Knight of The Swan

The story of the Knight of the Swan, or Swan Knight, is a medieval tale about a mysterious rescuer who comes in a swan-drawn boat to defend a damsel, his only condition being that he must never be asked his name. The earliest variants of the story appear in French chansons de geste attached to the family of Godfrey of Bouillon, the first ruler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Later, the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach included a version in his Grail epic Parzival. One of the Old French romances inspired a late-fourteenth century version in Middle English. Wolfram von Eschenbach's version inspired two later romances and the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner. A German text, written by Konrad von Würzburg in 1257, features a Swan Knight but without any other name.