Once there lived a king whose eleven sons and only daughter, Elisa, were hated by their cruel stepmother. By wicked enchantment the princes were changed into wild swans and driven from their home, whilst Elisa herself was cast out into the wide world.

After long wandering, the maiden found her brothers again. By day they flew as swans beneath the heavens, but each night they regained their human shape. Elisa prayed that she might free them, and in a dream a fairy revealed the dreadful task appointed to her: she must gather nettles from churchyards, spin them into thread, and weave eleven shirts. Until the work was finished she must neither speak nor utter a cry, for a single word would doom her brothers forever.

Thus Elisa laboured in silence, though the nettles burned and blistered her hands. A young king found her and, struck by her gentleness and beauty, took her to his palace and made her his queen. Yet her strange silence and her secret journeys to gather nettles awakened suspicion. A spiteful archbishop accused her of witchcraft, and even the king, though loving her dearly, could find no answer to the fearful charges.

Elisa was condemned to die upon the pyre. Even as she was led forth in chains, she continued weaving the last shirt. Then, above the assembled multitude, eleven white swans swept across the darkened sky. Elisa flung the finished shirts over them, and one by one they became princes once more. Only the youngest, whose shirt lacked one sleeve, retained a swan’s wing in place of an arm.

Now free to speak, Elisa told the truth. The king embraced her, the people rejoiced, and the fire prepared for her death blossomed instead into flowers. Thus innocence triumphed over malice, and steadfast love broke the cruelest enchantment.