The White Bird and His Wife
A woman marries a white bird and must search for him after he vanishes.
The White Bird and His Wife comes from an East Asian folktale found in The Bewitched Corpse, a book of Asian stories. It belongs to the animal bridegroom cycle, where a human woman marries a supernatural husband in animal form and later searches for him after losing him.
Quick Facts
- Compilation
- The Bewitched Corpse
- Related tale type
- ATU 425, The Search for the Lost Husband
- Mongolian tale type (lőrincz)
- MMT 163, Der Eulen-Gatte
- Kalmyk tale type (goryaeva)
- 400/1
- Kalmyk tale type (nadbitova)
- 432, Finist, the Bright Falcon
Facts from the source article.
Origin
The Tales of the Bewitched Corpse is a collection of stories from India and Tibet that later traveled to Mongolia and was translated into Mongolic languages. In India it is called Vetala Pañcaviṃśati, in Tibet Ro-sgrung, in Mongolia Siditü kegür, and in Oirat Siddhi kǖr. Mongolian scholar Tsendiin Damdinsüren pointed out two Tibetan versions of these Vetala tales, one with 13 chapters and another with 21, both recorded in the 11th-century work The Book of the Son. He suggested that the differences between the Indian and Tibetan versions might mean the Tibetan ones are original creations, not mere translations. Tibetologist Françoise Robin found over 20 versions in Tibetan-speaking areas, with common ones holding between 13 and 25 stories, and some containing as many as 75.
Summary
In a kingdom called Fair-flower-garden, a man lives with his three daughters grazing their goat herds. One day the goats vanish. The elder daughter searches and finds a large red door, then a gate of mother-of-pearl and one of emerald. A white bird appears and offers to show where the herds are if she marries him; she refuses. The middle daughter also refuses the next day. The youngest daughter agrees and marries the bird. Sometime later, a 13-day gathering occurs near a local temple. The white bird's wife attends as the loveliest woman, and a mysterious rider on a dappled gray horse also appears. She tells her husband about the rider. On the 12th day, an old woman advises her to pretend to go to the gathering, wait for her husband to remove his birdskin, assume human form, and ride to the festival on his horse. On the 13th day, the wife waits until her husband becomes human and leaves, then burns the perch, birdcage, and featherskin. When he returns, she tells him what she did. He despairs, explaining his soul was inside the cage and now gods and demons will come for him. The only solution is for her to stand at the gate of mother-of-pearl and hew a stick for seven days and seven nights without interruption. She applies motes of feather-grass to her eyelids but on the seventh night the motes fall off, she fails, and her husband is taken. She then goes looking for him anywhere between heaven and earth.
Variants
In Charles John Tibbitts's translation titled The Bird-Man, a father lives with three daughters who herd calves; the sisters pass through a golden, silver, and brazen door; the youngest marries the bird. During a 13-day feast around a large pagoda, the bird in human form rides a white horse, and his wife burns his birdhouse, which held his soul. When she finds him again, he explains he is forced to draw water for the Tschadkurrs and Tângâri; she saves him by building a new birdhouse. László L. Lőrincz classified a Mongolian tale type he termed 163, Der Eulen-Gatte: three sisters lose cattle; an owl offers their return for marriage; the youngest agrees; she later sees a handsome stranger at a town festival, discovers it is her husband, burns the birdskin, demons kidnap him, and she makes a new birdskin to rescue him. Lőrincz noted all Mongolian versions of The Bewitched Corpse contain 13 tales, with the seventh titled Sibaɣun ger-tü. A 1959 publication included a variant as its eighth tale, titled Histoire de la femme dont le mari était un coq. Boris Ya. Vladimirtsov translated a Mongol-Oirat version whose seventh tale is titled Having a Bird Skin: the youngest daughter burns the birdskin to keep him human, but he explains his life was in the birdskin. Baira Goryaeva grouped tales about lost spouses under Kalmyk type 400/1, noting this tale fit that type.
Analysis
Scholars have related the tale to the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther type ATU 425, The Search for the Lost Husband, which involves a human woman marrying a supernatural husband in animal shape; the wife may destroy the animal skin, causing the husband to vanish, and she must undergo penance to regain him. Irina S. Nadbitova classified a similar Kalmyk narrative as type 432, Finist, the Bright Falcon. According to Lőrincz, in a Tibetan translation of The Bewitched Corpse titled Ro-sgruṅ, tales 4 and 9 (out of 21) are animal husband tales classifiable as ATU 425 and its subtypes. Ágnes Birtalan translated a Kalmyk tale collected by Gábor Bálint, named Moγǟ köwǖn, in which the heroine marries a snake that becomes a man; her sisters burn his snakeskin, he disappears, and she quests for him, riding a deer's antlers to reach the heavens where she finds her three sisters-in-law.
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