Kare n S m i t h , S ü n i k o n , S w i t z e r l a n d

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives
in Hagiography and Folklore

By Karen Smith

The medieval versions of Margaret of Antioch’s life are significant texts in the
literatures of several medieval European languages. They have been interpreted
in terms of the theological and psychological meaning they had for their
readers, many of whom were women engaging in various forms of religious
practice, both in and out of convents. These interpretations, both literary and
historical, have not taken account of the influence of oral tradition and popular
belief in the development of the Margaret narratives1.
While hagiographic convention casts the life of Saint Margaret of Antioch in
the mold of virgin martyrs who suffer to keep their faith, there are deeper narrative
structures in this dragon-fighting virgin martyr tale that link it to a wider
folktale tradition. In the St. Margaret narratives, the saint (a pearl-like, pure
young daughter of nobility) is cast into a dungeon by a powerful and villainous
suitor, then swallowed by a dragon from whose jaws she escapes unharmed. She
then wrestles the dragon’s devil-brother to the ground, and finally after a series
of further tortures wins eternal salvation by being beheaded for her faith2. The
snake-maiden tales, with their themes of the serpent’s kiss, hidden treasure, and
white-woman seeking mortal marriage, present the snake-maiden as belonging
to the supernatural/divine realm. They comprise an important European folk
narrative tradition in their own right, but do not have explicitly religious content
in the sense that the hagiography does3. The motifs of serpent/maiden
 

(1 For a bibliography and a historical review of the Margaret narratives see Smith, K. P.:
Transforming Virgins: Margaret of Antioch, Snake Maidens and Medieval Mentalities.
Ph .D. dis s., Berkeley,Graduate Theological Union , 2000.
2 The version of the Margaret legend included by Jacobus de Voragine in the 13th century
Legenda aurea, along with many medieval vernacular versions based more or
less on the same 10th century Latin sources Jacobus used, has been carefully and
comprehensively studied, compared, and analyzed (mainly as medieval literature and
as ecclesiastical hagiography). For commentary on the English versions of the narrative
see Wolpers, T.: Die englische Heiligenlegende des Mittelalters: Eine Formgeschichte
des Legendenerzählens von der spätantiken lateinischen Tradition bis zur
Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen 1964. For the French see Keller, H. E. (ed.):
Wace: La Vie de sainte Marguerite. Tübingen 1990. For analysis of German vernacular
versions see Van den Andel, G.G.: Die Margaretalegende in ihren mittelalterlichen
Versionen: eine vergleichende Studie. Groningen/Batavia 1933.
3 For a study of the snake-maiden’s history in German literature and oral tradition see
Frank, E.: Der Schlangenkuß: Die Geschichte eines Erlösungsmotivs in deutscher
Volksdichtung. Leipzig 1928.)
 

Fabula 43. Band (2002) Heft 3/4
252 Karen Smith)

transformation (Mot. F 562.1: Serpent damsel)4, and redemptive kisses, as well
as plot sequences of “high-born women, seeking to be set free, who turn into
serpents” are characteristic of the lives of St. Margaret5. Using the snakemaiden
tales as intertexts to the medieval St. Margaret lives, I will argue that
Margaret can be seen as a divine snake-maiden and that this identity helps explain
the enduring popularity of her biography6.
The snake-maiden legends
The snake-maiden narratives occur in memorates, legends, and ballads of
northern and western Europe, including Ireland and the British Isles7. Except
for Emma Frank’s 1928 history of the serpent-kiss theme in German literature,
these narratives have not been studied much as a group8. The gist of Frank’s
 

(4 This and the following parenthetical designations specify motif categories from
Thompson, S.: Motif-Index of Folk Literature 1–6. Bloomington 1955–58.
5 See Kühnau, R.: Schlesische Sagen. Leipzig 1910, 236. Particularly striking in this regard
are the snake-maiden local legends popular throughout Central and Northern
Europe; see Brüder Grimm: Deutsche Sagen. ed. H. Rölleke. Berlin 1994, 46–48 (no.
13: Die Schlangen-Jungfrau); also ibid., 46 (no. 12: Die Schloß-Jungfrau). She is
known by other names (e.g., die weiße Frau, die Schlangenkönigin, or die Schlüsseljungfrau)
in versions collected in the 19th and 20th centuries; see Jegerlehner, J.: Sagen
aus dem Unterwallis. Basel 1909; Kapff, R.: Schwäbische Sagen. Jena 1926; Kuoni, J.:
Sagen des Kantons St. Gallen. St. Gallen 1902; Peuckert, W.-E.: Schlesische Sagen.
Jena 1924; Schambach, G./Müller, W.: Niedersächsische Sagen und Märchen. Göttingen
1855; Schwebel, O.: Die Sagen der Hohenzollern. Berlin 1878; Vernaleken, T.:
Alpensagen. Wien 1858; Zingerle, I.: Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Tirol. Innsbruck
1859. On the history of the legend in Germany, see Frank (above, note 4).
6 The significance of the St. Margaret figure has been discussed by theorists of the later
middle ages such as Delaney, S.: The Somaticized Text: Corporeal Semiotic in a Late
Medieval Female Hagiography. In: Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary
Representation. ed. L. H. Lefkovitz. Ithaca 1997, 101–125; Fox, A.: The Boundaries
of Sainthood: The Enclosed Female Body as Doctrine in Seinte Margarete. In: Medieval
Perspectives 8 (1993) 133–142; Lewis, K.J.: The Life of St. Margaret of Antioch in
Late Medieval England: A Gendered Reading. In: Studies in Church History: Gender
and Christian Religion 34 (1998) 129–142; Pearce, C.: The Cult of St. Margaret of
Antioch. In: Feminist Theology1 6 (1994) 70–85. Devotion to St. Margaret as patroness
of fertility and childbirth is also addressed in Smith, K.: Serpent-damsels and
demon-slayers. In: Demons, Spirits, Witches: Popular Mythology and Christian Demonology
(Hungarian Academy of Sciences, forthcoming).
7 See Larminie, W.: West Irish Folk Tales and Romances. London 1893; Henderson,
W.: Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders.
London 1866; Child, F.J.: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. New York
1962; see also Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens 2. ed. E. Hoffmann-
Krayer/H. Bächtold-Stäubli. Berlin/Leipzig 1929/30, 928–931. Similar stories were
collected in Portugal in the 1980’s; see Pereira Bastos, J.G.: From the Chaos and the
Void of Symbols to the Rainbow of Symbolism – the Spectral Study of Symbols. In:
Maidens, Snakes and Dragons. CESIL [Centre for Symbolism and Imagination in
Literature, Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, King’s College] Papers
(1991) 71–102, here 76.
8 A comparative approach has been taken by Vaz da Silva, F.: Symbolic Themes in the
European Cinderella Cycle. In: Southern Folklore 57 (2000) 159–180; Schuster, I.:)
 

