A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
Four milk-white doves enter Safeyd’s garden and assume fairy form to bathe. Prince Bairâm hides the clothes of Ghulâb Bâno, preventing her departure with her companions. He gives her another suit, and the text says that she falls in love with him. She is already one of the giant king’s wives, a relationship Safeyd knowingly relinquishes in Bairâm’s favour. Her heart escaping her body is the narrator’s language of love, not a separately stored external life.
When Bairâm returns her fairy clothes so she may visit her parents, she becomes a dove again. Her parents oppose her marriage to a mortal and imprison her in an underground city, within a tower of a hundred iron doors. Bairâm reaches her with Safeyd’s magical gifts. The giant’s summoned army defeats her father’s forces, and the lovers return with Safeyd to their mountain home. The narrative supplies neither her parents’ names nor a uniform anatomy for the fairy community.
Later she becomes an enormous bird and carries Bairâm between her wings to his human kingdom, then resumes dove and fairy forms. When a usurping vizier tries to take her, she escapes in her fairy clothes as a dove and flies to her parents. Bairâm recovers his kingdom but grieves until Safeyd reunites them. He thereafter divides his time between Ghulâb Bâno and his faithful human wife, finally leaving the latter permanently. The fairy is not said to die, and her bird forms do not imply that her humanlike form has permanent wings.
Origins & earliest records
Upper Indus Panjabi tales in Charles Swynnerton’s English collection
Records & interpretation
Complete tale and footnotes read; key original printed pages visually checked.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Indian Nights’ Entertainment; or, Folk-Tales from the Upper Indus
LXXXII, Prince Bairâm and the Fairy Bride, pp.342–347; one footnote
Family, evolution & connections
Unnamed father and mother of Ghulâb Bâno
The fairy asks to visit her father and mother; they imprison her after hearing she married a mortal. Their names and precise forms are unstated, and the other bathing fairies are not identified as her sisters.
Prince Bairâm of Swynnerton LXXXII
The parents’ protest and later wife references establish the marriage. Bairâm’s faithful human wife and her child are a separate household; the text does not assign that child to Ghulâb Bâno.
Primary records and illustrations
Charles Swynnerton, Indian Nights’ Entertainment (1892)
1892 edition. LXXXII, Prince Bairâm and the Fairy Bride, pp.342–347; one footnote
Full swynnerton1892-ch82.txt including complete ending/footnote read. Original pages342/344/347/351/355/364 viewed and retained as swynnerton1892-pNNN.png. Distinct actors and transformations not merged.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Historical primary English translationCornell scan of Swynnerton (1892), LXXXII, Prince Bairâm and the Fairy Bride, pp.342–347; one footnoteResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
