The Girl With Two Husbands is a Greek fairy tale translated and published by Richard MacGillivray Dawkins in Modern Greek Folktales. The tale is part of the more general cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom,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. 160. . https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.8.037/html and is classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as tale type ATU 433B, "King Lindworm", a type that deals with maidens disenchanting serpentine husbands. In the Greek variants of the tale type, however, the story continues with the adventures of the banished heroine, who meets a man at a graveyard, rescues and marries him, and eventually is found by her first husband, the snake prince whom she disenchanted before.
Sources According to Dawkins, the tale originates from Thrace with the translated title The Girl thrice accursed.Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. p. 71 (footnote nr. 4).
Summary A king and queen have a daughter who is taught by a female teacher. The woman has wicked intentions and plans to marry the king by getting rid of the queen, and manipulates the princess to reach her goals: she treats the princess with kindness, gives her sweets and makes her bed with twelve pillows to sway her to her side. Now finally under her thrall, the female teacher asks the princess which she would rather see dead: the queen, her mother, or the teacher. The girl answers she would rather the teacher lives, thus the woman plots with the princess how to kill the queen: the princess is to ask for walnuts, which are in a lid, but only if the queen gives her some, then she is to close off the lid on the queen's head.
The princess does as the teacher instructed and closes the lid on the queen, killing her. After a period of mourning, the female teacher dotes on the girl even more and convinces her to ask the now widowed king to find a new wife, and mention her name. The king hears his daughter's suggestion, but denies her request and sets a test: he hangs a pair of iron shoes on an iron chain and declares he will only marry the teacher if the iron shoes fall from the chain. The female teacher advises the girl to speed up the process by dousing the chain with stinking water and rotten lemons. The chain rusts and releases the iron shoes, which the king perceives as a portent to marry the female teacher. The king relents and gives in to his daughter's suggestion, but warns the princess not to complain if his new stepmother mistreats her. After the marriage, the stepmother, who once treated her kindly, mistreats her. The princess locks herself in her room and cries.
Meanwhile, in another country, a queen goes for a walk in the mountains, sights a snake and sighs that she has no children, for even a snake has its young. Thus, she prays to God to give her a son, even in the shape of a snake. Thus, a snake son is born to her, but he cannot be born, since he bites any midwife that approaches him. Back to the princess's stepmother, she hears of this situation and decides to send her stepdaughter to help in the second queen's delivery. Fearing for her life, the princess goes to a priest to confess, and admits to her mother's murder. The priest chastises her and orders her to seek forgiveness and advice on her mother's tomb. The princess goes to her mother's grave and, in tears, asks for her forgiveness. Her mother's ghost's voice says she will help her, despite her death by her hands: the princess is to wear iron gloves and place a cauldron of boiling milk under the queen; the snake will sense the milk and exit his mother's body, then the princess is to take the snake with the iron gloves and tend to him.
The princess follows her mother's spirit's advice and delivers the snake prince. Next, the snake son's father bring wet nurses to suckle the prince, but he bites them all to death. The princess's stepmother sends the princess again to die, but she is advised on the queen's grave to use the iron gloves to suckle him. The third time, the snake son is ready to learn his letters, but he kills every tutor that his father has sent to teach him. The stepmother sends the princess to teach the snake son, since she was the one who helped in his delivery and in his feeding. The princess goes to her mother's grave in search of advice, and the queen's ghost tells her to use an iron rod to keep the snake at bay during her lessons.
Time passes, and the snake son keeps slithering and hissing about the palace, wanting to be married. His father the king arranges marriages for him with beautiful princesses, but each time he devours them during the night only their bones remain. In time, the king issues a proclamation to find one brave enough to marry the snake prince. The stepmother queen sends her stepdaughter, the princess, again, on the pretext that, since she helped in his delivery, suckled him and taught him letters, she shall be his bride. The princess goes to her mother's grave for advice, and her mother's ghost advises her to prepare a fire in his room, then order the prince to remove one of his shirts, which are each time to be tossed in the fire; if the prince orders the princess to undress, the girl is to reply he must do it first. The princess does as instructed and orders the snake prince to remove each of his shirts, while she removes her after his turn. When the snake takes off his seventh shirt, he becomes a handsome human prince and marries the girl in human form.