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives in Hagiography and Folklore 253

thesis is that the motif of the serpent maiden, or maiden in white, who can be
freed from a curse by a hero that allows himself to be kissed by a snake, developed
from a 13th–14th century melding of an Arthurian Romance episode
with popular German traditional themes9. Chris Knight has discussed the
snake-maiden-dragon symbolism in relation to the ritual authority of menstruating
women10, and Francisco Vaz Da Silva has written on the theme in
relation to dragon s layer folktales (AaTh 300: The Dragon-Slayer)11.
A typical German ‘Weiße Frau’ (woman in white) or ‘Schlangenjungfrau’
(snake-maiden) legend contains some or all of the following interrelated motifs:
a maiden of noble birth has been cursed (verwünscht), often for reasons
connected to sexual behavior, jealousy or violence to children12. For this she is
banished in her own (human) form or in the form of a serpent (Mot. E 425.1.1)
to the ruins of a castle or church, or to the sea. She often wears a gold crown
(Mot. D 1011.3.1) and/or carries one or more gold keys (Mot. F 886.1), and/or
she must guard a treasure (Mot. H 335.3.4). She will give up the treasure if the
seeker kisses her three times (Mot. D 735) and thus frees her (erlöst sie) from
her enchantment. In the following version Jacob Grimm presents an account of
a hero who met a snake-maiden in a cave13. According to that account, which
contains the central themes listed above, the enchanted girl told the hero that
‘[she was] of royal lineage, and had been turned into a monster [Ungeheuer];
she could not be saved unless a boy whose chastity was pure and unbroken
kissed her three times; then she could return to her own form. In return she
 

(Die Schlangenfrau: Variationen eines chinesischen Motivs bei Herman Grimm und
Gottfried Keller. In: Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 18 (1982) 44–62.
9 In Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet, the fairy Elidia’s search for a mortal spouse,
with its courtly eroticism, is brought together with the pagan Scandinavian narrative
tradition. That is, in his version of the Lancelot chain of adventures, Ulrich passes on
the heroic theme of disenchanting a cursed animal-maiden (which was part of the
Arthurian Romance tradition) colored by pagan traditional elements such as treasure-
legends and enchanted mountain-men and women. The episode moved as a narrative
of its own, independent of the adventure series, into the Icelandic Hjálmpérs
Saga, where the liberatory transformation is brought about through both the courage
of the hero and the eroticism of the kiss. See Harris, R.L.: Hjálmpérs Saga: A Scientific
Edition. Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, Iowa City 1970. From there the tale begins
to show up as a local legend all over Germany and Switzerland, as well as in Baltic
folktales and English and Scottish ballads. For a discussion of folkloristic
methodologies applied to the interpretation of medieval literature see Rosenberg,
B.A.: Folklore and Medieval Literature. In: Journal of the Folklore Institute 13 (1976)
311–325.
10 Knight, C.D.: On the Dragon Wings of Time. In: Maidens, Snakes and Dragons
(above, note 7) 7–49.
11 Vaz Da Silva (above, note 8).
12 Some examples of the Weiße Frau’s transgressions: she stabbed her lover out of jealousy:
Peuckert (above, note 5) 130; defied her husband: ibid., 124; killed her
children: Schwebel (above, note 5) 187; Kapff (above, note 5) 62; betrayed a secret
entrance to escape rape: Kühnau (above, note 5) 240–242; insulted a snake: Vernaleken
(above, note 5) 245–247.
13 See Grimm (above, note 5) 46–48.)
 

