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The brothers took them home; but after seven years the swan-maidens, wearied of their life, flew away to battle, and did not return. "Seven years they stayed there, but in the eighth longing seized them, and in the ninth need parted them." Egil and Slagfinn went to seek their wives, but Völund stayed where he was and worked at his forge.
There the Moon still chases his sister, the Sun; and every now and then he turns his sooty cheek toward the earth, when he becomes so dark that you cannot see him. Another story, which I cite from Mr. Tylor, shows that Malays, as well as Indo-Europeans, have conceived of the clouds as swan-maidens.
Eistedd." p. 225; White, vol. i. p. 126. Dennys, p. 140; "Corpus Poet. Bor." vol. i. p. 168; "Kathá-sarit-ságara," vol. ii. p. 453, cf. p. 577; White, vol. i. p. 88; Schneller, p. 210; Robertson Smith, p. 50. Gill, p. 265. "Indian N. & Q." vol. iv. p. 147. Romilly, p. 134; Landes, p. 123. Bent, p. 13. The Nereids in modern Greek folklore are conceived in all points as Swan-maidens.
But we are diverging from the subject of swan-maidens, and are in danger of losing ourselves in that labyrinth of popular fancies which is more intricate than any that Daidalos ever planned.
All these Totemism, the equality and essential identity of nature between man and all other objects in the universe, the doctrine of Transformation, the doctrine of Spirits are phases of savage thought, every one of which has been incorporated in the myth of the Swan-maidens, and every one of which, except one special and very limited development of the doctrine of Spirits, is ignored in Liebrecht's theory.
There a little bird showed him the house of Utahagi, and after various adventures he took up his abode among the gods." In Siberia we find a legend of swan-maidens, which also reminds us of the story of the Heartless Giant. A certain Samojed once went out to catch foxes, and found seven maidens swimming in a lake surrounded by gloomy pine-trees, while their feather dresses lay on the shore.
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