Then the queen said, "Go back to your city, and having placed the cooking utensils near the hearth, hide yourself and stay in the house."
After the prince returned to the city, he did as she had told him. The mouse, having come out, took off her mouse-jacket, and, assuming the shape of a girl, put on other clothes. While she was preparing to cook, the prince took the mouse-jacket and burnt it.
Afterwards when the girl went to the place where the mouse-jacket had been and looked for it, it was not there. Then she looked in the hearth, and saw that there was one sleeve of the skin-dress among the embers. While she was there weeping and weeping, the prince came out of his hiding-place and said, "Your mother told me to burn the mouse-jacket. Now you are really mine!"
So the mouse became a princess again and married the prince.[80]
The same idea is contained in the story of the king who, putting on a jackal-skin, turns into a jackal, only resuming human form permanently when the skin is burnt.[81] In "Indian Fairy Tales" there is a prince who has a monkey-skin which he can put on and off at pleasure.[82] A king's daughter in another story also has a monkey-skin and when a prince burns it she takes fire and flies away all ablaze to her father's palace.[83] Four fairy doves in feather-dresses appear in "Romantic Tales from the Panjab with Indian Night's Entertainment."[84] When they take off their feathers to bathe, a prince conceals one dress and the fairy is unable to resume bird form. The story of the feather-vest of the dove-maiden in "The Arabian Nights"[85] is similar in style.
The swan-maidens or cloud-maidens, as they are sometimes called, have a shirt made of swan's feathers which acts much in the same manner as the wolf-skin to the wer-wolf. The swan-maiden retains human shape as long as she is kept away from her feather tunic. The commonest form of this legend is that of a man who passes by a lake and sees several beautiful maidens bathing, their feather-dresses lying on the bank. He approaches quietly and steals one of the dresses. In due course the bathers come to the shore, don their dresses and swim off in the shape of swans, all but one, who is left lamenting on the shore. Then the thief appears, tells her what he has done and bids the maiden marry him. They live happily together until one day when the husband, by accident, leaves the wardrobe door unlocked and the swan-maiden puts on her feather-shirt and flies off, never to return.[86]
In a similar story the maiden is wearing a gold chain round her neck which her huntsman lover seizes, thus gaining the power over her which makes it possible to woo and wed her. She gives birth in due course to seven sons, each one of whom wears a gold chain about his neck and can transform himself into a swan at will.
Lothaire, King of France, married a fairy wife, and his children were born wearing golden collars which gave them the magical power of assuming the form of swans.
In the legends which have a Knight of the Swan as hero, like the story of Lohengrin, the swan plays only a secondary part.
The primitive idea at the root of all these stories is that the human soul, in passing from one shape to another, has to wear the outer sign or garment of the creature it desires to represent. The symbolic difference between the wer-wolf and the swan-maiden is that the former represents the rough, howling, and destructive night-wind, the latter the fleecy, pure, and enthralling summer cloud.