254 Karen Smith

would give the savior [Erlöser] her entire treasure, that had been kept concealed
in that place’14.
In this legend the heroine is high-born, she has been turned into a monster
and she wants to be set free. In this particular narrative version, as in the Mélusine
fairy tradition, the bottom half is snake, the top half woman15. The condition
for freedom is that he kisses her, overcoming his natural revulsion at her
form. He only manages to kiss her twice, then runs away: he never again finds
the entrance to her cave, but often hears her crying.
In other variants of the legend she retains a ‘wraith-like’ human form, only
appearing periodically in her snake form16. To disenchant (erlösen) her, the
hero must kiss the snake; or allow the snake to wrap herself around his neck;
or take the treasure for himself, setting her free17. To get to the treasure he may
have to get past a big black dog, or a snake wrapped around the treasure
chest18; or he must get a golden key out of the snake’s mouth, or from a
dragon’s tooth19; or he must take possession of the snake’s golden crown20.
Great courage is demanded of the young man, who must overcome the obstacles,
complete the tasks and win the rewards. As Grimm’s version exemplifies,
it is the nature of the legend genre that the hero is unsuccessful – otherwise
he never would have come back to tell the tale21.
From the girl’s point of view this narrative expresses her fear of being too
ugly, too s trong, too r epulsive to b e taken as an acceptable mate . If s he is not
accepted, she will be a spinster, a woman still working alone long after the
age of marriage has passed22. The fear that guarding one’s ‘treasure’ will lead to
 

(14 See ibid., 47, my translation.
15 Ubiquitous in French local legends collected in the 19th century, the tale of Mélus ine
was based on earlier oral tradition and clerical writing. See Jean d’Arras: Le Roman
de Mélusine ou l’Histoire des Lusignan. Mis en français moderne par M. Perret, préface
J. LeGoff. Paris 1979. With E. LeRoy Ladurie, LeGoff presents evidence for the
antecedents of Jean’s version in Melusina: Mother and Pioneer. In: Time, Work and
Culture in the Middle Ages. Trans. A. Goldhammer. Chicago/London 1977, 205–222.
In the Mélusine tales a prince, separated from his companions in the forest, sees a
beautiful unknown (fairy) woman, who will marry him if he agrees not to see her in
her bath; he does but later violates the interdiction; in retaliation she leaves, causing
the end of his prosperity. Later one of his daughters, Mélusine, buries him in the
earth up to his waist; as punishment for this she is doomed to become a serpent from
the waist down.
16 See Kuoni (above, note 5) 121 f.
17 See ibid., 332, 427; Jegerlehner (above, note 5) 19; Schambach/Müller (above, note 5)
260; Zingerle (above, note 5) 397 f.; Kapff (above, note 5) 64.
18 See Kühnau (above, note 5) 240–245; Kapff (above, note 5) 64; Schambach/Müller
(above, note 5) 260.
19 See Kuoni (above, note 5) 403; Peuckert (above, note 5) 129.
20 See Vernaleken (above, note 5) 171, 179.
21 For example, Kuoni (above, note 5) 121 f.
22 The task of spinning wool is women’s work, whether peasant or noble (LeGoff, J.:
Medieval Civilization 400–1500. Trans. J. Barrow. Oxford/Cambridge, Mass. 1988,
286). This occupation belongs in folk tradition to young maidens, and the significance
may be enhanced in initiation tales when the adolescent girl spins by the well,)
 

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives in Hagiography and Folklore 255

keeping it indefinitely is a ubiquitous theme in European culture. In terms of
the cultural mandate for girls to marry and have children, the maiden wins
rather than loses by having the golden key removed from her possession. By
taking her guarded treasure, the boy does her a favor: she becomes mortal and
is free of the curse of exclusion and exile. He also does himself a favor: by
freeing her he gets the treasure, because the reward and the task are intertwined23.
Unfortunately, having the hero take the treasure is not always
enough; in some versions, he doesn’t follow the injunction to keep the treasure
a secret: he tells his friends down at the tavern24. Silence itself is the price of her
freedom, and when he tells, he loses his chance at both the treasure and the
maiden25.
The task is to free her from the curse she is under, the curse of being banished
from our world into the supernatural realm. This banishment can take
the form of being trapped in the body of a serpent, or just being sentenced to
wander the outlying districts, but either way her real punishment is being obliged
to remain outside the mortal world. The snake form can represent her actual
state of being in the other realm, or can appear later in the narrative as a
test for the suitor and a condition for her salvation (if he overcomes his revulsion
to her snake-form, then she will be saved), rather than the snake form
itself being the condition she is trying to be freed from26. In any case, his per
 

