The Serpent Prince or The Snake Prince is a Hungarian folk tale collected by Hungarian-American scholar Linda Dégh, featuring the marriage between a human maiden and a husband in serpent guise.
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, and shares motifs with other tales of the region, like Serbian Again, The Snake Bridegroom, and Romanian Trandafiru and The Enchanted Pig. According to Hungarian scholars, the snake appears as the form of the enchanted husband in most of the Hungarian variants.
Sources
Dégh collected the tale in the 1950s from Hungarian teller Zsuzsanna Pálkó.
Summary
Pálkó's narration begins thus: a king complains to his wife that she has not born him any child. The queen questions why God has not given her children, and asks for a snake son, so that they may finally have offspring. Just as she says it, a snake son appears. The king declares they must hide the animal from prying eyes, so that no one may know they have a snake son.
They hide the animal son in a room and he grows up there. Years later, when he has grown very large, he begins to whistle so loud it shakes the castle. His mother pays him a visit to question what is the reason for the whistling. He explains he has come of age and desires a mate, and suggests the princess of a neighbouring kingdom shall be the perfect candidate.
So his mother summons the princess and she comes to the castle to find out more about her prospective husband. The queen leads the princess into the prince's quarters. When she sees the giant snake, she screams and faints. The queen sprinkles some water on her, who comes to, and explains the prince is the snake, albeit a harmless one. The princess refuses to marry the snake prince and tries to escape the room, whose windows are barred with iron. The queen and the king lock her up with the snake prince and leave them be.
This situation goes for a week: the princess tries to think of a way out, but everywhere she looks the windows and the doors are barred. She does not even touch her food, choosing to wither away slowly than marrying the snake. Despite his bride's grievances, the snake prince tries to convince the girl he means no harm to her. He then begins to crawl into their bridal bed, to the princess's horror. For two nights, she tries to sneak away from him, somewhat successfully.
The third night, after a quick rest, she wakes up to a handsome man beside her. She wakes the man up and question his presence there: he tells her he is the snake, but wears a snakeskin at night "because he has too", since it is his "cloak". The princess feels more at ease and they live as husband and wife, she becoming pregnant some time later.
Despite the revelation, the prince does not show his parents his human form, which annoys the princess. She visits a sorceress nearby and tells her her situation. The sorceress advises her to take the snakeskin and burn it in the stove.
That night, when the snake prince is asleep, the princess wakes up, takes the snakeskin off of him. She creeps into the kitchen, lights up the stove and tosses the skin in. She returns to her chambers to a awakened prince, who asks her about the smell of burning. She lies that it is only some tufts of her hair burning, but he knows she is lying. The prince then explains that he was to wear the cloak for one more month, and curses her not to bear their children until he embraces her again; and that a ring on her finger shall stay there until he puts his finger on her. He then gives her a dry hazel-rod she must water with her tears until it bears fruit, and a grain of wheat she must plant and with the harvest bake a bread; then she can go after him. Then he vanishes.
The princess tells her parents-in-law that the snake prince has disappeared, and goes to water the dry hazel-rod and the grain of wheat. After a long time, she takes the rod and the bread and starts a journey. In a forest, she sees a light in the distance - an old woman (the mother of the Moon)'s house, where she takes shelter for the night. Her son comes home and is inquired about the whereabouts of the Serpent Prince. The old woman directs the princess to her aunt, and gives her a gold bobbin.
The situation repeats twice in the next two houses (of the Sun and of the Winds), and she gains a golden reel and a golden spool and ball of thread; only on the third house she finally learns where her husband is: the Hurricane Wind tells her he went to his castle and he can take her there.