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jo
Unregistered User
(9/14/00 12:21:01 am)
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what's the name of the story?
When I was young, I remembered reading a fairy tale about a girl and her 7 or 11 brothers who were turned into swans by the spell of the wicked stepmother. In order to break the spell, the sister had to gather some foul plants from the dark wood and use it to knit sweaters for each of her brothers and worse than that, she had to stay silent until the task finished. Then the prince found her and married her in spite of the fact that she never uttered a word. Then she was accused of being a witch and was to be burnt alive. In the end she finished her task in time.
What's the name of the story?
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Jennifer
Registered User
(9/14/00 3:23:57 am)
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Re: what's the name of the story?
Hi-
That is "The Six Swans" by the Grimm's. I don't remember the sweater detail, but the swans and silence are in that tale. It is tale #49.
Warmest regards-
Jennifer
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Ellen
Unregistered User
(9/14/00 8:27:46 am)
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Swan brothers
Also told by Hans Christian Andersen as "The Wild Swans" in which the heroine, Lisa, must pick stinging nettles, "crush them and spin them into a green thread," then knit eleven coats (in this version she has *11* brothers), which, of course, she does, though she doesn't finish one sleeve and her youngest brother winds up with a wing instead of an arm. Kelly Link also did a fabulous re-telling of this story, "Swans," which appears in *A Wolf in the Door,* the middle-grade anthology by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling that Simon and Schuster just published.
E.
P.S. You can find the Andersen story in Golden's "The Fairy Tale Book."
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Carrie
Registered User
(9/14/00 8:33:26 am)
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Re: what's the name of the story?
I recently wrote a poem on the topic, so I happen to know of several stories that follow the same sort of plot. I found that I remembered different pieces from the similar stories. Try Grimm's "The Twelve Brothers," "The Seven Ravens" and "The Six Swans." Also you should check out Andersen's "The Wild Swans."
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