( or the crossroads; see Zipes, J.: Spinning With Fate: Rumpelstiltskin and the Decline
of Female Productivity. In: Western Folklore 52 (1993) 43–60. In the Margaret narratives,
she is tending sheep (in the world of folk motifs tending sheep and spinning
would be analogous) at the crossroads when Olibrius and his men first see her. In one
Old English version Margaret is spinning while she watches the sheep. This detail is
noted in Van den Andel (above, note 2) 28; for a translation of this version see Clayton,
M./Magennis, H.: The Old English Lives of St. Margaret. Cambridge 1994,
esp. 61–71. For examples of iconographic images of Margaret with both spindle and
sheep see Kirschbaum, E. et al.: Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie 3. Rome et al.
1971, 500; Tasker, E. C.: Encyclopedia of Medieval Church Art. London 1992, 147.
23 Usually the protagonist is a virgin boy or young man; for instances of a girl as protagonist
see Kapff (above, note 5) 62; and Peuckert (above, note 5) 124, 126. In the
first, she asks for help, but in return is put in a stall and is herself transformed into a
goat/devil figure. In the second it is a female factory worker who encounters the
woman in white, and a devout girl who can disenchant her.
24 See the text „Die Schlüsseljungfer vom Pflasterbach“ below.
25 Frank (above, note 3) 129 asserts that the theme of death or insanity as the penalty for
failure goes back to Celtic mythology.
26 An Austrian version, „Der Hirtenknabe“ (The Shepherd Boy; Zingerle [above,
note 5] 226), s pells out the s teps. A young shepherd sees a b eautiful maiden crying,
asking to be set free. She tells him to cut a straight hazel branch and use it to open
three doors. Behind the third one is a dragon that will try to swallow him; if he
doesn’t cry out he will get the treasure. But he gets scared and doesn’t act; everything
disappears and as it does he glimpses the lost treasure. In other versions the maiden
turns herself into a serpent; he then has to kiss her in order to free her of her enchantment;
or the enchanted maiden offers him a treasure encircled by a huge serpent. In
all cases he has to somehow muster the courage to overcome a serpent, as well as his
own loathing, in order to free her from the enchantment under which she has been
obliged to wander, to guard a treasure, or to endlessly walk.)
 

256 Karen Smith

sistence, and often his silence, are required to make her human again. In both
kinds of ‘Weiße Frau’ narratives (ones where she is identified totally with the
snake as well as ones where she only appears as a snake to test him, or does not
appear as a snake at all), the hero’s task is to save, or free (erlösen), her from
her cursed state27. The snake image itself with its connotations of sin and the
demonic is an image often juxtaposed to that of purity, as in the Genesis story
of Eve and the serpent or the iconography of the Virgin Mary crushing the serpent,
Satan28.
The grammar of the key-maiden stories allows for all the elements of the
snake-maiden narrative to be present without having her appear literally in
snake form29. In these variants the maiden is enchanted, dressed in white, and
guards an underground, or underwater, treasure to which she holds the keys.
She grants a poor man or a suitor what he asks, on the condition that he not
speak a word during the task or after the fact. But the ophidian nature of her
transformation is implicit in that she guards a watery or underground realm
(or both), and in other aspects of the narrative that are cognate with the snakemaiden
material30.
The following 1977 dialect version from the Wehntal region of Germanspeaking
Switzerland historicizes the tale, and offers an explanation for why
the maiden (the ‘Schlüsseljungfer vom Pflasterbach’) is not seen much any
more in the Swiss countryside31. It typifies the way regional history is called
into play to connect well-known events and features of the landscape with the
more mobile part of the narrative. It also contains most of the narrative elements
found in 19th century collected versions of the legend.
 

(27 ‚Erlösen‘ in these texts refers to disenchantment as well as redemption, and this is by
way of the association with ‚lösen‘ (to solve) and ‚losmachen‘ (to loosen). But the
noun, ‚der Erlöser‘ (the redeemer) is synonymous with ‚der Retter‘ (the savior), so
the sense of the word encompasses both the notion of salvation and of disenchantment.
28 For example, the curse on the serpent and on Eve in Genesis 3,15 f.
29 This might be because the teller expects to be believed in a culture that no longer believes
in the literal ability to transform into another being, but that continues to believe
in vaguely mysterious ghosts with whom one could, on a dark romantic evening,
converse.
30 Frank (above, note 3) 127 asserts that as the legend developed, the explicit snake imagery
fell away. “In the vast majority of legends the enchanted maiden is only a pale
reflection of the Celtic snake-fairy or the animal/princess transformations of [medieval]
novels and folktales; she is a woman in white, or a very beautiful maiden […]”
(my translation).
31 This kind of historical validation connects the legend to the historical event that allegedly
caused the ruin of the monastery or castle. According to T. R. Tangherlini historicization
is employed to enhance ‘believability’, and is comparable to ‘diachronic
ecotypification’ (Tangherlini, T.R.: ‘It Happened Not Too Far From Here …’: A Survey
of Legend Theory and Characterization. In: Western Folklore 40 [1990] 371–390,
here 379))
 

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives in Hagiography and Folklore 257

