So I've mentioned before that one of my favourite fairytales is The Seven Ravens and all its variants- The Twelve Brothers, The Six Swans, The Wild Swans, The Twelve Wild Ducks, Udea and her Seven Brothers and more, this story has variants all over the world. The basic plot is about a princess whose older brothers are turned into birds after her birth and she sets on a quest to find and rescue them.
I find it interesting that in The Twelve Brothers it is the father who is the villain opposed to a wicked stepmother as he builds coffins for his own twelve sons and vows that they shall be killed should the Queen birth a girl so that the girl might take the boys' possessions. Thanks to the Queen's warning to the youngest the boys successfully flee and are later found by their sister and in a surprising turn of events it is she who unwittingly condemns them to be ravens by plucking twelve flowers in a garden for them. She then has to take a vow of silence for twelve years and during the silence is spied by a king who virtually abducts her (although in some variants she gives a nod of consent to be his wife) then he allows his mother to claim that the girl's muteness is a sign of evil to the point that he condemns her to death. Luckily she is rescued by the return of her brothers who retake their form.
It is similiar with The Six Swans in that the girl takes a vow of silence for six years to restore her brothers to their true form and is effectively abducted by a king who falls in love with her beauty. Here she has two sons who are taken after birth by the king's mother who then smears her mouth with blood and says she has murdered them. After the second occurrence the king condemns his wife to death by burning. She takes with her the shirts she has been making for her brothers, one unfinished, and as she is about to be burned they arrive, she throws the shirts on them and they are returned to form, though one maintains a swan's wing, and the truth is revealed. In this story the brothers were turned in swans by the magic of an evil stepmother. In this version the brothers could take human form for fifteen minutes every evening.
In the Seven Ravens the brothers and sister are this time the children of peasants. Like The Twelve Brothers the brothers are condemned by their father, in fact it is he who brings about their transformation. They were sent out to fetch a jug of water to baptize their newly born sister with but dropped the jug in their haste and were too ashamed to return. The father cursed them to be ravens and so they were. The daughter grows up and rather than taking a vow of silence or mending shirts she sets out to find them, going through several trials before she reaches them and they return to home.
In The Wild Swans again it is an evil stepmother queen who turns the sons into swans, this time there are eleven, she tries to change the girl but fails and the girl is taken by her brothers to safety. Again she must take a vow of silence and knit shirts, out of nettles, for her brothers and again a king finds her and takes her, eventually proposing to her and marrying her. This time it is the Archbishop who accuses her of witchcraft not the king's mother, and he has her condemned to be burned. The swans rescue their sister and she puts the shirts over them restoring them to form, again one is left with a wing, but is then restored via a miracle. In this version the brothers could take human form at night.
In The Twelve Wild Ducks it is the queen who condemns her sons, saying she does not care what will happen to them so long as she has a daughter, so a troll witch turns them into ducks when the daughter is born. The daughter, known as Snow-white and Rosy-red bizzarely, learns of them, takes a vow of silence and begins to make them shirts to free them. A king finds her, takes her and marries her and she has three sons who are taken by the king's stepmother who frames the girl for murder. Again she is condemned and then rescued by the return of her brothers who are freed from their curse by the shirts. In this version the brothers who resume human form at night.
I find The Seven Ravens to present the most brave of the heroines as she actually sets out on a quest to free her brothers, going to the sun and the moon and the stars for help, climbing a glass mountain, sacrificing her finger in some versions to open the door, and then finally saving them. She is an active heroine opposed to the others who sit in silence for years making shirts, which whilst being noble and difficult, it is idle in a fashion.
I also find it interesting how there is always a different version as to how the brothers' curse is brought about- a father, the sister, a mother, a stepmother, the stories all offer something different, in one it is an accident, in another a spur of the moment curse not meant to be taken seriously, in another an act of jealousy or spite, and in another a bargain for a daughter. In some of them the brothers want to hate their sister because it is because of she that they were cast out and/or cursed but they cannot because it was not her fault, rather the fault of the parents, and she has gone out of her way to come and save them.
The abduction by a king and then the following marriage and birth of sons always bothered me because the girl was mute, she could not give consent to these and it always resulted in her life being put in danger as a spiteful mother/stepmother/Archbishop took her muteness as a sign of evil. The king was happy to accept her muteness up until that point but then allows his mind to be corrupted and turns on this wife who he effectively forced to be with him, and condemns her. Really if he had never taken her in the first place she could have continued her silence and shirt mending in peace. Also, despite how easily he turned against her, she always forgives him in the end after her brothers rescue her. One also wonders how a marriage happened without her verbal consent and indeed the creation of children.
I think a more lighthearted version of the tale could certainly make a good Disney movie, although they seem more interested in remakes at the moment. I think it and The Princess and the Pea would be strong contenders, although I admit trying to form a decent movie length plot out of The Princess and the Pea could be hard, certainly it goes largely ignored in literature and film adaptations.
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