"The Serpent" from Giambattista Basile's collection - "Stories from the Pentamerone"
The story begins with a moral about the danger of falling prey to curiosity. Even if women are believed to be curious, this time a man, a king is the one who is too curious.
The story is about a couple of humble people, a gardener and his wife who do not have any children. From the Propp's perspective, the first function here could be 'absentation' because the wife wants a child, so one day her husband goes to the mountain and brings back a piece of wood where they find a serpent. To their suprise, the serpent speaks and offers himself to be their son. When he grows up, he tells his adoptive father that he wants to marry and he sends him to ask for the princess' hand in marriage. These could be two functions: 'the lack' (he needs a wife) and 'mediation' (the father is dispatched to ask for the King's daughter). The King takes the request as a joke but he also acts as a donor and establishes the 'testing' function.
The King proposes three magical tasks that the hero carries out using his father as a helper. The first task is to "turn all the fruit of this orchard into gold". For this one, the serpent sends his father to gather all the fruit-stones he can find in the city and sow them in the orchard. All of them turn into golden fruit. The second task is to make all the walls and grounds of the orchard to be of precious stone. This time the gardener gathers all kind of scrap metal and he throws it as required. All of it turns into precious stones. The third test is to change the whole palace into gold. When the last task is performed as well, the King has to keep his word and give his daughter, Grannonia, as wife to the serpent. The princess is an obedient girl and accepts her father's decision.
The next functions are 'acquisition' and 'guidance'. He gets the girl and travels to the palace on a "car drawn by four golden elephants". The surprise is that when he takes the princess into the room, he sheds off his skin and appears to be a handsome young man.
In this point of the story the king changes from donor into a villain because he will bring a prejudice. Being very stressed about the safety of his daughter, the King spies on them and seeing the handsome son-in-law, be breaks in, takes the skin and burns it. The young man gets very upset, he changes into a dove and flies away through the window hurting himself badly in the process. This could be considered a 'branding'.
The princess leaves to look for her husband. In other stories with this motif, when the enchanted husband or wife reveals themselves, there is also an 'interdiction' concerning the skin (never to talk about it, it is kept hidden). When the spouse violates that interdiction, they lose the person they love and they have to go a long way and pass through many tests in order to find him or her again.
Right now the question is who can be considered the true hero of the story because from this point forward the princess will leave home and go searching for her husband.
On her way, she meets a fox, a magical helper. The fox will translate to her what some birds are saying. This way she finds out that her husband is badly wounded and in danger to die because nobody knows how to cure him. The fox also helps to reveal the cure. It is the blood of those birds, but also the blood of the fox. The princess tricks the fox, kills it and takes its blood too.
She gets to the palace of her in-laws and offers to cure the prince in exchange for his hand in marriage. Nobody knows who she is, but when she saves the prince she will be recognized by him and there will be a nice wedding, her parents being called too. In the last part there are the following functions: 'arrival', 'task', 'solution', 'recognition' and 'marriage'.
The narrative style is rich in descriptions, the language is metaphorical and more sophisticated: "...as soon as the Sun with his golden broom has swept away the dirt of the Night from the fields watered by the dawn..." Also the characters are more clearly outlined, at least from a psychological point of view. The adoptive father, Cola Matteo, was a "plain, straightforward kind of man".
I think this story has the position 400-459 in the Aarne-Thompson_Uther Index: the enchanted husband.
The motif of enchanted spouse is quite common in fairy-tales. In some forms can be found in the Romanian folklore and literature: "The Story of the Pig" by Ion Creanga, "The Enchanted Tortoise" by Petre Ispirescu, "The King of Snakes" by Ioan Slavici, but also in the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid.
I found a story about a love between a woman and a serpent in an American Indian story, "Passamaquoddy" or "The Woman Who Loved a Serpent Who Lived in a Lake" from the collection of "Flolklore and Mythology Electronic Texts" selected and edited by D.L. Ashliman - it can be found here:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/animalindian.html.
From a psychological perspective I believe this tale is about appearances. People can be truly known in intimacy whereas in society they have a mask, a skin that prevents others from perceiving their true nature.
But the ethical level is just the skin of the story, the meaning is deeply symbolical: first of all, the serpent symbolizes magic, the power over elements, it is a primordial animal whose nature represents constant renewal and regeneration. The fox is also a symbol of egoism and falsehood but it is also an animal that can travel between realms. It acts as a guide to the souls in the underworld.
The serpent is an important symbol in our culture starting from the Bible with the story of the first couple and the original sin. From this perspective it is connected to temptation, falling prey to evil influences. The serpent is also a symbol of redemption, or using knowledge to find again the right path.
There is a theory nowadays that has become popular due to David Icke who writes in his books about an inter-dimensional race of reptilian beings called Anunnaki who are living on Earth disguised as humans.
The idea of a race of reptiles hiding in humans is quite prolific and it is a main source of inspiration for SF movies. My favourite example is the TV-series "Stargate SG-1" where the galaxy is enslaved by such snakes who live as parasites into humans.
I liked the story because of the theme of transformation that is present at all levels. It is like an alchemical allegory. The first is the serpent that becomes human. The skin is a symbol of death and revival. When he is wounded the cure is the blood of the birds and the fox, other beings have to die in order for him to live. In nature everything is connected, everything changes into something else, death supports life. Even the tasks that the King sets are alchemical transformations. All three are about turning matter into gold or precious stones. Plants and metal are used to be transformed into something beautiful and precious.
Bibliography:
1. The story is taken from:
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/pent ... t1911.html2. Ivan Evseev, Dictionar de simboluri.
3. Victor Kernabach, Dictionar de mitologie generala.
4.
https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Propp_ ... 2nd_ed.pdf5. Marc Klein, "The Serpent's Skin: Creation, Knowledge and Intimacy in the Book of Genesis.
Elena Petrovan
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