Die Schlüsseljungfer vom Pflasterbach

Up at Sünikon the Plaster-Brook32 bubbles out of the woods. It is called that because
there is a lot of lime in the water, which petrifies and cements the whole stream bed.
Halfway up the mountain used to be the old road to Zürich, and up around there the
Knight of Sünikon erected his castle. Later on it became an inn, and was dug up
again in 1962. In 1501 a faithful patron had a chapel built [across the road from the
inn], because in those days they thought the Plaster-Brook could work miracles.
Visitors came from far away, and the pilgrims got a big indulgence by going there.
At the Reformation, the Zürich council forbad that pilgrimage, and the chapel as
well as the inn disintegrated bit by bit. However, there had been in the chapel
precious objects that had been used for Mass. Naturally, many people wondered
what had happened to the objects, and before long it was believed that the things
were in the cellar of the former castle in an iron chest, to which an enchanted maiden
carried the key. Thus they called her the Key-maiden. About her it was said that she
sometimes went up to Regensberg [where a medieval castle still stands in 2002] and
back, wearing a white robe, at the witching hour. Once a poor man followed her
there and declared his misery to her and begged her for the key [to the treasure]. He
was given it on the condition that he would be permitted to remove something from
the chest, but not tell anyone anything about it. But he couldn’t keep it to hims elf,
and so he lost the object and became very poor again – in fact, lost his mind. Afterwards,
the Key-maiden disappeared, just as the good ghosts would do, if someone
teased or followed them33.
In this example the practical matter of credibility may have influenced the decision
to omit the snakes from the legend form of the tale, while the folktale versions
(not meant to be believed and not held to strictures of historical time)
keep the dual woman/snake form explicitly intact. The folktale direction this
narrative can take is exemplified by the tale of ‘The Shepherd and the Snake’
(Der Schäfer und die Schlange)34. This version of the story sounds just like the
local legend versions, except that the protagonist succeeds in his task, which is
to kiss her in her snake form, and wins the maiden, and lives happily ever after
in her kingdom (though the people back in his village miss him). In this tale-
 

(32 Both meanings of the German ‘Pflaster’ are reflected in the name of the stream: that
of wound healing, as in ‘sticking plaster’, and that of paving or cementing something
over, as in plastering a wall.
33 My translation. The Swiss German (Züridütsch) dialect version is found in Hedinger,
H.: Wëëntalergschichte. Dielsdorf, Switzerland 1977, 11 (= Kaufmann, H.: Die
Schlüsseljungfer vom Pflasterbach 2. In: Mitteilungsblatt der Gemeinde Steinmaur
[Switzerland] 25,12 [April 1990] 8–10, here 9). A very elaborate version of this kind
of historicization gives an entire history, from 1361 on, of the appearances of ‘die
weiße Frau’ in the Prussian king’s palace, starting with Albrecht the Handsome’s love
affair gone bad; see Schwebel (above, note 5) 186–199. According to the legend,
the king’s lover died of despair after he rejected her, having killed her two children
(with a needle jabbed into the brain) in a mistaken attempt to persuade the king to
marry her. She appeared many times over the centuries in the family’s various castles.
As Schwebel (195) notes, there is scarcely a castle-ruin in Germany without its ‘weiße
Frau’.
34 Bechstein, L.: Deutsches Märchenbuch. München 1857, 397–399.)
 

258 Karen Smith

type the deserted castle motif is present, as well as the task of disenchanting
the princess35.
The Northumbrian tale, The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh, presents a
folktale version that contains all the legend themes. In this version the maiden’s
name is Margaret36:
The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh37
When Lady Margaret’s mother dies her father, the king, leaves her in charge of the
castle keys and goes to find a new wife. The new queen is jealous of her stepdaughter,
Margaret, and turns her into a dragon – a huge, hungry serpent who hides
in a cave by day and wanders up and down the coast at night. The dragon exacts a
tribute of milk from the populace (elsewhere, the milk of seven cows), and nothing
can grow in any direction for seven miles after she has passed through38. Her brother
Child Wynde (Champion Gawain), away at sea, hears about the dragon ravaging the
land and is worried for his sister’s safety (he doesn’t know s h e is the dragon), so he
returns to save the kingdom39. After chasing the dragon to a rocky island, he draws
his sword to kill her but she calls out ‘kiss me’ and he recognizes her voice40. He
kisses her, and she turns back into a woman, standing naked before him41. The
 

(35 Similar tales exist in France, as with the powerful fairy who turns a girl into a toad:
the maiden can only be freed by a hero whose cradle was made of a certain tree; see
Frank (above, note 3) 80. Frank finds that the legend changed the otherworld to a
nearby (but somewhat inaccessible) place, changed the ‘mythical’ time to historical
time, and replaced the noble, successful hero with a simple man who can’t quite manage
the job (123). Frank has thoroughly established the ubiquity of the snake-maiden/
transformative kisses legend in German-speaking Europe, as well as in French-speaking
Switzerland; for Baltic versions see ibid., 116–118.
36 See Jacobs, J. (ed.): English Fairy Tales. New York/London 1898, 190–196. By ‘folktale’
version here I mean ‘universal’ rather than local/historical legends, and with a
‘happy’ rather than ‘the one that got away’ ending.
37 This tale is based on the English ballad, “Kemp Owyne” (that is, ‘Champion Gawain’).
See Child (above, note 7) 309–313 for a ballad in which a good daughter is cast
into the sea by her jealous step-mother. The girl must stay in the sea, in the form of a
savage beast with tail and fin, until the hero comes from across the sea to kiss her
three times. The name “Spindleston Heugh” suggests a stone associated with fate (the
spindle is a symbol of fate) and a hole or low-lying meadow (heugh). The serpent in
this version must curl around the base of the castle (Bamburgh Castle in Co. Durham,
England) until released. Another version, “Spindlestone Haugh”, also is associated
with the castle. In the ‘Geordie’ dialect of Northumbria ‘haugh’ means a steep
hill, or pr omontory.
38 Child (above, note 7) 309–313.
39 See Jacobs (above, note 36) 272. He equates Childy Wynd with Childe Owein (i.e.,
Kempe, or Champion Owein, a 6th century Welsh hero).
40 In the ballad, “Kemp Owyne”, she calls out: “Oh quit thy sword, and bend thy bow,
and give me kisses three; for if I am not wonne eer the sun goes down, Wonne will I
never be” (Child [above, note 7] 313).
41 The specific literary ‘handover’ of the enchanted snake-maiden from the courtly romance
genre into traditional German folk narrative is described by Frank (above,
note 3) 78 who finds the Lancelot episode’s origin in the Celtic narratives of the fairy
who wants to marry a mortal. She demonstrates that the serpent-kissing episode was
part of the Lancelot story in the Arthur narrative chain, at some point becoming an)
 

