Feather O' My Wing is an Irish fairy tale collected and published by Irish author Seumas MacManus. The tale belongs to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom as a subtype, with few variants reported across Europe and in Ireland. In it, the heroine is delivered to a cursed or enchanted prince, but breaks a taboo and loses him; later, she finds work elsewhere and wards off the unwanted advances of male suitors with the magical object her enchanted husband gave her.
Summary A gentleman who lives in Connaught has three daughters. One day, a magpie lands on a rich gentleman's shoulders. The man tries to shoo it away, but lets the bird perch on his shoulder and talks to it. The magpie answers that he is an enchanted prince. The man asks what he can do to help him, and the magpie replies that if he can marry one of the man's daughters, his enchantment can be broken. The gentleman takes the magpie with him to his house and talks to his three daughters. The elder two refuse to entertain the magpie, but the youngest, named Una, decides to help the bird. After the man and the elder daughters leave, the girls spy on Una being courted by a handsome man instead of the bird. The sisters become jealous.
Una and the prince marry and depart to his castle. The elder sister decides to visit their new home, but the prince warns that his castle is filled with rare and beautiful things; if anyone were to covet them, he would revert to a magpie for another seven years. Some time later, Una's elder sister promises not to covet anything. During her visit, however, the elder sister mutters to herself she wants to have a certain golden plate of her brother-in-law's collection, and the prince turns back into a magpie. His wife, Una, asks the prince what she can do. The prince replies that she is to go to the mansion of the White Lady and work as a laundress, but she must not ask for money, and let her employer, the White Lady, place her wages in a drawer. The magpie also gives her a feather of his wing and teaches her a spell: "By the feather of his wing".
And so it happens: Una works for the White Lady, and uses the feather and the spell to do her chores, like washing heaps of dirty clothes, hanging them to dry, ironing and folding them. Una's employer is surprised at her work, but this arises suspicions among the other female servants. One night, a waitress goes to Una's room to share a bottle of wine with the newcomer, and Una pretends to drink and feigns sleep. The waitress asks where Una's source of magic lies, and she lies that it is in her red curls. Later, she creeps into Una's room to cut off her red curls (spurred by Una's sarcastic retort), but Una - pretending to be asleep - uses her husband's feather and commands the waitress to do her chores all night; thus, she sets every table for the whole night and well into the morning, to the other servants' amusement. Una then dispels the command.
Next, a lady gardener tries her luck and brings a bottle of wine to share with Una, so that she reveals her secrets. Again, the girl pretends to drink and lies that her magic is in a ribbon tied around her wrist. Later at night, the lady gardener enters the room with a pair of scissors to cut Una's ribbon on her wrist, and the girl uses the feather and the magic spell to force the other to tend to the garden the whole night: raking, digging, and planting flowers and seeds, until the morning. After the other servants find the gardener in this state, Una dismisses the command.
Lastly, a lady coachman goes to extract the truth from Una with another bottle of wine, and is answered the powers lie in Una's left earring. Thus, the women enters Una's room, but the girl forces the coachman to do her job: she goes to the stables and harnesses the horses, then takes the White Lady from her bed, places her in a carriage, and both gallop round the house, awakening everyone in the house, until the morning, when Una dispels the command.
After humiliating the servants, the White Lady is furious with Una, but does not know how to deal with her. When Una's seven years' time is almost up, the White Lady gathers all of her servants and orders them to arm themselves with sticks and prepare to beat Una as soon as she leaves the house. As for Una, she prepares to leave the mansion, since she saw her husband arriving in a coach, but the White Lady and her servants approach her. Una uses the magic command to have the White Lady and the servants beat themselves up. Una's husband, the prince, appears to her and kisses her, then says the people have been punished enough. With this, Una recants the spell and releases everyone. The prince takes Una back to their castle, explaining the White Lady was the one that cursed him in the first place, but now he is free at last.
