The Queen of the Serpents (Repost)

I posted this myth many years ago, but I thought it was worth another go.


Once there was a fisherman who had a beautiful daughter, named Egle.  Egle used to bathe in the sea every morning.  Once, as she emerged from the sea and went to gather her clothes, a large serpent rose up out of the folds of the garment and spoke to her.

"If you will marry me," he hissed, "I will return your clothes."

"But how could I, a woman, marry a serpent?" Egle asked, distraught.

"Then you will be shamed by your nakedness," the crafty serpent replied.  So Egle consented, and took the serpent home to meet her family.  Her father and brothers treated it poorly, but to no avail, for the next day, a hundred serpents were waiting in the yard of the fisherman's hut, all of them having come to take part in the wedding of their beloved Prince (for that is who the serpent was, the Prince of the serpents). 

And so the two of them were married, and the Prince took his bride to his castle under the water.  There, he transformed into a handsome young man, and Egle was very glad she had married him.  By and by, the King died, and her husband, Zilvinas, became King of the serpents.  The King (and now the Queen), soon had three beautiful children, and all lived quite happily.  But by and by, Egle became homesick, and asked to see her family.

Zilvinas agreed, and told his wife that she could return tot he surface for as long as she wished.  When it was time for her to come home, she only had to speak his name, and he would send a wave to carry them back to the Kingdom.  "But," he said, "if the wave is bloody, then you know I have died, and you must not come here again."

So Egle and her children went to see her father and brothers.  But the brothers were cruel, and beat the half-human children.  Egle begged them to stop, but they would not rest until they learned the secret of how to kill Zilvinas.  In her distress, she told them how to summon him, and the brothers went to the seashore and called out to him.  He appeared, and they killed him.

Egle, however, did not know what they had done, and, seeing an opportunity to escape, she grabbed her children and ran to the seashore.  She called for her husband, but the wave that washed ashore was bloody, and she knew what had happened.  In her despair, she cried out that she and her children might be turned into trees, and the gods listened to her and obeyed.