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Updated: June 15, 2025
For a few days he wandered about the shore, and the charitable gave him bread. He ventured to tell his history to one kind friend; but the same night he disappeared, and in a few days the waves cast up his body on the beach. The foregoing tales all combine with the characteristics of the group under discussion, either those of the Swan-maiden group or those of the Forbidden Chamber group.
We have seen that the original werewolf, howling in the wintry blast, is a kind of psychopomp, or leader of departed souls; he is the wild ancestor of the death-dog, whose voice under the window of a sick-chamber is even now a sound of ill-omen. The swan-maiden has also been supposed to summon the dying to her home in the Phaiakian land.
The big crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden.
'Until Decca be the Queen of Largnen, until the good Saint come to Erin, and ye hear the chime of the Christ-bell, shall ye not be delivered from your doom. The good Saint had indeed come, and the sweet chimes of the Christ-bell had been heard, and the fair Decca was now the Queen of King Largnen. Soon were tidings brought to Decca of the swan-maiden and her three swan-brothers.
The original werewolf is the night-wind, regarded now as a manlike deity and now as a howling lupine fiend; and the original swan-maiden is the light fleecy cloud, regarded either as a woman-like goddess or as a bird swimming in the sky sea.
Retrospect The fairies of Celtic and Teutonic races of the same nature as the supernatural beings celebrated in the traditions of other nations All superstitions of supernatural beings explicable by reference to the conceptions of savages Liebrecht's Ghost Theory of some Swan-maiden myths MacRitchie's Finn Theory The amount of truth in them Both founded on too narrow an induction Conclusion.
These beliefs can only be referred to the same origin as the fairy superstitions; and all arise out of the doctrine of spirits, the doctrine of transformations, and the belief in witchcraft, held by savage tribes. But here I must, at the risk of some few repetitions, notice a theory on the subject of the Swan-maiden myth enunciated by Liebrecht.
Slowly the heavy curtains swung together, hiding the limp, lifeless body of the Swan-Maiden and the despairing figure of her lover as he knelt beside her, and after a breathless pause, the great audience, carried away by the tragic drama of the dance, its passion and its pathos, broke into a thunder of applause that rolled and reverberated through the theatre.
I hope I have made clear in the last chapter the connection between the various types of the Swan-maiden group of folk-tales. The one idea running through them all is that of a man wedding a supernatural maiden and unable to retain her.
First and foremost, we have found some of the Swan-maiden tales boldly professing to account for the worship of totems; and so thoroughly does totemism appear to be ingrained in the myth that there is some reason for thinking that here we have a clue to the myth's origin and meaning.
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