ed by the Jinn in the foregoing tale is not
specified; but in Europe, where beauty and grace and purity find so apt
an emblem in the swan, several of the most important variants have
naturally appropriated that majestic form to the heroine, and have thus
given a name to the whole group of stories. In Sweden, for example, we
are told of a young hunter who beheld three swans descend on the
seashore and lay their plumage aside before they plunged into the water.
When he looked at the robes so laid aside they appeared like linen, and
the forms that were swimming in the waves were damsels of dazzling
whiteness. Advised by his foster-mother, he secures the linen of the
youngest and fairest. She, therefore, could not follow her companions
when they drew on their plumage and flew away; and being thus in the
hunter's power, she became his wife. The hero of a story current among
the Germans of Transylvania opens, like Hasan, a forbidden door, and
finds three swan-maids bathing in a blue pool. Their clothes are
contained in satchels on its margin, and when he has taken the satchel
of the youngest he must not look behind until he has reached home. This
done, he finds the maiden there and persuades her to marry him. Mikailo
Ivanovitch, the hero of a popular Russian ballad, wanders by the sea,
and, gazing out upon a quiet bay, beholds a white swan floating there.
He draws his bow to shoot her, but she prays him to desist; and rising
over the blue sea upon her white wings, she turns into a beautiful
maiden. Surprised with love, he offers to kiss her; but she reveals
herself as a heathen princess and demands first to be baptized, and then
she will wed him. In a Hessian story a forester sees a fair swan
floating on a lonely lake. He is about to shoot it when it warns him to
desist, or it will cost him his life. Immediately the swan was
transformed into a maiden, who told him she was bewitched, but could be
freed if he would say a Paternoster for her every Sunday for a
twelvemonth, and meantime keep silence concerning his adventure. The
test proved too hard, and he lost her.[186]

The swan, however, by no means monopolizes the honour of concealing the
heroine's form. In a Finnish tale from OEsterbotten, a dead father
appears in dreams to his three sons, commanding them to watch singly by
night the geese on the sea-strand. The two elder are so frightened by
the darkness that they scamper home. But the youngest, despised and
dirty, watches