The Six Swans - a fairy tale by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

I borrowed a copy of The Six Swans (illustrations by Dorothee Duntze) from a school library last week. Now I am so confused. As a child my favourite fairy tale was The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen. I had this amazing copy with puppet photos and a 'hologram' cover (see below). Now I discover another fairy tale called The Six Swans by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.  The two stories are SO similar. 

Using Wikipedia here is my comparison:

The Wild Swans

In a faraway kingdom, there lives a widowed king with his twelve children: eleven princes and one princess. One day, he decides to remarry, but marries a wicked queen who is a witch. Out of spite, the queen turns her eleven stepsons into magnificent swans who are allowed to temporarily become human only at night and forced to fly by day.

The Six Swans

A King gets lost in a forest while hunting for game. An old witch promises to help the lost King get back home, on the condition that he marry her beautiful daughter. The King suspects the mysterious maiden to be wicked but agrees to marry her. He has six sons and a daughter from his first marriage, however, and fears that the children will be abused by his new wife. So, before the wedding, the King sends his children to a hidden castle in the forest, secretly visiting them by following a magical reel of thread given to him by a wise woman. The Queen, who is also a witch, then sews seven magical white shirts. When the King leaves for an errand one day, the Queen follows the reel to the hidden castle. Mistaking her for their father, the six princes rush out to greet their stepmother who then throws the shirts over her stepsons, transforming them into swans.

In both stories, the young daughter of the King is left to save her brothers. In both stories the young girl is not allowed to speak, and she must make shirts for her brothers. This is painful and difficult work which takes years to complete. Also, in both stories the boys only appear in human form briefly. 

The Wild Swans

Elisa is guided by the queen of the fairies to gather stinging nettles in graveyards to knit into shirts that will eventually help her brothers regain their human shapes. Elisa endures painfully blistered hands from nettle stings, and she must also take a vow of silence for the duration of her task, for speaking one word will kill herself and her brothers.

The Six Swans

The princes can only take their human forms for fifteen minutes every evening. They tell their sister that they have heard of a way to lift the curse: she must not speak for six years while sewing six star-flower shirts for her brothers.

In both stories one shirt is incomplete and in both the girl is accused of witchcraft. 

The Wild Swans

When Elisa finishes the last shirt, she throws the shirts over the swans, and her brothers return to their human forms. The youngest brother has a swan's wing instead of an arm, as Elisa did not have time to finish one sleeve of his shirt.

The Six Swans

In this story the young girl marries a king and so she is now a queen but she cannot speak until the six years have passed. Even though the young Queen has sewn all six star-flower shirts, the last one lacks a left sleeve. When the girl is brought to the stake, she takes the shirts with her. Just as she is about to be burned, the six swans come flying through the air. She throws the shirts over her brothers and they regain their human form, but the youngest retains a left wing instead of an arm.

I now discover the there are lots of variations on this fairy tale. In this article the author compares three - the two I have talked about and The seven ravens. Read more here. Goodreads identify forty titles that are based around this fairy tale. 

I also read this: The tale “The Wild Swans” was written by 33-year-old Andersen in 1838 and was included in the collection “Fairy Tales Told for Children.” When creating the tale, Andersen relied on the tales of the Brothers Grimm and the Irish legend of a sister and two brothers turned by a stepmother into swans. Source

I previously talked about this book which feels very similar to The Wild Swans.

The Children of Nuala

And our Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year for 2024 also has overtones of The Wild Swans - Paradise Sands.