Lady Featherflight
Giant's daughter who aids a hero's flight using bird magic.
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Lady Featherflight is the title character of an American fairy tale that was first published in 1895 by W. W. Newell in his work 'The Song of the Seasons', based on an oral source from Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the story, a traveler receives hospitality from Lady Featherflight, who is the daughter of a giant.
The giant forces the traveler to complete several tasks, but Featherflight helps him by commanding birds to assist. Eventually, the two elope and steal the giant's treasure. The tale is categorized in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 313, 'The Magic Flight,' though the heroine is often a giant's daughter rather than a swan maiden, and the tale type does not inherently require a swan maiden figure.
Quick Facts
- Field
- Folklore
- Collector
- W. W. Newell
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
During the pursuit, Featherflight instructs Reuben to look in the horse's ears for objects to delay the giant: a stick becomes a forest, a drop of water becomes a lake. The giant drinks the lake until he bursts. Reuben and Featherflight then marry and live happily, later returning to the giant's house for more treasure. Note: The episode involving a reflection in a fountain, village women, husbands trying to kill Featherflight as a witch, and the bridge-breaking with the line 'Why not mend the bridge?' are not present in Newell's canonical text and appear to be conflations from other variants.
Reader's Guide
Lady Featherflight is significant as a variant of the international tale type ATU 313, 'The Magic Flight,' collected in the United States from oral tradition. The tale preserves the swan maiden motif, with the heroine's name hinting at her avian nature.
Folklorists have noted its possible British or Scots-Gaelic origin, and its inclusion of the 'Forgotten Fiancé' episode in fragmentary form. The story also contains motifs found in other tale types, such as the heroine's reflection in water (ATU 408). Its publication by W. W. Newell in 1891 and later in The Journal of American Folklore and The Oak-Tree Fairy Book helped document a rare American fairy tale with deep European roots.
Did You Know?
- No widely known source attributes the quote 'old fairy-tale ... was well-known in Massachusetts' to psychoanalyst Hanns Sachs in connection with this specific tale; the claim is unverifiable and likely invented.
More in Swan maidens
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: Lady Featherflight (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the Codexery glossary, each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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