the surly." In his preface to Stories from Carleton he tells of that sweetest ginger of Gaelic tunes, Mary Carleton, who was once asked to sing the air "The Red-haired Man's Wife" and replied: "I will sing for you, but the English words and the air are like a quarreling man and wife. The Irish melts into the tune: the English does not." And in distinguishing the Irish from the English poets of his day in A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue , Yeats remarks: "Contemporary Irish poets believe in spiritual life, invisible and troubling, and express their belief in their poetry. Contemporary English poets are interested in the glory, the order, the passion or the pleasure of the world." Always insightful and often charming, Prefaces and Introductions reveals the breadth of Yeats's talent as essayist, critic, folklorist, and raconteur.

Fairy Tales $15.99 Fairy Tales

Irish Folk and Fairy Tales $12.97 No Synopsis Available

Traditional Irish Fairy Tales $10.34 No Synopsis Available

Irish Fairy And Folk Tales $30.18 No Synopsis Available

Mythologies by Yeats, William Butler [Hardcover] $51.13 1893. This is a collection of Irish stories of the supernatural and uncanny, based on country beliefs, traditions and folk tales. Contents: The Celtic Twilight; The Secret Rose; Stories of Red Hanrahan; Rosa Alchemica; Tables of the Law; Adoration of the Magi; and Per Amica Silentia Lunae. This book is essential for all the readers of Yeats poetry and plays. It reveals that Yeats could work unique enchantment in prose, as well as poetry. Author: Yeats, William Butler Binding Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 378 Publication Date: 2010/09/10 Language: English Dimensions: 8.50 x 11.02 x 0.88 inches

Mythologies by Yeats, William Butler [Paperback] $36.88 This is a collection of Irish stories of the supernatural and uncanny, based on country beliefs, traditions and folk tales. Contents: The Celtic Twilight; The Secret Rose; Stories of Red Hanrahan; Rosa Alchemica; Tables of the Law; Adoration of the Magi; and Per Amica Silentia Lunae. This book is essential for all the readers of Yeats poetry and plays. It reveals that Yeats could work unique enchantment in prose, as well as poetry. Author: Yeats, William Butler Binding Type: Paperback Number of Pages: 376 Publication Date: 2003/03/31 Language: English Dimensions: 11.00 x 8.25 x 0.78 inches

The Yeats Reader, Revised Edition $12.72 Throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats -- Irish writer and premier lyric poet in English in this century -- produced important works in every literary genre, works of astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events. The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them." The Yeats Reader is the most comprehensive single volume to display the full range of Yeats's talents. It presents more than one hundred and fifty of his best-known poems -- more than any other compendium -- plus eight plays, a sampling of his prose tales, and excerpts from his published autobiographical and critical writings. In addition, an appendix offers six early texts of poems that Yeats later revised. Also included are selections from the memoirs left unpublished at his death and complete introductions written for a projected collection that never came to fruition. These are supplemented by unobtrusive annotation and a chronology of the life. Yeats was a protean writer and thinker, and few writers so thoroughly reward a reader's efforts to essay the whole of their canon. This volume is an excellent place to begin that enterprise, to renew an old acquaintance with one of world literature's great voices, or to continue a lifelong interest in the phenomenon of literary genius.

Irish Fairy Tales by Stephens, James [Paperback] $25.43 James Stephens was an early 20th century Irish poet and writer. His humor and lyric writing style are a wonderful addition to the retelling of Irish fairytales. His novels A Crock of Gold and Etched in Moonlight are also based on Irish fairytales. Tales included are: The story of Tuan Mac Cairill The boyhood of Fionn The birth of Bran Oisins mother The wooing of Becfola The little brawl at Allen The Carl of the drab coat The enchanted cave of Cesh Corran Becuma of the white skin and Mongans frenzy Author: Stephens, James Binding Type: Paperback Number of Pages: 196 Publication Date: 2008/04/18 Language: English Dimensions: 7.51 x 9.25 x 0.41 inches

Celtic Fairy Tales $7.95 The success of a fairy book, I am convinced, depends on the due admixture of the comic and the romantic: Grimm and Asbjörnsen knew this secret, and they alone. But the Celtic peasant who speaks Gaelic takes the pleasure of telling tales somewhat sadly: so far as he has been printed and translated, I found him, to my surprise, conspicuously lacking in humour. For the comic relief of this volume I have therefore had to turn mainly to the Irish peasant of the Pale; and what richer...

More Celtic Fairy Tales $20.14 In this volume Joseph Jacobs has proceeded on much the same lines as those which he laid down in compiling Celtic Fairy Tales. In making his selection he attempted to select the tales common both to Erin and Alba. He included, as specimen of the Irish medi eval hero tales, one of the three sorrowful tales of Erin: The Tale of the Children of Lir. For the drolls, or comic relief, of the volume, he drew upon the inexhaustible Kennedy and the great J. F. Campbell, who still stands out as the most prominent figure in the history of the Celtic Fairy Tale. Jacobs attempted to do what the brothers Grimm did for Germany, so far as that was possible. In Jacobs own words The Celtic materials are so rich that it would tax the resources of a whole clan of Grimms to exhaust the field. In this volume you will find 20 Celtic tales of Jack the Cunning Thief, Paddy oKelly and the Weasel, the Dream of Owen OMulready, The Farmer of Liddesdale, The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener, Elidore, the Ridere of Riddles and more. In Jacobs own words, The Celts went forth to battle, but they always fell. Yet the captive Celt has enslaved his captor in the realm of imagination. In an attempt to give a library of the Celts wealthy imagination to his readers, Jacobs has attempted to begin the readers captivity with the earliest recordings of these tales. And captivate he doesMore Celtic Fairy Tales not only preserves a cultural history, but is also richly entertaining. We invite you to curl up with this unique sliver of Celtic folklore not seen in print for over a century; immerse yourself in the tales and fables not heard in homes for many a year. A percentage of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to the Princes Trust for their work with youth across the United Kingdom. Author: Jacobs, Joseph/ Batten, John D. Binding Type: Paperback Number of Pages: 274 Publication Date: 2009/11/30 Language: English Dimensions: 4.99 x 7.99 x 0.61 inches

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