Seventh Brother

Seventh Brother

Keeping the theme from last week this week’s post also has wings, or at least a wing. It is another sold piece. Seventh Brother is the first of my fairytale works. “The Seven Wild Swans”, the inspiration for this piece, is one of the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm.

In the story the seven brothers are cursed into swan form by a wicked witch (a fairytale staple). They can only be freed if someone weaves stinging nettles into shirts and doesn’t speak until the task is done. The brothers’ sister is determined to free them and starts on the task. When she is nearly done the witch finds her and accuses her of performing witchcraft (ironic). As the girl cannot speak to defend herself she is set to be burned at the stake. Just as the pyre is lit her swan brothers come flying back. She throws the nettle shirts over them and the curse is broken.

In some versions of the tale the sister doesn’t finish all the shirts in time. The youngest brother is human again, but one arm remains a swan wing. That caught my imagination.

Seventh Brother depicts the youngest brother as he reaches for the sky with his swan wing. He is longing for the freedom of the sky forever out of reach.