Seven-league boots explained

Seven-league boots are an element in European folklore. The boots allow the person wearing them to take strides of seven leagues per step, resulting in great speed. The boots are often presented by a magical character to the protagonist to aid in the completion of a significant task. From the context of English language, "Seven-league boots" originally arose as a translation from the French,^[1] popularised by Charles Perrault's fairy tales.

Mention of the legendary boots are found in:

• France – Charles Perrault's – Hop o' My Thumb, Madame d'Aulnoy's The Bee and the Orange Tree, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
• Germany – Sweetheart Roland, Adelbert von Chamisso's Peter Schlemiel, Goethe's Faust (Mephistopheles uses them at the start of Part Two, Act Four^[2]), Wilhelm Hauff's Der Kleine Muck.
• Norway – Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe – Soria Moria Castle
• Britain – Jack the Giant Killer, John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, C. S. Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress, Wizardoligy, A Guide to Wizards of the World, Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic, The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Jenny Nimmo's Midnight for Charlie Bone, Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle, Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle, George Eliot’s The Mill On The Floss,
• United States – Zane Grey's The Last of the Plainsmen, Ruth Chew's What the Witch Left, Gail Carson Levine's The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, Roger Zelazny's Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming, Clair Blank's Beverly Gray at the World's Fair, Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Village Uncle.
• Russia – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Monday Starts on Saturday.

Etymology

From the context of English language, "Seven-league boots" originally arose as a translation from the French,^[3] popularised by Charles Perrault's fairy tales. A league (roughly 3miles) was considered to represent the distance walked in an hour by an average man. If a man were to walk seven hours per day, he would then walk seven leagues, or about 21miles. In the 17th century, post-boys' boots were called "seven-league boots". While some suggest that the "seven leagues" references the distance between post houses (post-boys would only have their boots touch the ground at every coach inn, when changing the horses), this is inaccurate: the distance between coach inns was fixed at no more than five leagues.^[4]

Other variations

In fiction

Folklore

• Russian folklore has a similar magic item called Russian: Сапоги-Скороходы (fast-pace boots), which allows the person wearing them to walk and run at an amazing pace.
• In Finnish and Estonian translations of stories with seven-league boots, they are often translated as (Finnish) and (Estonian),^[5] literally "boots of seven Scandinavian miles".
• Japanese scholar Kunio Yanagita listed a tale titled The Thousand-ri Boots from Yamanashi and wondered about its great similarity to a tale in the Pentamerone with a pair of seven-league boots.^[6]
• In Latvian tales the phrase "nine-mile boots" (Latvian: deviņjūdžu zābaki) is used.

Notes and References

1. Web site: the definition of seven-league boots.
2. Book: Goethe . Faust, Part Two . 1959 . Penguin . Middlesex . 0-14044093-3 . 216 . registration .
3. Web site: the definition of seven-league boots.
4. Book: Jobé, Joseph . Au temps des cochers : histoire illustrée du voyage en voiture attelée du XVe au XXe siècle . fr . Lausanne . Édita-Lazarus . 1976 . 54 . 2-88001-019-5 .
5. Book: Põhjamaade muinasjuttude kuldraamat . et . TEA Kirjastus . 2014 . 9789949243303 . Estonia.
6. Yanagita, Kunio; Translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer (1986). Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale. Indiana University Press. p. 97. .