Shapeshifting serpent husbands in folklore
Because I can only encounter so many magical snake husbands before I start making compilations:
The Girl and the Snake, Sweden
Character: A large snake lives in a hall in a mountain with a large bed and a banquet table. A farm girl finds him there and he offers her to take some food and lie down on the bed if she wants to, but that she needn’t if she doesn’t want to. She does not. He warns her that people are coming to dance with her, but that she mustn’t do so. Strange people come to eat, drink and dance, but the girl ignores them. The same happens the second day.
Transformation: On the third day the girl accepts his offer to eat and drink and lay down on the bed with the snake. He then asks her to hold him and kiss him, which she also does. He transforms into a handsome young man and explains he is a prince that was bewitched, but that her courage has saved him. They go away together and no one sees or hears anything from them ever again.
Umamba, Zulu oral tradition from South Africa
Character: After three of her babies die suspiciously, one of the wives of a village chief protects her fourth child by wrapping him in the skin of a mamba and transforming him into a snake.
Transformation: When it is time for all the chief’s sons to marry, a brave girl agrees to anoint him with fat and stretch his skin as he asks. This allows him to shed his skin and be human again. From then on he can transform at will. He marries the brave girl, later also takes other wives, and lives happily.
The Snake Husband, Chewong oral tradition from Malaysia
Character: A man who possesses a snake bajo (spiritual word for body, closely related to the word coat) and wears it all day, asks several women to marry him but is turned down, until two sisters agree. Whenever they are asleep, he takes off the snake coat and turns back into a man, to eat the leftover food they cooked and rest next to his sleeping wives a while.
Transformation: To find out how the food goes missing, one night the sisters only pretend to sleep. They see their snake husband shed his snake bajo and grab it, crumpling it between their fingers. When he cries out looking for it, they confront him and tell him they have destroyed it because they want a real husband. They give him a real bajo and from then on the snake-man is a real man and a handsome one at that.
chequerootlurks
