The King of the Snakes is a Chinese folktale published by John Macgowan in 1910. In it, a father finds a flower from a snake spirit's garden and is forced to give his youngest daughter to the animal, who turns out to be a human, and their marriage is fortunate for the youngest daughter. Out of jealousy, the girl's sister conspires to take her place and kills her. The heroine, then, goes through a cycle of transformations, regains human form and takes revenge on her sister.
The tale is related to the cycle of the animal bridegroom, but scholars consider it a narrative that developed in East Asia, since most of the tales are attested in China and Taiwan. Local and regional folktale indexes register similar tales from nearby regions in East Asia, such as in Mongolia and Japan.
Summary The tale begins by describing how a society of snakes is so refined and advanced that some of its members are dissatisfied with their low condition and wish to become humans. One of them, who becomes the ruler of the snakes, discovers how to alternate between human and snake forms, becomes human and owns a great estate in the human realm. On this estate, there is a beautiful garden unlike any other in the Flowery Kingdom.
One day, this Prince of Snakes sees an old man plucking flowers in his own gardens and, irritated, asks the old man the reason for his presence. The old man answers he is just plucking flowers for his four daughters, of varying charm and beauty: the eldest pock-faced and the fourth the most beautiful. He ponders on this information and demands the old man send the fourth daughter to him as his bride in ten days time, lest he send a troop of snakes to devour him and his family.
The man returns home and tells the situation to his daughters. The three elders refuse to marry the snake, despite his threat, but the youngest, Almond Blossom, being the "most devotedly filial", offers to go in her father's place. The fairies listen to her plea and, touched by her devotion, send one of their own to protect her against her enemies.
At the appointed time, a sedan-chair comes to their house to get Almond Blossom as the snake's bride and to take her to her future husband. The father follows behind his daughter some days later and reaches the snake's palace. He is greeted by his daughter, who looks very pleased with her new life: a loving husband and a lavish palace. She tells her father her husband is on a journey and sends him back to his humble house with extravagant gifts.
After the father returns home, he shows the grand presents to his daughters. The eldest begins to nurture a jealous heart and decides to visit her sister. She goes and admires the whole palace. She convinces Almond Blossom to show her around the property. They reach an empty well. The eldest sister shoves her in.
After some time, the eldest sister still at the snake king's palace, a little bird flies out of the well and begins to sing a song with almost human-like qualities. The eldest sister, fearing that the bird will reveal the truth, snap its neck and throws it outside the house. Some time later, a clump of bamboo grow up on the spot of the bird's remains. The eldest sister, sensing that the bamboo will also reveal the truth, gets an axe and chops them down.
Some of the snake king's servants see the chopped down bamboo and take some of them to fashion a new chair. The Snake King finally returns home and asks about his wife. The eldest sister says only that she saw her by the well, and the servants also do not know her whereabouts. Suddenly, the chair turns into Almond Blossom, who accuses her sister of trying to kill her. Enraged, the snake king orders the execution of his sister-in-law.Macgowan, John. Chinese folk-lore. Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald. 1910. pp. 212-224.
Analysis Tale type In the first catalogue of Chinese folktales, devised by folklorist Wolfram Eberhard in 1937, Eberhard abstracted a Chinese folktype he termed Der Schlangenmann ("The Serpent Husband"). In this type, indexed as number 31 in his catalogue, a man with many daughters marries his youngest daughter to a snake or snake spirit as a promise for a favour; the snake and the girl live happily, enticing the jealousy of the eldest sister; the eldest sister shoves the youngest sister into a well and takes her place; the youngest sister becomes a bird, then a tree (or bamboo), regains human form and unmasks her treacherous sister.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. pp. 47-48.
Chinese folklorist and scholar established a second typological classification of Chinese folktales, and abstracted a similar narrative sequence. He named this tale type 433D, "The Snake Husband"Nai-tung TING. A Type Index of Chinese Folktales in the Oral Tradition and Major Works of Non-religious Classical Literature. FF Communications, no. 223. Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1978. pp. 73-74. (or "The Snake and Two Sisters").Zhang, Juwen. “Rediscovering the Brothers Grimm of China: Lin Lan”. In: The Journal of American Folklore 133, no. 529 (2020): 297. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.133.529.0285.
In a joint article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, European scholars Bengt Holbek and John Lindow described it as a "Chinese oikotype".Holbek, Bengt; Lindow, John. "König Lindwurm (AaTh 433, 433 A–C)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 8: Klerus – Maggio. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 162. . https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.8.037/html In that regard, researcher Juwen Zhang indicated that type 433D, "Snake boy/husband and two sisters", is an example of local Chinese tale types that are not listed in the international ATU index.Juwen Zhang. Oral Traditions in Contemporary China: Healing a Nation. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. p. 30. .
