In Grundtvig =B=, the bird is a falcon. The maid will have no man that cannot fly. Master Hillebrand, son of the king of England, learns this fact, and has a bird’s coat made for him, enters the room where man had never been before, sleeps under white linen, and in the morning is a knight so braw. (Here the story ends.) In =C=, the maid will have no man that cannot fly, and Master Hillebrand orders a bird’s coat to be made for him (what could be more mechanical!), flies into the maid’s bower, and passes the night on the pole on which she hangs her clothes. In the morning he begins to sing, flies to the bed, and plays with the maid’s hair. If you could shed your feathers, says the maid, I would have no other man. Keep your word, says the bird; give me your hand, and take my claw. She passes her word; he throws off his feathers, and stands before her a handsome man. By day, says the maid, he is to fly with the birds, by night to sleep in her bed. He perches so long on the clothes-pole that Ingerlille has a girl and a boy. When her father asks who is their father, she tells him the positive truth; she found them in a wood. When the bird comes back at night, she says that he must speak to her father; further concealment is impossible. Master Hillebrand asks the father to give him his daughter. The father is surprised that he should want a maid that has been beguiled; but if he will marry her she shall have a large dowry. The knight wants nothing but her. Kristensen’s copies do not differ materially. 11 =A= in his tenth volume (a very brief ballad) drops or lacks the manufacture of the bird-coat. Grundtvig’s =D-G= drop the bird quite. The ballad occurs in Swedish, but in the form of a mere abstract; in Arwidsson, II, 188, No 112, MS. of the sixteenth century. A maid will have no man but one that can fly. A swain has wings made from five gold rings; he flies over the rose-wood, over the sea, sits on a lily-spray and sings, flies till he sleeps in the maid’s bosom. A Färöe copy is noted by Grundtvig as in the possession of Hammershaimb, resembling his =B=, but about twice as long. The lover in bird-shape is a very familiar trait in fiction, particularly in popular tales.