The Snake Maiden (Germanic legend)
"The Snake Maiden" is a lesser-known Germanic legend collected by the Brothers Grimm, which illustrates themes of transformation and redemption. The story centers around an enchanted maiden, who, cursed to become a snake from the waist down, seeks liberation through a series of three kisses from a chaste youth. This tale, which has roots in various European cultures, explores the complexities of female social exclusion, as the maiden's monstrous form belies her noble lineage.
In the legend, a simple man named Leonhard stumbles upon a hidden cave where the maiden resides, adorned with a crown and guarding a treasure. Although he manages to kiss her twice, fear of her reaction prevents him from completing the task, leading him to leave with only a fraction of the treasure. This failure results in a grim fate for Leonhard, who succumbs to a life of moral degradation and never finds the cave again.
Symbolically, the snake embodies a duality; while often viewed negatively in Christian contexts, it also represents ancient life-giving forces in pagan traditions. The story invites readers to reflect on its enigmatic elements, such as the meaning of the treasure and the nature of the maiden's curse, as well as the cultural intersections of its time.
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Subject Terms
The Snake Maiden (Germanic legend)
Author: Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Time Period: 1701 CE–1850 CE
Country or Culture: Germany; Western Europe
Genre: Legend
Overview
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are famous the world over for their nineteenth-century collection of fairy tales, but as part of their life’s work to understand and preserve German culture, the brothers also collected legends. One such legend is “The Snake Maiden,” or saga 13, a mysterious story of an enchanted snake woman who seeks liberation from a curse. Though not well known today, the story of the snake maiden represents an oral legend that was once common throughout many parts of northern and western Europe.
The maiden swore she sprang from a royal line and race, but had been cursed and transformed into a monster. Nothing could save her except being kissed three times by a youth, whose chastity was certain and spirit undefiled; then she could regain her prior shape and form. She would relinquish to her savior the entire treasure, which had been kept hidden at that place for so many years.
“Grimm’s Saga 13: The Snake Maiden”In the Grimms’ version of the legend, a simple man walking along a gorge happens upon a mysterious cave that he enters with the aid of a lighted candle. Passing through a gate, a vault, and an arched chamber, he finds beautiful gardens and a castle. Inside the castle, he finds a lovely maiden who is human from the waist up but serpentine from the waist down. The maiden wears a crown and leads the man to an iron box guarded by dogs. Subduing the dogs, the maiden removes several pieces of silver and coins from the box and offers them to the man. She claims to be of royal lineage but says that she was cursed and changed into a monster. She promises that if a chaste youth kisses her three times, she will return to her full human form, and the youth will be rewarded with the entire treasure. Managing to kiss her only twice, the man fails in this endeavor and takes with him the few pieces of treasure he initially received. He is then taken by disreputable people to a brothel. Thus corrupted, he is never again able to find the cave entrance.
In its presentation of a woman banished to a supernatural realm from which she seeks freedom by means of three kisses from a morally upright man, the story evidently deals with female social exclusion. Yet the legend is puzzling in many ways: Why does the snake represent the maiden’s monstrosity? If she is a monster, why is her behavior benign? What is the meaning of the treasure? Why does the man fail to kiss her three times, and why does he end up forever cursed with an unchaste life? The story begins to make sense if it is understood in terms of the Christian and pagan cultures underlying it. A symbolic interpretation that investigates the snake’s significance in the pagan and Christian cultures that inform this story reveals the animal’s contradictory meanings as a sign. Reviled as a demonic sign in the Christian religion, the snake for ancient Europeans symbolized an immortal and universal life-giving force, and snake goddesses represented this force as maternal in nature. Although this positive symbolism was not dominant in European culture when the Grimm brothers wrote, several of their legends and fairy tales present snakes as benign magical animals with powers consistent with the ancient symbolism, and scholars of Germanic folklore and mythology confirm this view. A symbolic analysis of the snake in this story and in related legends and fairy tales shows that the maiden’s serpentine curse may well incorporate vestiges of divine symbols from ancient times. These traces of ancient culture help the reader to understand, if not resolve, the story’s intriguing puzzles.
Summary
Like many legends, the Grimm brothers’ “The Snake Maiden” begins by naming the time and location of the events it reports. The “incident” is said to occur in approximately 1520 near Basel, Switzerland, and involves a character named Leonhard, or Lienimann, who is introduced as “a foolish and simple man” who stutters. While walking along a gorge called the Schlaufgewoelbe, described as an underground corridor that runs from Augst to Basel, the man is able to go farther than anyone previously had gone. With a “consecrated wax candle,” he enters a cave and finds an iron gate leading to a large vault, which in turn leads to a larger arched chamber. The chamber leads to beautiful green gardens, in the center of which stands what appears to be a castle or royal hunting lodge. Inside the structure, he finds a beautiful maiden wearing a crown and with her long hair loose over her shoulders. She is human in form to her waist but appears as an ugly snake below her navel. She leads the man to an iron box guarded by two black dogs. She silences and bridles the dogs and then opens the box with keys hanging from her neck. From the box she takes several coins and pieces of silver and offers them to the man. He brings these objects out of the gorge with him, and the story then states, “Many years later he showed these treasures to all who asked” (Grimm and Grimm, “Saga 13”).
The story then describes the plight of the maiden, who swears that “she sprang from a royal line and race, but had been cursed and transformed into a monster.” The only remedy that could restore her to full human form was to be “kissed three times by a youth, whose chastity was certain and spirit undefiled.” If such a youth were to liberate her, he would receive all of the treasure that had been in the mysterious hiding place for so long. Leonhard said that he had kissed the maiden twice, but her reaction frightened him away. Each time he kissed her, she “made such a frightful grimace, probably from the immense joy of unexpected redemption,” that he decides not to kiss her a third time because he fears that she will destroy him. Instead, he decides to leave and takes with him the few treasures she has offered. His fate is not a happy one, as he is said to be taken by people of “ill repute” and spends the rest of his life in a brothel. Described as “besmirched and imbruted” (Grimm and Grimm, “Saga 13”), sullied and degraded, he is said to never again be able to find the entrance to the underground cave, which frequently causes him to weep.
Karen Smith reports that the Grimms’ legend is in fact one version of a snake-maiden story that occurred in many forms in the northern and western parts of Europe from the late Middle Ages on (“Snake-maiden” 252). The essential elements of the story include a woman of noble birth who has been cursed and forced to exist either in her own human form or in the form of a snake. She is banished to the ruins of a church or castle or to the sea. The maiden frequently wears a gold crown or carries keys, or both. She is forced to guard the treasure but offers to relinquish it to the one who will kiss her three times and liberate her from the spell. In other versions of the story, the maiden is described as a woman wearing pure white, who may appear as a ghost with a human appearance, whereas at other moments, she appears as a snake. Sometimes the hero must kiss the snake directly, allow it to be wrapped around his neck, or claim the treasure that is guarded by the snake or a black dog. In some versions, the liberator must remove the key from the snake’s mouth or claim the snake’s golden crown (253). Many of these elements are present in the Grimm brothers’ legend and thus identify it as belonging to the group of stories sharing these essential characteristics.
Bibliography
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