Later, the stepmother learns of her stepdaughter's successful marriage, then consults with wizards for a way to get rid of her. Finally she finds the right opportunity when the now human snake prince departs for war and leaves his wife under his mother's care, warning that, if anything happens to her, he will not return home. The stepmother writes a series of false letters with a command to expel the princess from the palace and cast her out into the world. The snake prince's mother receives the false letters and decides to hide them from the princess, whom they love. However, the princess suspects something is amiss and discovers heaps of letters supposedly sent by her husband. She confronts her parents-in-law and decides to leave the palace herself, since they would rather disobey her son's command.
The princess leaves on her own and finds work with some shepherds. One night, she stops to rest by a midden and watches as four fairies come and resurrect a dead prince from a midden, then bring him back to be buried in the midden. The princess meets the dead prince when he is revived and, nine months later, is heavy with his child. The dead prince, awake at this point, sends his wife to another land for protection and she must search for the palace of Riga, be welcomed in his name, and reveals how they can save their son: by banishing every black rooster from the city. The pregnant princess journeys on until she finds the palace of Riga and is welcomed by the prince's mother, and given lodge to have her baby. The princess gives birth to her baby and lulls her child with a song, saying in verse that, if the queen knew that baby was Riga's, she would place him in a silver cradle with swaddlings of gold. One night, the queen overhears the song and questions the girl how they can save prince Riga: the girl answers that no black rooster must crow in the kingdom and beyond. So the queen orders the roosters to be killed as they wait for the prince's liberation: the fairies revive prince Riga from the tomb and, when dawn comes, they cannot hear the crowing of any rooster. Defeated, the fairies fly away, and Riga is free to be with his lover and son.
Back to the now human snake prince, he return from war and learns of the false letters, then wanders off until he reaches the city of prince Riga, sighting his wife inside the palace with a child in her arms. He talks to her and tries to convince her to go back with him, but she tells she has a son now. Riga and the snake prince dispute over her, and the case is brought to a judge. The judge prepares a test: give the girl a sleeping drug so she sleeps for a while, and when she wakes up, the first one to offer her a glass of water shall have her as his wife. His orders are carried out, and the two princes lie in a long vigil. One night, the princess wakes up, laments her dilemma in some verses, and dies, torn for having to choose over two men she loved. The two princes awake and, on seeing the dead princess, also die by her side.Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. pp. 71-79.The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Volume Two: G-P. Edited by Donald Haase. Greenwood Press. 2008. p. 770. .
Analysis Tale type The first part of the Greek tale type corresponds, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, to tale type ATU 433B, "King Lindworm": a serpent (snake, or dragon) son is born to a king and queen (either from a birthing implement or due to a wish); years later, the serpent prince wishes to marry, but he kills every bride they bring him; a girl is brought to him as a prospective bride, and wears several layers of cloth to parallel the serpent's skins; she disenchants him.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 148. Tale type ATU 433B, "King Lindworm", is part of the cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, stories that involve a human maiden marrying a prince in animal form and disenchanting him.
Richard MacGillivray Dawkins noted that the Greek tale formed a two-part narrative. In the first part, the heroine allows for a woman to become her stepmother, and she marries an enchanted prince in animal form; in a (rarer) second part, the heroine finds a second lover she rescues from the curse of the fairies and has to choose between them.Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. pp. 70-71. Similarly, Anna Angelopoulou and Aigle Broskou, editors to the Greek Folktale Catalogue, and Michael Merakles noted that, in Greek variants, the heroine kills her mother on another woman's convincing and the woman becomes her stepmother; later, the woman sends the heroine to die at the hands of the snake prince (Ophis), but she survives with her mother's spirit's advice and disenchants the prince. In the second part of the tale, the heroine is either exiled due to falsified letters and revives a dead man who becomes her lover, or she rescues a man from the fairies, becomes pregnant and bears his son in his mother's castle (tale type AaTh 425E). At the end of both narrative sequences, she has to choose between both men.Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 798-799.Merakles, Michales G. Studien zum griechischen Märchen. Eingeleitet, übers, und bearb. von Walter Puchner. Raabser Märchen-Reihe, Bd. 9. Wien: Österr. Museum für Volkskunde, 1992. pp. 148-149. .
Greek folklorist considered that the Greek variants showed a contamination between tale type 433B, wherein the heroine disenchants the snake prince following her dead mother's advice, and subtype ATU 425E, "Enchanted Husband Sings Lullaby", wherein the pregnant heroine is sent by her lover, kidnapped by the fairies ("neraides", in the Greek tales), to his mother's castle, where she can give birth in safety.
Motifs The snake prince