Relation to other tale types
Ting described tale type 433D as a combination of the initial part of type 425C, "Beauty and the Beast", and the second part of type 408.Nai-tung TING. A Type Index of Chinese Folktales in the Oral Tradition and Major Works of Non-religious Classical Literature. FF Communications, no. 223. Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1978. p. 73. Likewise, in the article about tale type King Lindworm in the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Holbek and Lindow noted that Ting's new tale type combined motifs of ATU 425C, "Beauty and the Beast"; the heroine's transformation sequence that appears in tale type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", and the bird transformation from tale type ATU 720, "The Juniper Tree".Holbek, Bengt; Lindow, John. "König Lindwurm (AaTh 433, 433 A–C)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 8: Klerus – Maggio. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 162. . https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.8.037/html
Taiwanese scholarship also recognizes some proximity between the Chinese tale type, the French story Beauty and the Beast (father plucks rose from the Beast and is forced to surrender him his daughter) and Italian The Three Oranges (heroine goes through cycle of transformations, including bird and tree), but emphasize that the European stories deal with love between heroine and hero, while the crux of the Chinese tale is the rivalry between a younger sister who married into good financial circumstances and her elder sister, wanting what the other has.
According to Christine Shojaei-Kawan's article, Walter Anderson, in his unpublished manuscript on The Three Oranges, identified a "Chinese mixed redaction" between the Snake Husband tale (which he listed as type AT 433A) and type 408, "The Three Oranges", in that the heroine is murdered and goes through a cycle of incarnations. However, Shojaei-Kawan considers that the motif of the transformation cycle already exists in South and East Asia unrelated to type 408, and suggests that the "mixed redaction" could be treated as an independent tale type.Shojaei-Kawan, Christine (2004). "Reflections on International Narrative Research on the Example of the Tale of the Three Oranges (AT 408)". In: Folklore (Electronic Journal of Folklore), XXVII, pp. 32-33.
Motifs
In his folktype system, Eberhard indicated that the number of sisters also varies between tales.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. p. 49.
The heroine's father is ordered to surrender his daughter after he steals some of the snake's flowers from its garden, or asked to deliver her as the snake's reward for a favour (e.g., cutting all trees or retrieving his axe handle).
The snake husband In his folktype system, Eberhard indicated that in some of the variants, the supernatural husband is a snake, snake spirit or a dragon, and another type of animal in others.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. p. 49. He also agreed that the motif of the snake husband seemed very old.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. p. 51.
In Ting's catalogue, the snake husband assumes human form, but it can also be a "flower god", a wolf, or a normal man.Nai-tung TING. A Type Index of Chinese Folktales in the Oral Tradition and Major Works of Non-religious Classical Literature. FF Communications, no. 223. Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1978. p. 73.
The heroine's replacement The heroine is drowned by her sister when she is convinced to bathe or to take a look at their reflections in water. In her cycle of transformations, she may change into many objects: a cradle, a baby carriage, a spindle, or a type of food (bread, or, as in Taiwanese variants, a red tortoise cake).
Variants Distribution Eberhard, in his 1937 catalogue, asserted the tale's spread across China, but supposed that its center of diffusion was Southern China, since most of the variants available at the time were collected there.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. p. 52. In a later work, Eberhard associated the tale of the snake husband with the local snake cults of the Yüeh culture. In turn, Ting, in his 1978 study, listed several printed variants of his type 433D, confirming the dispersal of the story in his country.Nai-tung TING. A Type Index of Chinese Folktales in the Oral Tradition and Major Works of Non-religious Classical Literature. FF Communications, no. 223. Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1978. pp. 74-76.
In addition, in a later study, Eberhard reported tales from Yunnan province and among the indigenous peoples of Taiwan.Eberhard, Wolfram. Studies In Chinese Folklore And Related Essays. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Center for the Language Sciences; [distributed by Humanities Press, New York], 1970. p. 283 (note 4 to Chapter 22). In this regard, according to researcher Juwen Zhang, the tale type is very popular in both China and Taiwan, with more than 200 variants collected. According to Li Shouhua, research of the "Snake Bridegroom" in China unearthed over 220 stories, distributed across 25 ethnic groups across 21 provinces and regions of mainland and Taiwan, including from the Han people and the Rukai people and Bunun people among the Gaoshan of Taiwan. Shouhua also concluded that the Chinese Snake Bridegroom tales, especially the story of Snake Bridegroom and Two Sisters, were "unique" to China, with a "clearly defined" geographical distribution.
China