Analysis Tale type The tale belongs to the cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, of the international Aarne-Thompson Index, as subtype AaTh 425N, "Bird Husband": after losing her husband, the heroine finds work somewhere else and has to avoid the romantic advances of unwanted suitors.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . pp. 144.Delarue, Paul. Le conte populaire français: catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outre-mer: Canada, Louisiane, îlots français des États-Unis, Antilles françaises, Haïti, Ile Maurice, La Réunion. Volume 2. Érasme, 1957. p. 109. According to Christine Goldberg, the heroine enchants the servants to be kept busy with some other task for the whole night.Goldberg, Christine. "Nächte erkauft". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 9: Magica-Literatur – Neẓāmi. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 1119. .
In his monograph about Cupid and Psyche, Swedish scholar proposed that subtype 425N derived from a type he designated as 425A, that is, "Cupid and Psyche", which contains the episode of the witch's tasks.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. pp. 23, 344.
However, after 2004, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther updated the international catalogue and subsumed type AaTh 425N under the more general type ATU 425B, "The Son of the Witch".Oriol, Carme. «La catalogació de les rondalles en el context internacional». In: Revista d’etnologia de Catalunya, [en línia], 2007, Núm. 31, p. 94. https://raco.cat/index.php/RevistaEtnologia/article/view/74325 [Consulta: 11-08-2021].
Motifs The crow is the supernatural husband's form in Northern European variants, but in all of them the heroine receives a magical token from her husband: either a feather from the bird husband, or a ring. According to Swahn, the husband's token (feather or ring) is what allows the heroine to humiliate her unwanted suitors (akin to some variants of tale type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight"), and the feather as the token appears in German, English and Irish variants.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. pp. 344-345. Similarly, French scholars Paul Delarue and Marie-Louise Thénèze described that subtype N is characterized by the motif of the tricked three youths - also found in type ATU 313.Delarue, Paul. Le conte populaire français: catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outre-mer: Canada, Louisiane, îlots français des États-Unis, Antilles françaises, Haïti, Ile Maurice, La Réunion. Volume 2. Érasme, 1957. p. 109.
Variants Distribution According to scholar Christine Goldberg, Swahn reported 17 variants of subtype 425N across Europe, in Ireland, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Swahn calls type 425N "West European", with a limited distribution area.
Ireland The Enchanted King and Queen In an Irish tale collected by Pádraig Ó Tuathail from County Carlow and County Wicklow with the title The Enchanted King and Queen, a prince becomes bewitched to be a crow for seven years. When he flies in crow form, he sights a royal couple and their horses bogged in the mud. The crow-prince offers to help, in exchange for the royal couple's daughter. The royal parents agree and the crow helps them. The princess, named Nancy, meets her crow fiancé, who turns into a handsome man. He asks her which form she prefers him to be; she answers that she wants him as a man by night. And so they marry and move out to a palace of their own. One day, the crow prince warns her to protect a cask of gold and not give it to a witch that will come after it, no matter the cost. This it happens: a witch appears and demands the cask, but the princess refuses to give it. The witch comes back the next day and fails again. On the third day, she appears with two teeth and two walking sticks, captures the princess and steals the cask of gold, to the crow prince's misfortune. Nancy cries over the broken promise, but the crow prince has a plan: he advises her to seek employment with the old witch, gives her three feathers of his tail and teaches her a spell to fulfill every wish she may have ("By the bark of my three crow's feathers"). Nancy goes to the old witch's house and offers her services as a maid. She washes and dries the clothes, feeds the horses - all with the magic command her husband taught her. At the end of the afternoon, a servant lad wishes to stay with Nancy all night, but the asks him a favor: for him to close the duck-house door for her. The servant lad goes and Nancy chants the magical spell to have the lad lock the duck-house door all night. The next day, Nancy uses the magical spell on another servant: this time, he stays up all night just raking and raking the fire. The third time, she commands a third servant lad to lock the fowl-house door all night, for fire to come out of his mouth and for him to go round the yard like a devil. Some time later, fed up with the humiliation, the three servants lad prepare a trap for Nancy in the woods, but she learns of this and uses the magical command to compel the trio to beat one another. The old witch appears to see the commotion and Nancy alters the command and compels the lads to strike the witch. The hag begs for Nancy to save her, and the princess agrees, so long as she returns the cask of gold to her. Nancy gets the casket and dispels the command, then goes back to the magpie husband, who has become human for good. Ó Tuathail classified the tale as type AaTh 425.
The Black Crow