Research source

THE CUCKOO, THE HERON, THE HEATHCOCK, THE PARTRIDGE, THE NIGHTINGALE, THE SWALLOW, THE SPARROW, AND

Date of account: English edition published 1872
Source: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2)
Reference: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2) · selected passage 107
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

In the chapter which treats of the swallow, we saw the beautiful maiden upon the tree at the fountain changed into a swallow by the witch's enchantment; numerous other legends, instead of the transformation into a swallow, give us that into a dove.[438] The stories of the maiden Filadoro and of the Island of the Ogres, in the _Pentamerone_;[439] a Piedmontese story communicated by me in 1866 to my friend Professor Alexander Wesselofski, who published it in his essay upon the poet Pucci; the thirteenth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach (of which the twelfth story is a variation); the forty-ninth story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_ (a variety of which occurs at the end of the fifth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia), and a great number of analogous European stories, reproduce this subject of the maiden transformed into a dove by the witch's enchantment: as the swallow is white and black, so does the dove into which the beautiful maiden is transformed appear now white and now black.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

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