TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SWAN-MAIDENS. 427
linger on the sea-shore; and the swan was considered a bird of
augury}- The VolundarqviSa
relates: Three women sat on the
shore, spinning flax, and had their dlptarliamir (swan-shifts) by
them, so that any moment they could fly away again as swans :
meyjar flugo! and settuz at hvilaz a ssevarstrond ; one of them
has even the surname of svanhvit (swanwhite), and wears swan s
feathers (svanfiaSrar dro). In the Hromundarsaga (Fornald. sog.
2, 375-6), the same Kara, who the Edda says was a second birth
of Svava, appears as an enchantress in swan-shift, (fiolkyngiskona
i alftarham), and hovers above the hero, singing. 2
her assist
ance Helgi had always conquered, but it happened in one fight,
that he swung his sword too high in the air, and hewed off his
lover s foot, she fell to the ground, aud his luck was spent. In
Saxo Gram., p. 100, Fridlevus hears up in the air at night sonum
trium olorum superne clangentium, who prophesy to him, and drop
a girdle with runes on it. Brynhildr
By
is like the swan on the
wave (Fornald. sog. 1, 186) : the simile betrays at the same time,
that she had really the power of changing into the bird. Many
tales of swan-wives still live among the Norse people. A young
man saw three swans alight on the shore, lay their white bird-shifts
in the grass, turn into beautiful maidens, and bathe in the water,
then take their shifts again, and fly away in the shape of swans.
He lay in wait for them another time, and abstracted the garment
she fell on her knees before him, and begged for
of the youngest ;
it, but he took her home with him, and married her. When seven
years were gone by, he shewed her the shift he had kept concealed ;
she no sooner had it in her hand, than she flew out as a swan
through the open window, and the sorrowing husband died soon
after. Afzelius 2, 143-5. On the other hand, the swan-hero
forsakes his wife the moment she asks the forbidden question. A
peasant had a field, in which whatever he set was trampled down
every year on St. John s night. Two years in succession he set his
two eldest sons to watch in the field ; at midnight they heard a
hurtling in the air, which sent them into a deep sleep. The next
year the third son watched, and he saw three maidens come flying,
1 Es schwant mir, it swans me = I have a boding. The reference to the
bird seems undeniable, for we also say In the same sense : es wachsen (there
grow) mir schwansfedern (so already in Zesen s Simson). Conf. the Eddie
svanfiaSrar dro (wore) .
2 Kafn has chosen the reading Lara.