The Six Swans

Introduction

This tale, told as a fable, is not a stretch at all. Its backbone is an old, plain lesson: great things are done by patient steps. For six whole years the sister neither speaks nor laughs; she gathers aster flowers, one by one, and sews them into shirts. Chinese readers will recognize her patience in the old saying "a drop of water wears through a stone." The happy ending, in which truth comes to light and the family is reunited, echoes the folk belief that goodness is always repaid. It is worth telling children that this story belongs to a very old family of tales. Andersen's "The Wild Swans" tells the same tale, except his princess sews shirts of nettles, while the Grimms use aster flowers. And in the Grimm version the sister suffers more: she is accused of eating children and led to the stake, yet she will not speak one word in her own defence, because a single word would doom her brothers forever. That is the heart of the tale — silence as the deepest courage — and also the part that may trouble young readers. So read slowly, keep the fright light, and steer the talk toward two questions: Why did she never cry out for herself? And why did the king keep trusting her? Both answers teach more than the plot alone, and both are worth a long evening chat by lamplight.