VERSION
Conte Type T433
Version 1002
1002
- THOMPSON, Folktale,101
Belonging to this same group of tales are two about serpents. In one of them (Type 433A), a huge serpent carries a princess into its castle. She kisses it and disenchants it. In the other (Type 433B), a childless queen bears a son who has the form of a serpent and who stays far away from home. He is disenchanted by a maiden, usually by bathing him. Both of these serpent stories are most popular in Scandinavia, though the first has also been reported in the Baltic countries and in Hungary. The second talc, known in Danish as Kung Lindorm, was given a thorough stady a generation ago by Axel Olrik. This has been recently elaborated in the light of newly available material by Anna Birgitta Waldemarson.(23) The peculiar distribution of the versions - some simple legends in India and complicated tales of exactly the same pattern in the Near East and in Denmark and southern Sweden-ihows upon analysis that there can be little doubt of the origin of the tale in he East, of its development into a story of the disenchanted serpent husband, followed by the adventures of the cast off wife ( either Type 451 or 707). This secondary development was accomplished in the Near East, and the tale, with both parts, seems to have been carried to Scandinavia without having left any important trace on the way.
28 Olrik, Danske Studier, 1904, pp. 1, 224; Waldemarson, "Kung Lindorm: en Orientalisk Saga i Dansk-Skänsk Sagorradition," Folkkultur (Meddelanden frän Lunds Universitets Folk-minnesarkiv), 1942, pp. 176-245.