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives in Hagiography and Folklore 259

brother takes off his cloak and puts it around her shoulders, and they return home
to find their stepmother and turn her into a toad42.
The powers Margaret receives through her transformation into a dragon and
redemption by her brother’s heroism make her into a divine being able to
transform her enemy. The ability of snake-maidens to shape-shift is also evident
in St. Margaret when she goes into, and out of, the body of the dragon in
her cell.
Narratives are cognate
The argument that St. Margaret’s divine power derives partly from her association
with the snake-maiden depends on the narratives being cognate versions
of a recognizable type. I will discuss this cognate aspect of the narratives before
proceeding further.
The argument for the narratives being cognate, that is, developing from the
same source rather than arising independently, centers on three main aspects
of the tales. First, in both sets of narratives the passage the hero/heroine makes
through the dragon or snake form (no matter where it occurs in the narrative)
is the central event around which the transformation occurs. The erotic nature
of the snake form and its association with the temptation to inappropriate sexuality
(the lascivious dragon and the dangerous serpent) are set against the importance
of resisting the temptation (for Margaret, of giving in to the villain
and for the pure young man, of giving in to revulsion). In this juxtaposition
whiteness, purity, and innocence is set against the dark, wet, mysterious realm
of the demonic. Finally, the tales are related in terms of the development of the
action: the heroine who is in need of salvation in the snake-maiden legends is
embodied in St. Margaret when she is spurned by her father and imprisoned by
the villain. The hero who can free the snake-maiden from the curse or prison is
 

(independent motif that took on more local Germanic ‘folk’ themes and became a separate
narrative on its own. Thus the passage of the Lancelot narrative into the Northern
European narrative adds the courtly snake-kiss to local supernatural legends of
disappearing treasure. Finally, the kiss becomes disassociated from the saving, or disenchanting
function, and becomes just a condition for getting the treasure (Frank
[above, note 3] 132).
42 This group of themes is also to be found in a medieval Icelandic saga, where a maiden
is transformed into a monster by the hero’s lustful step-mother, who later tries to seduce
the hero herself. The monster, now carrying a sword in her hand, sneaks up on
the hero. He tries to talk her out of her sword, but she will not give it up unless he
kisses her. Variations of the abduction, the treasure guarding and the transforming
kisses abound in Icelandic folklore; see Harris (above, note 9); Boberg, I.M.: Motif
Index of Early Icelandic Literature. Copenhagen 1966, R 11.1: Princess abducted by
monster, D 47.3: Princess transformed into ogress, D 732: Man disenchants loathsome
woman by embracing her, H 335.3.4: Suitor task: to kill treasure-guarding
snake lying around the princess’s chamber. St. Margaret, of course, is not kissed –
but in the main medieval Latin traditions the dragon wraps his tongue around her
(expandit linguam suam); see Clayton/Magennis (above, note 22) 204.)
 

260 Karen Smith

played in the saint’s tale by Margaret herself – as the young man is meant to
save the snake-maiden, Margaret saves herself by confronting the serpent. She
can’t marry herself, though, and in that sense her real salvation and deliverance
is accomplished with her martyrdom and release into heaven where she will be
united with the groom to whom she has promised herself all along.
The enchanted, cursed, or unredeemed state implies a lack of freedom; in
fact, the whole task of the folktale hero is to free the maiden from the curse imposed
on her by an angry parent. Like her snake-maiden counterpart, St. Margaret,
too, is under the curse of her angry father; though she is living away
from home he still has the final say over whom she marries and how she lives.
The curse condemns the snake-maiden to wander around in white, frightening
passers-by and soliciting heroic help. At certain times (midnight, Christmas,
every seven years, every hundred years) she appears in the horrible form of a
serpent, a white snake, a dragon; she has to be freed by noon, or midnight, or
sundown.
St. Margaret is an adolescent maiden and she becomes a dragon when it
swallows her, or tries to. While the snake-maiden finds a willing hero to try to
free her, sometimes with the help of a hazel or elder wand43, St. Margaret frees
herself from the dragon, along with its associated temptation and entrapment,
with the help of the holy cross. In comparison with the snake-maiden tradition,
the female agency expressed in Margaret’s reversal (heroine who saves
herself rather than being saved) suggests divine powers that could prepare a
nice virgin saint to be patroness of women in childbirth and protector, with attributes,
against all manner of evil.
In the snake-maiden legends the suitors refuse the maiden – at least at first –
because she is so hideous in her serpent’s body. In the life of St. Margaret,
on the other hand, it is the maiden herself who does the refusing, the consequence
of which is that she is cast into a dungeon and nearly swallowed by a
dragon (becomes a dragon). She escapes, through her heroism, from the
dragon’s jaws and his attempts to ‘deflower [her] virginity’, and goes on to win
her prince44.
The folktale heroine doesn’t usually dispatch her own adversary, and in this
way St. Margaret takes on the male hero’s role in addition to that of an ‘innocent
persecuted heroine’45. The reversal expressed in the hagiographic tale may
 

