Superstitions tend to cluster around the most significant moments in life, which is why there are so many surrounding birth, death and marriage. The start of married life, like the start of the New Year, was said to determine how successful the union would be, so newlyweds traditionally followed all sorts of wedding-day customs designed to ensure a happy life together, many of which continue to this day. There was one superstitious act, though, that the bride carried out in secret: to keep her new husband faithful she would sew the feather of a swan into his pillow.
Placing items inside or under pillows was traditionally seen as a way of influencing a person’s behaviour or wellbeing. Anyone afraid of being bewitched would place a knife beneath their pillow to keep witches away and it was thought that sleeping with a carefully selected posy of flowers beneath your pillow would allow you to dream of your future spouse. These beliefs mirrored ancient African witchcraft customs, in which ‘voodoo’ charms like bones, hair, rags or strings placed under a pillow were said to cause sleeplessness or even death through so-called ‘Pillow Magic’.
The significance of the swan’s feather in ensuring fidelity came from the bird’s reputation in folklore for faithful love, founded on the fact that, unlike most other birds and animals, they mate for life. Swans appear in the legends of many cultures; one of the oldest is from India about a nymph, Urvasi, who fell in love with a mortal man, Puruvaras, and pledged to stay with him as long as she never saw him naked. A god, envious of their love, tricked Puruvaras into breaking her condition and Urvasi was forced to flee from him. Loyal Puruvaras searched endlessly for her and finally found her swimming with other nymphs in the guise of swans. Some versions say she refused to return to him, others that he was granted immortality to remain with her forever. Parallel tales can be found in Egyptian and Roman mythology and in legends from Greenland, Eastern Siberia and Ireland, where they were said to be bewitched maidens, or carriers of the souls of women who had died as virgins. Later, portrayals of their devotion in Wagner’s operas Parsifal and Lohengrin and Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet Swan Lake cemented the swan’s image as an emblem of devotion.