Has it been so long?

Jorinda and Joringel. Witch freezes boy, transforms girl into a bird. Boy unfreezes, becomes a shepherd, searches the woods for the witch's castle, finds it by way of some lucky dreaming and a curious flower, frees girl from spell. Smoochie woochie.

But a sad story, at it's edges. It seems that Joringel is the only boy in the whole of the Black Forest with any sense of fidelity. Before finding and freeing Jorinda, he must first release the many birds that have been languishing in cages for lord knows how long. Hundreds of cages with hundreds of abandoned loves. How many had sung away their bloom in bird-form, waiting for boys that never returned? How many had passed out of youth, into sad, childless years, and now teetered into old age and senility?

My guess is that when Joringel transforms the birds back to "maidens" what he finds instead are the husks of women--bitter and hopeless, with pale flickers of humanity, but with a powerful sense of betrayal. And when they see what they've become, they weep and rage and beat their withered limbs and curse lovers and love in half-remembered languages. And become a new breed of witches.