Wonderling
Unregistered User
(12/28/05 6:39 pm)
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Need Help Identifying Fairy Tale
Years ago I was reading one of the fairy tale collections I borrowed from a library (I've read too many of the collections and visited too many libraries to be likely to find it) and came across a story I'd like to see again. Hopefully someone here can help me identify it.:)
Things I remember:
1) It starts out with a "proud princess" setup. I don't remember if the heroine was a princess or not, but all the young men of the kingdom wanted to marry her and she wasn't interested in any of them.
2)Her father got sick of it and gave her hand to the next man that asked, a large, hairy fellow. The man doesn't speak. He can transform into a bear.
3)The heroine is very unhappy in her marriage. One day she sees some beautiful poeple a ways away from where she lives with her new husband, apparently having a party or something like that. She goes to join them. They are water spirits, I believe they were referred to as selkies, and they enslaved her. She had a hard life being a slave for the selkies, and eventually her husband rescued her. Their relationship was better after that.
4)She and her husband had a baby. He was so excited that she was almost sure he would finally say something, but he didn't.
5)Eventually she decides to officially forever stay with him, and the husband turns from a hairy silent man into a handsome young man who can speak. The couple is overjoyed and live happily ever after.
What's confusing me is how fractured it all seems - I'm not sure if it's an original fairy tale from somewhere, or if it's compounded of other fairy tales, like "The Proud Princess" and "East of the Sun, West of the Moon." If any of you have seen this somewhere, I'd love information about it.
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