It was a balmy summer day when the Earl of Mar’s daughter chose to enjoy her father’s grounds. After a long afternoon of riding and archery, she grew tired and decided to rest beneath a large oak tree by the castle wall. As she sat there, she watched all manner of birds to-ing and fro-ing; sparrows, finches, she even spied the odd kestrel through the clearing above. Eventually, a handsome white doo perched on the castle wall, and the Earl’s daughter marvelled up at it. 

‘Come here, wee doo!’ She called. ‘You wouldn’t have to live in any plain tree if you were with me! I’d give you a cage of red and gold. I’d decorate it with silver, and I’d brush your feathers so you’d shine fairer than all the birds in the sky.’

The doo then hopped from its perch and flew down to sit on the young woman’s head. Delighted, she hurried back to her father’s hall and set about spoiling the bird: feeding it the finest seed, washing its feathers, creating it a beautiful home. She worked through the day and into the night, and as the moon rose high in the sky, she turned away to refill the bird’s seed, only to turn back to her bird and find a handsome young man standing in its place. 

‘Where did you come from?’ She asked, shocked. Her door had been bolted tight, and she started to worry he might do her harm. 

‘Don’t worry, my lady,’ the young man said. ‘Do you mind that doo you spied on the castle wall?’

‘Aye,’ the Earl’s daughter said, eager to learn more. 

‘My mother is from a land far away, and she is a high and mighty Queen who is skilled in magic. She changed me into the shape of a doo, you see. By day, I am a doo, and by night…’ He spread his hands. ‘I am a man.’

The Earl’s daughter was charmed by the young man, and invited him back to speak with her in secret night after night. This relationship, known only to the two of them, went on for seven years, until the Earl’s daughter had borne seven sons. With the birth of each, their father would take to the sky in the form of a doo and carry them to his mother across the sea. 

For twenty three years, the young woman lived with her father the Earl, who invited numerous wealthy young men to meet his daughter and try to strike a marriage deal, but each one she refused. His daughter had only eyes for her secret love. 

‘I’m content to live alone with my bird,’ she told him after refusing yet another proposal. ‘We are happy, just the two of us.’ 

This answer did not please her father, for he was in desperate need of an alliance, and so he swore to his fellow nobles, ‘Tomorrow, before I do so much as eat or drink, I will have this nuisance of a bird killed, and then my daughter shall be wed!’

The bird, who the Earl did not know was a man, was roosting in his cage when he heard this, and so, when the nobles and the Earl departed, the doo flew as fast as his wings could carry him to his mother’s castle across the sea. His mother, spotting him perched on the wall, ordered minstrels and dancers to come to her hall, so that she might celebrate the return of her son, who she had missed so dearly.

‘No, mother,’ the young man said. ‘There’s no time for that, for my love, and the mother of my seven sons is to be wed tomorrow, against her will.’

‘What can I do?’ His mother asked. ‘Say the word and it will be yours.’ 

‘Turn four and twenty men to storks, and my seven sons into swans. And make me into a goshawk so I might lead the flock and save my love.’

And so, his mother granted his wish, and turned the men into storks, and the sons into swans, and her son from a doo into a goshawk, and together, the flock took to the skies. They soared across the land and sea, until the Earl of Mar’s land came into view below them. 

They spied a mighty celebration underway, with people dancing on the green, and toasting to the upcoming nuptials. As one, the curious looking flock descended and perched among the trees, and the wedding guests gawked in amusement at the array of birds that gathered in the branches. There they waited, the young man in the form of a goshawk keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. 

When at last the guests made formation, and the drummers drummed, and the fiddlers fiddled, and the Earl escorted his daughter to the altar, the birds again took to the sky. This time, they attacked. 

The storks swarmed the guests, who ran cowering, and the swans swooped the best men. The bride tried to flee from the birds, but when the goshawk fixed her with a twinkling eye and landed on her head, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her love had come to save her! Laughing all the while, she allowed him to whisk her away from her father and her suitor, over the sea to his mother’s home. 

There, the couple were able to at last live in peace with their children. In time, the Earl came to understand the situation, and in time he warmed to the young man who was a bird during the day and a young man at night. He and the doo’s mother soon signed an accord, binding their two kingdoms in peace and unity, forevermore.

Adapted from Child Ballad 270