(43 The hero uses an elder branch or a hazel branch to pet the snake; see Kapff (above,
note 5) 64 and Peuckert (above, note 5) 128; or a hazel branch to open the door to the
treasure; see Zingerle (above, note 5) 400.
44 K. Gravdal’s translation of Wace’s Anglo-Norman, »et ta virginité tolsist«; see id.:
Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law. Philadelphia
1991, 40; Francis, E.A. (ed.): Wace: La vie de sainte Marguerite. Paris 1932, line
370.
45 S. S. Jones (The Innocent Persecuted Heroine Genre: An Analysis of Its Structure
and Themes. In: Western Folklore 52 [1993] 13–41, here 33) demonstrates that a subgroup
of the female heroine folktale can be distinguished by the related motifs, episodes
and plot outlines they share, Cinderella (AaTh 510A), Sleeping Beauty (AaTh)
 

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives in Hagiography and Folklore 261

have influenced one folktale version, Simon and Margaret46. In this version
from Ireland, the threatening dragon is a sea monster (explicitly female) who
threatens a group of sailors with disaster if they do not throw Margaret overboard.
Margaret escapes being swallowed by the serpent, and later is chosen to
kill a giant no one else could kill47. But like St. Margaret, this female hero goes
on to accomplish her own salvation, and wins the hero in the end.
Simon and Margaret
The tale begins with Margaret following the man she loves, and who has refused her
(snake-maidens always get refused at first). The dragon swims up to her ship and demands
that Margaret be thrown overboard as a sacrifice, or she (the dragon) will
swallow the ship. The sailors put Margaret out in a boat to be swallowed, but a wave
intervenes. Margaret washes up on dry land, where a woman gives her shelter. The
woman says she is afraid of being killed by a giant who lives at White Doon, and she
prays that someone will come who is able to kill the giant. While Margaret is there, a
gentleman and a lady come by to visit on their way to White Doon. The old woman
gives them a magic ring to help them, but it does not fit either of them. They go to
White Doon anyway, but are killed by the giant. A month later Simon, the man Margaret
is in love with, comes to visit the old woman. It turns out that the couple whom
the giant killed were Simon’s wife and his brother. Simon now wants to kill the giant,
but the magic ring does not fit him, either. The only one it fits is Margaret herself,
and so she goes with Simon to White Doon to kill the giant. As it happens, Simon
falls asleep while she wrestles the giant to the ground (as St. Margaret does the devil)
using the method favored by legendary snake-maidens: she forces him down by
squeezing him three times. Then, ignoring his complaints at being vanquished by a
girl, she cuts off his head with a sword of light (and goes off with Simon).
Here again, as in the legends, is the white, other-world imagery (White Doon).
A monster (the giant) has to be overcome, and the hero cannot do it because
the ring does not fit him. It is Margaret’s fight, and in the vanquishing episode
 

(410), and Rumplestiltskin (AaTh 500) among others. Building on Ilana Dan’s structural
model of the ‘innocent persecuted heroine’ figure (The Innocent Persecuted
Heroine: An Attempt at a Model for the Surface Level of the Narrative Structure of
the Female Fairy Tale. In: Patterns in Oral Literature. eds. H. Jason/D. Segal. The
Hague/Paris 1977, 13–30), Jones describes the tales in the genre as being characterized
by three ‘acts’, as in a drama.These are: life at home where the heroine is the victim of
family members with whom she is in conflict; the period of meeting her mate in
which she comes to terms with her sexuality, overcomes obstacles and is married; and
life in her husband’s home where she is persecuted, usually after giving birth (Jones,
16, 26). Not every tale in the genre presents all three situations, but most present at
least two, and St. Margaret’s life can be included in the innocent persecuted heroine
genre on that basis.
46 Larminie (above, note 7) 130–138. As with “Lady Margaret” in some English versions
of the tale discussed above, it is tempting to attribute the name to the saint, but since
the late middle ages it has been such a common girl’s name in European languages
that it is har d to dra w the connection dir ectly.
47 Margaret is chosen because, just as Cinderella’s foot fits the slipper, Margaret’s finger
perfectly fits a gold ring of power.)
 

