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The Swan-Maiden Revisited: Religious Significance of "Divine-Wife" Folktales with Special Reference to Japan

1987; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1177885

0385-2342

Alan L. Miller,

Culinary Culture and Tourism

The swan-maiden folktale or motif enjoyed a certain vogue in the study of folklore in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has now fallen on hard times, having dropped out of most popular folktale anthologies, and enjoys only the most cursory mention in more serious scholarly works. It is accorded only parenthetical mention in Antti Aarne's tale type index (Aarne 1910), where under the general rubric no. 400, Supernatural or Magical Husbands (Wives), it is referred to as often [serving] as an introduction to stories in which a husband searches for a wife who has disappeared. Yet Stith Thompson in his Motif Index (Thompson 1932-1936) devotes to the swan-maiden a substantial paragraph of citations designated D361.1 under the general rubric of magic. Even more significantly he supplies extensive cross references to no fewer than ten other motifs under six other rubrics.