Oh..I should have stated that this was NOT a song. Sorry. I was merely a story collected by an amateur folklorist friend of mine who was out asking older folks born to tell him old stories they knew. It wasn't his style to prompt an informant even though he wasn't a "pro." I've not listened to the tape of THIS story since I don't know where it is presently and even if I did, I don't have a reel- to reel anymore. Still, of those I have heard..he just prompted with the typical "And then what happened" type of question. He and I gathered some stories together in 1983 and he was far less likely to prompt than the Folklorists I studied with.

The Swan girl story is the only one of its type in his notes which I inherited upon his death back in 1988. He wasn't an academic - never published anything in any serious forums. Just typed up all his collected songs and stories and shared them about. In fact, it was when I was in grad school that I met this fellow, relying on him to help me transcribe my own field work. He had written some rather nifty UNIX code for 3-line transcription useful when you needed to do running and literal translations atop eachother in text. Dating myself there for sure but in the early 80s, at my university, it was still UNIX or worse I'm afraid.

I was flipping through these all last week and sat down today to look up some themes and lyric snippets. I've known the standard version of Molly Bawn but assumed perhaps maybe there was something about it I didn't know. Turns out to be plenty I didn't know!

In the story as collected..

She's a Swan sometimes by night (not every night apparently)..girl by day just like her dead mother was. Her father knows nothing of this enchantment.. spies her in the brush (like the song) one summer night (the informant says "it was a night in late summer)") and shoots her through the heart. He goes to collect the dead bird, and as it lays dying, it reverts into the form of his own dear girl. The detail is that he shot her through the heart. She also forgives him before dying in his arms. It seems to me to be an amalgamation of the song as we know it, some Cinema tradition and maybe some old myth. The transformaion scene just smacked of Universal Horror film to me. It certainly seems plausible.

The informant does say the girl is 'Enchanted", does not name her Molly or anything else, states she is "fair" and that it was raining on the night in question. Other than that, there's nothing too emarkable.

Doesn't it sound like a mix of the song and a fairy story? That would be my guess.