Storytelling for Week 12: The Swan Princess

Once upon a time there was a king of the North land, King David, whose daughter had become of age to marry.  There was also a king of the South land, King Stephen, who was getting old and sick and needed his son to marry a princess, so he could make sure his kingdom would be taken care of and protected after he passed on to the next life.  The two kings decided to meet one day to discuss their children getting married in the near future.  The princess entertained the prince while their fathers discussed the marriage arrangements.  They became instantly smitten with each other and knew that they would be happy with getting married to each other.  This arrangement would bring forth peace between the two lands.

Well, the king of the West land, King Joshua, heard about this meeting and adamantly disagreed with the arrangement because he wanted his daughter to marry the prince of the South land.  King Joshua was very well known around the lands as a vengeful and hated man.  He did not want peace between the lands, but wanted to rule the land of the South as well.  So King Stephen told King Joshua that he would never allow his son to marry a daughter of such a wicked man.  This news enraged King Joshua, so he decided to kidnap the princess and have a witch cast an evil spell on her as well.

A couple days later, King Joshua sent out his best fighters to kidnap the princess of the North.  No one in the North kingdom realized what had happened until the next morning when King David found his daughter missing.   There was much grieving and sorrow that day in the land of the North!  Search parties were sent out to find the lost princess, but no one could find her.

Once King Joshua had the princess hidden in the darkest of places in the forest, he had a witch cast a horrible spell on her.  The princess was turned into a swan and was confined to the lake in the middle of the forest.  She could still speak with a human voice, but had to live her life as a swan.  If she attempted to leave the lake, she would die.  The only way for her to break the spell would be to promise to NEVER marry King Stephen's son, the prince of the South.  She could not make that promise because she loved the prince with all her heart.  The prince loved her with all his heart too, so he set off on a journey to find his beloved princess.

Swan Princess

The prince finally found his beloved princess after many months of searching and she told him of the witch's evil spell and of King Joshua's plan to have his daughter marry him instead of her.  The prince decided that there might be another way to save the princess and that way was to kill the witch.  So, the prince set off on another journey to find the witch.  Once he found the witch, she begged for her life and promised to reverse the spell that she had cast on the princess.

The witch and the prince rode back to where the princess had been held captive for many months.  The witch did as she promised and reversed the spell so that she would not be killed.  Once the spell was lifted, the princess was turned back into her human form and rode off with the prince to the land of the South to be married as quickly as possible.  They were married later that evening before word had spread to the land of the West where King Joshua lived.

King Joshua was enraged that the witch broke her promise to him, but by then there was nothing he could do about it.  In the end, the prince of the South land and the princess of the North land lived happily ever after for the rest of their days.

Editor's Note: I retold the story named The Fate of the Children of Lir.  I changed the story quite a bit.  Lir is a man who wanted to become king of the land.  When he was not chosen as the new king, he became angry and went back to his home.  To keep peace in the land, the chosen king sent a messenger to Lir telling him that he would let him chose a wife from one of his three daughters.  He was pleased and chose the eldest daughter.  They had several children together, but she died after having their last child.  So the new king sent another one of his daughters to become his wife to keep Lir appeased.  His new wife became jealous of Lir's children and took them to a lake where she cast a spell of them to turn them into swans with human voices for five hundred years.  Lir went out and searched for his children, but could never find them.  It wasn't until after the five hundred years had passed that the spell was broken and they returned to human form.  However, they did not return as human children, but as old people.  They ended up dying a couple days later after they were returned to human form.

I chose to change the story to fit more along the lines of the movie The Swan Princess.  That is where I got all my inspiration for the changes I made to the original story.  Even though I decided to use many ideas from the Disney movie, I didn't follow the storyline from beginning to end.  The original story was about the children of Lir turning into swans for five hundred years, but in my version I turned the princess into a swan until the witch reversed the spell after being threatened with death if she didn't reverse it.  Another similarity between the original version and my version of this story was that there was great sorrow when the characters went missing and that search parties were sent out to find them.  I kept that idea in my version of the story as well.  I also changed the ending to where the prince and princess lived happily ever after.  In the original story, Lir's children never saw their father again and ended up dying within a few days of turning back into human form.  The ending in my version of this story is also different from the movie's ending.  The Swan Princess dies in the movie, but is brought back to life by the prince's kiss.  In my version, the princess doesn't die and the spell is broken by getting the witch to reverse the spell instead of by a lover's kiss.  Another difference between my story and the Disney film is that I used a female witch to cast a spell on the princess.  In the Disney movie, the character was a male sorcerer who turned into a magical beast and the prince defeated the beast by killing it with his sword.  The last idea that I used from the original story, The Children of Lir, was that the king wanted to keep peace among the lands, so he sent Lir two of his daughters to marry.  I used the same idea of keeping peace in the land by using having the prince and princess vowing to be married and then getting married in the end.

Bibliography:

This story is part of the Celtic Fairy Tales (2) unit. Story source: More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1895).

Disney movie: The Swan Princess, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swan_Princess.