262 Karen Smith

(which very much echoes the language of St. Margaret’s devil-fighting episode)
she passes her initiation and then can proceed to marry Simon.
Union with the intended spouse
It is clear that the hagiographic life of St. Margaret is cognate with the category
of legends and folktales characterized as depicting “high-born women, seeking
to be set free, who turn into serpents”48. The figure of St. Margaret is of noble
birth. On a literal level she seeks deliverance from the dungeon, from the darkness,
and from the dragon. Spiritually she seeks salvation in the form of eternal
life in heaven with Christ. By accomplishing her own salvation without benefit
of an intervening hero figure, she is presented in the dual role of hero (whose
job is always to save the heroine) and heroine (whose job is to be innocent,
persecuted, and willing to marry the hero). Margaret herself is a serpent bride
whose reptilian form is also the monster she must slay. Both traditions play on
the theme of refusing offers of advantageous marriage, but in the snake-maiden
legends, the girl (in her hideous serpent form) is refused by her suitor and depends
on him for salvation. St. Margaret, on the other hand, does the refusing
in her narratives: refusing her father, her suitor, the dragon and the devil.
This interpretation helps explain St. Margaret’s place in the popular imagination
and suggests the appeal behind the persistence of her cult and her narrative.
St. Margaret’s role in her narrative is that of a hero; her biography is
marked by the episodes of noble birth, prophecy, exile, foster parents, dragonslaying,
and other events that are characteristic of the hero pattern49. The
popularity of St. Margaret as an intercessor for successful childbirth and general
fertility is not only a function of the power that she gets from her mastery
over her own body as a Christian virgin. It also derives from her association
with the snake-maiden’s connection to fertility as indicated by her supernatural
powers over life and death, wealth and sexuality. Furthermore, by reversing
the passive aspects of the snake-maiden heroine (who has to be saved by the
hero), St. Margaret appropriates for herself the courage of the (usually male)
hero as well. She acquires an aura of divinity from the snake-maiden, and in
addition does what the heroines of the snake-maiden legends cannot do for
themselves: instead of being liberated by the hero and then claimed by him,
she releases herself into the union with her chosen, supernatural spouse. As a
rare female hero, she not only saves the ‘innocent persecuted heroine’ (herself);
she also gets the right spouse (by remaining a loyal bride of Christ and
then accomplishing union with him through saintly death). Her association
 

(48 “Erlösung suchende Burgfrauen, die sich in Schlangen verwandeln.” My translation
of a section heading in an early 20th century collection of legends from Silesia
(Kühnau [above, note 5] 236).
49 See Dundes, A.: The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus. In: id.: Interpreting Folklore.
Bloomington/London 1980, 223–261.)
 

Snake-maiden Transformation Narratives in Hagiography and Folklore 263

with culturally traditional supernatural powers as well as her heroic reversal of
her traditional role contributed toward the ‘life’ becoming significant to religious
women in the later Middle Ages. Oral legends such as those exemplified by the
snake-maiden tradition are both extensions of, and commentaries upon, the
literary (such as Mélusine) and the canonically sanctioned (such as St. Margaret
of Antioch) versions found in late medieval collections and liturgies.
 

Abstract

In the Christian tradition of virgin martyr tales, the ‘lives’ of St. Margaret of Antioch
stand out as significant texts in the literatures of several medieval European languages.
The events of St. Margaret’s ‘life’ (such as defying her father’s authority, refusing to
marry, being cast into a dungeon and swallowed by a dragon) have been interpreted in
terms of the theological and psychological meaning they had for their readers, many of
whom were women engaging in various forms of religious practice, both in and out of
convents. These literary and historical interpretations miss the significance of oral tradition
and popular belief in the development of the narratives. A combination of approaches
– Propp’s structuralism and the hero pattern as synthesized by Dundes – makes
it possible to see St. Margaret’s life as an instance of the serpent damsel motif and to
compare the narratives with each other.
 

Zusammenfassung

In der christlichen Tradition der Legenden jungfräulicher Märtyrerinnen kommt der Vita
der hl. Margarete für die Literatur verschiedener mittelalterlicher europäischer Sprachen
besondere Bedeutung zu. Die Ereignisse ihres Lebens (Widerstand gegen die Autorität
ihres Vaters, Verweigerung der Heirat, Gefangenschaft im Kerker, Verschlingung durch
einen Drachen) sind bislang fast ausschließlich in bezug auf ihre theologische und psychologische
Bedeutung für die Leserinnen – vor allem fromme Lainnen und Klosterfrauen
– untersucht worden. In solchen literarischen und historischen Interpretationen
wird jedoch die bedeutende Rolle übergangen, die die mündliche Tradition und der
Volksglauben für die Entwicklung der Legende spielten. Eine Kombination zweier verschiedener
Ansätze – des Proppschen Strukturalismus sowie Dundes’ Synthese des Heldenlebenschemas
– ermöglicht einen Vergleich zwischen den Legenden der hl. Margarete
und den Schlangenjungfrausagen.
 

Résumé

Dans la tradition chrétienne des vierges martyres, la légende de Sainte Marguerite est
d’une importance particulière pour les lettres médiévales de plusieurs langues européennes.
Les événements de sa vie (défi du père, refus du mariage, imprisonnement dans un
cachot, engloutissement par un dragon) ont été surtout analysés par rapport aux implications
théologiques et psychologiques pour les lectrices qui étaient pour la plupart des
religieuses et des laïques pieuses. Toutefois, ces interprétations littéraires et historiques
ne tiennent pas compte du rôle important que la tradition orale et les croyances populaires
ont joué dans le développement de la légende. Une combinaison de deux approches –
le structuralisme de Propp et le schéma de la vie héroïque suivant la synthèse de Dundes –
permet de comparer la vie de Sainte Marguerite avec les légendes des dames blanches.