Swan maiden

Mythical female creature

The "swan maiden" story is a name in folkloristics used to refer to three kinds of stories: those where one of the characters is a bird-maiden, in which she can appear either as a bird or as a woman; those in which one of the elements of the narrative is the theft of the feather-robe belonging to a bird-maiden, though it is not the most important theme in the story; and finally the most commonly referred to motif, and also the most archaic in origin: those stories in which the main theme, among several mixed motifs, is that of a man who finds the bird-maiden bathing and steals her feathered robe, which leads to him becoming married to the bird-maiden. Later, the maiden recovers the robe and flies away, returning to the sky, and the man may seek her again. It is one of the most widely distributed motifs in the world, most probably being many millennia old, and the best known supernatural wife figure in narratives.

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