The Bird Lover
Folktale type of a woman healing a wounded bird prince.
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The Bird Lover, also known as The Prince as Bird, is a narrative structure in folklore classified as type 432 in the Aarne–Thompson system. In the typical version, a woman acquires a bird lover—a nobleman in the shape of a bird—who is wounded by a trap set by the woman's husband; she follows the wounded bird's trail, cures him, and marries him. In French scholarship, this type is often referred to as 'l'oiseau bleu' or 'the blue bird', named for a story by Madame d'Aulnoy.
Background
An example of the motif is found in one of Marie de France's Lais, 'Yonec', though the lai ends in tragedy instead of a happy ending. A 'sophisticated rationalization' of the type is found in Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, where Lancelot appears at Guinevere's heavily barred window and cuts his fingers bending the bars back. Swedish scholar also pointed to Yonec as a predecessor, but noted that in tales of 'later tradition', especially from India and Persia, the lover comes to the heroine in the shape of a bird, citing the tale of 'King Parrot', from a 15th century Turkish version of The Seven Wise Masters.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: The Bird Lover (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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