Swan Maidens of Korea, Japan and China

Heavenly maidens come down from the sky to bathe in a quiet pool. They hang their feathered robes on a branch and slip into the water. A man creeping through the trees sees them, steals one robe and hides it. When the others fly home, one maiden is left behind. She cannot return to heaven without her robe, so she stays on earth and becomes his wife.

Folklorists call this the swan maiden story, and the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that it is found all over the world. In East Asia it is especially beloved. Korea, Japan and China all tell it, and all three begin in almost exactly the same way. Then they go in three different directions.

Korea: the woodcutter who missed his mother

In Korea, the man is a poor, unmarried woodcutter. He saves a deer from a hunter, and the grateful deer tells him where the heavenly maidens bathe, how to hide a robe, and one important warning: do not give the robe back until she has borne you three children.

The woodcutter and the fairy marry and have children. But after the second child, she begs so sweetly to see her robe just once that he gives in. She puts it on, gathers a child under each arm and flies up to heaven. Heartbroken, the woodcutter follows her, in most versions by climbing into a bucket that heaven lowers to draw water, and for a while the family live happily together in the sky.

But he cannot stop thinking about his old mother, alone on earth. His wife lets him visit on a heavenly horse, warning him never to step down from its back. His mother is overjoyed and makes him his favourite pumpkin porridge. The bowl is hot, he spills it on the horse, the horse rears, and he falls to the ground. The horse flies off without him, and he can never return. People say he became a rooster, which is why roosters still stretch their necks to the sky and cry out at dawn.

Japan: the robe of feathers

Japan’s best-known version, Hagoromo (羽衣), “the feather robe”, is set on the beach at Miho, a long pine-covered shore looking across the bay toward Mount Fuji. A fisherman finds a beautiful robe hanging on a pine tree and decides to keep it. Its owner, a heavenly maiden, pleads with him to give it back. In the famous Noh play version, the fisherman agrees on one condition: that she dance for him. She puts on the robe and performs a heavenly dance on the shore, then rises slowly into the air above the pines and Mount Fuji and disappears.

In other Japanese tellings she does marry the man and has children, and then finds her hidden robe and flies away. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that in Japan, when a husband does follow his wife to heaven, he is usually set impossible tasks and then sent away or kept apart from her, rather than living happily there as the Korean woodcutter does for a time.

China: the cowherd and the weaver

In China, the swan maiden story merged with the legend of the two stars on either side of the Milky Way. In the version known as Niulang and Zhinü (牛郎織女), a poor cowherd is told by his wise old ox that heavenly maidens will come to bathe in a lake. He takes the robe of Zhinü, the weaver of heaven, and she becomes his wife. They have two children and are very happy, until the Queen Mother of the West discovers that a heavenly maiden has married a mortal.

She brings Zhinü back to heaven. Niulang chases after her, carrying the children in baskets on a shoulder pole, but the Queen Mother draws her hairpin across the sky and creates the Milky Way between them. Only once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh month, can they meet on a bridge of magpies.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that this kind of ending, a couple separated in the sky and meeting once a year, is the one found in China and Japan. In Korea, the star story is told separately, as the tale of the herdsman Gyeonu and the weaver Jiknyeo.

Three endings

So the same opening scene leads to three very different places. In Japan, the maiden often simply goes home, and the story is about beauty that cannot be held. In China, the lovers are torn apart by heaven’s rules and become stars. In Korea, the man actually reaches heaven, and loses it because he will not abandon his mother. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture sees this as the mark of Korean values on a story that came from far away.

Talk about it

Was it fair for the man to steal the robe in the first place? Which version gives the maiden the most choice? Why do you think the Korean version brings the mother into the story?

Words to know

Seonnyeo (선녀) is a heavenly maiden or fairy. Namukkun (나무꾼) is a woodcutter. Hagoromo (羽衣) is Japanese for “feather robe”. Hyo (효) is devotion and duty to one’s parents.