of the Knight of the Swan, in which the son of queen Matabrune, CHAP.
having married the beautiful Beatrice, leaves her in his mother's
charge. After his departure, Beatrice gives birth to six sons and a
daughter, each with a silver collar round its neck. These children
the stepmother seeks to destroy, but she is cheated by the usual
device which substitutes some beast for the human victim. At
length Matabrune is informed that seven children may be seen each
with a silver collar, and again she decrees their death. They are,
however, only deprived of their collars, and the loss changes them
into swans, all but the youngest, Helias, whom a hermit had taken
away as his companion.^ Helias, of course, avenges his mother's
innocence, when she is about to be put to death, and then makes a
vow that he will never rest until he has delivered his brothers and
sister from the evil inchantment. Having recovered five of the
collars, he succeeds at length in restoring five to their human shape ;
but one remains spellbound, his collar having been melted to make a
drinking-cup for Matabrune. This swan-brother now appears draw-
ing a boat, in which Helias embarks, and arriving at Neumagen fights
on behalf of the lady who claimed the duchy of Bouillon. His
victory makes him duke of Bouillon, but he warns the duchess that
if she asks his name he must leave her. In due time the question is
of course asked, and instantly, the swan and boat reappearing, Helias
vanishes like Eros when seen by Psyche. This romance Mr. Gould,
who gives some other versions of the story, regards as a local myth
of Brabantine origin, the name Helias being a corruption of the
Keltic ala, eala, ealadh, a swan. This is but saying, in other words,
that an old myth has been worked into the traditions of European
towns, and attached, like the story of the early life of Cyrus, to names
undoubtedly historical. The tale itself agrees in all its essential
features not only with many Teutonic legends but with the Hindu
story of Guzra Bai, the Beatrice of the tale of Truth's Triumph.
This beautiful maiden is the Flower Girl, or the Gardener's daughter ;
in other words, the child of Demeter playing on the flowery plain of
Nysa or Enna, — the teeming source of life as distinguished from the
dead or inert matter on which it works. She thus becomes at once,
like Beatrice, the mother of many children ; here the number is a
hundred and one, this one being as with Beatrice a daughter. These
beautiful children awaken the jealousy and hatred of the twelve
childless wives to whom the husband of Guzra Bai was already mar-
• In Grimm's story of " The White water, but at the same moment a snow- and the Black Bride," the mother and white swan is seen swimming down the sister push the true bride into the stream.
