KidLit Forum

(Irish Fairy and Folk Tales) The twelve wild geese

A. Context
- Country and language: Ireland, Irish;
- Original collector: William Butler Yeats
- Title of collection, year, place: Irish fairy and folk tales, 1857, New York
- Numbers of tales in that collection: 65
- Original publication: 1888
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B. Summary
A king and queen that had twelve sons, but the queen was not pleased because she had always wished for a daughter. So one winter day, after seeing a calf’s red blood in the white snow she couldn’t help but wish for the long desired daughter with the skin as white as snow and her cheeks as red as that blood, but her mistake was that she said she would give away every one of her twelve sons. An old woman appeared and warned her that it will happen as she desired. When her daughter was born, the twelve sons of the queen disappeared from the palace. The beautiful princess, who was called by everyone “Snow-white and Rose-red”, never knew what happened to her brothers, so at the age of twelve she went looking for them. She found them in a house where at first they wanted to kill her, but than the old woman appeared again and told everyone that she is actually their salvation. She has to spin and knit twelve shirts, and not once speak, laugh or cry and the whole process will take her five years. She managed to make eight shirts after three years, when she met a young king whom she instantly fell in love with, and him with her. They soon got married and had a little boy. The young king’s step-mother who was evil and cruel gave the baby to a wolf. The same thing happened with their second child too, who was a little girl, but this time the whole kingdom believed that the young queen has devoured her children, due to the blood marks around her mouth. She was sentenced to death but she did not stop knitting and spinning, when she was nearly done, she couldn’t help but shed a tear and shout out that she was innocent, that was the moment her twelve brothers appeared, each got a shirt and they saved her. A fine looking woman appeared giving the young royal couple the little prince and the baby back and they lived happily afterwards.

C. Position in the Aarne-Thomson-Uther Index
According to this index the fairytale falls into the Ordinary Folktales category (Types 300-1199), subtype Tales of Magic (300-749), type 451 “The maiden who seeks her brothers” because of the brothers who were turned into birds.

D. Vladimir Propp classification
The characters of the tale can be classified according to Vladimir Propp as follows: the hero (the princess with the white skin and red cheeks who saves her brothers and marries a king), the villain (the young king’s step-mother who does not like her at all and wants to get rid of her my all means), the dispatcher (the old woman who tells her that she will have to knit and spin twelve shirts for her brothers). Also some functions are present such as: absentation, delivery, trickery, departure, victory, liquidation, rescue, solution, punishment, wedding.

E. Similarities with other known tales
The fairy tale “The twelve wild geese” has common features with the following tales: “The twelve Wild Ducks” a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe which has a similar plot, „The wild swans” a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen where eleven brothers where transformed into swans by an evil queen, but also some elements of “Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs”, another German fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm (a Queen that wants a daughter with white skin and rosy cheeks after seeing blood on the white snow and she is appointed the name “Snow-White” and in the present text “Snow-White and Rose-Red”, another similarity between the two is that parts of the story when she finds the house of her brothers with twelve beds, just like Snow-White finds the house of the seven dwarfs, with seven beds).

F. Modern-day editions in English and Romanian
The tale is still known today, it is frequently played on children’s cartoon channels and it is very loved and appreciated both by children and adults.