Life can pile up misfortune after misfortune without end. In such cases, it is easy to question one’s strength and ability to endure.
After losing his wife, the king decides to remarry. However, the new queen proves to be a cruel sorceress. She turns the king’s mind against his 11 sons and transforms them into swans.
The wicked stepmother then tries to get rid of the king’s daughter. This task proves far more difficult because of the princess’s beauty and virtue.
Unable to taint the princess’s virtuous heart, the stepmother smears her face with “a vile ointment” and tangles her hair to make her less beautiful. Upon seeing his daughter, the king announces that “she [is] not his daughter.”
Never Tiring
The river leads the princess to the ocean, where she looks out upon the beautiful water. Seeing its beauty and strength, she says: “The water rolls on without weariness ... till all that is hard becomes smooth; so will I be unwearied in my task.”
Her perseverance pays off. As the sun sets along the water, 11 swans with crowns on their heads fly down and land on the shore. When the sun completely sets, the swans transform into her brothers.
She cries out and runs to them, calls them by their names, and embraces them. Joy overwhelms them all as they embrace each other and revel in their reunion.
The brothers tell her of the spell that their stepmother cast on them. They explain how they are swans by day and, once the sun sets, human by night. They tell how they no longer live in their native land, but in a strange land across the ocean.
The young princess feels deeply for her brothers. She asks how to break the spell for them, but none of them know how. Nevertheless, they invite her to go with them to their strange new home across the ocean. She immediately accepts this offer, not willing to be parted from them.
The next day the swan princes set off, carrying their sister high above the ocean in a woven net. For two days they make the perilous journey to the strange land. When they finally land, they deliver their sister safely in a cave.
That night, the young princess dreams of a way to free her brothers from their curse. Doing it is long and difficult, requiring much from her with little respite. But, thinking only of her brothers, the young princess sets out to break the spell that binds them.
Through this tale, children can see that determination, as demonstrated by the young princess, can enable them to never give up when given a task. Even when tasks grow more and more difficult, confidence helps them to persevere.
As Roy T. Bennett says in his book, “The Light in the Heart,” “Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.” In this way, children can endure with faith and perseverance and without weariness.
