[89]
[89] This is substantially identical with the stories of
Beauty and the Beast, Eros and Psyche, Gandharba Sena, etc.
In the majority of these legends, however, the Apsaras, or
cloud-maiden, has a shirt of swan's feathers which plays the
same part as the wolfskin cape or girdle of the werewolf. If
you could get hold of a werewolf's sack and burn it, a
permanent cure was effected. No danger of a relapse, unless
the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. So the
swan-maiden kept her human form, as long as she was deprived
of her tunic of feathers. Indo-European folk-lore teems with
stories of swan-maidens forcibly wooed and won by mortals who
had stolen their clothes. A man travelling along the road
passes by a lake where several lovely girls are bathing; their
dresses, made of feathers curiously and daintily woven, lie on
the shore. He approaches the place cautiously and steals one
of these dresses.[90] When the girls have finished their
bathing, they all come and get their dresses and swim away as
swans; but the one whose dress is stolen must needs stay on
shore and marry the thief. It is needless to add that they
live happily together for many years, or that finally the good
man accidentally leaves the cupboard door unlocked, whereupon
his wife gets back her swan-shirt and flies away from him,
never to return.
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