The Snake’s Wet-Nurse

“Once upon a time there was a poor woman,” the snake narrated, “who went one morning to a meadow to mow grass, and she took her little baby along, who still drank from her breast. After she had breast-fed the baby and it had fallen asleep, she laid it gently down on a grassy slope, where she softly and carefully made it a bed in the shade of an old and hollow willow-tree. But in the trunk of this willow there lived a snake.

The woman diligently attended to her work until the midday hour, when she laid down her scythe and went over to her beloved child to feed him again, and to enjoy her own simple meal as well. When she had finished the latter, she placed the baby to her breast and hummed it a lullaby; and as the day was very hot, and the labour of mowing had tired the woman, she fell into a slumber herself, and the baby let go of its mother’s breast and fell asleep in her arms.

All this had been observed by the little snake which lived in the trunk of the old willow, because it had crept forth to sun itself and to bask in the hot midday air; and because we snakes like to drink milk, it crept softly over, attached itself to the young mother’s breast, and drank the sweet mother’s milk with relish. But great was the horror felt by that woman when she awoke from her slumber and perceived what kind of uninvited guest she was feeding. Then the old enmity between womankind and snakes was aroused to the highest pitch, but the snake was only too happy where it was, and the woman could not tear it off, for at the very first attempt the snake clung on so tightly that it hurt, and so the young mother had to expect that the snake would bite her if she offered it any violence.

Now there remained to the woman only the one breast for her baby, while the snake claimed the other, and it did not let go, particularly as the milk helped it to grow wondrously; and the baby was not harmed in the slightest by having a snake for a milk-sister, but rather thrived likewise and competed with the snake in growth. The woman could have been quite satisfied, for where snakes live, good fortune and blessings come calling, had it not been for the mindless preconception and the fear that the snake would bite her, as if we snakes had a sting in our mouths. Humans also call us ugly while believing themselves to be beautiful, and their understanding is so narrow that they are unable to see that the whole of creation cannot show forth another creature of such perfect beauty as a snake: we have curvature and fullness of form, free from the indecency of ugly hairs and bristles; there is grace in our every movement, and full vigour in the irreproachable sinuosity of our bodies, which are not disfigured by angular, taloned limbs or stumps. Now, that woman continued to pine away, and the snake continued to feed from her, having already attained to the thickness of a human arm, and then it was time for the child to be weaned. But the snake would not let itself be weaned; it grew and grew, and the woman had to make a suspensory in which she carried the snake’s heavy body while its jaws remained firmly fixed to her breast. To make matters worse, the woman had to suffer the derision of her neighbours, who conferred on her the name, ‘Snake Wet-Nurse’.

For ten months that woman had been carrying the snake, when a stranger happened to come to the village, and hearing the tale that was on everyone’s lips, he went to the woman and saw her guest, and how she was wasting away, and how miserable she was because the snake would not leave her – and he said to her, ‘Woman, I will assuredly rid you of this snake if you trust me and follow me into the forest, and will not be afraid when you see yet more snakes. None of them will do you harm, I guarantee it.’

This man was a snake-charmer, and the woman trustingly followed him into the nearby forest, where he described a circle with his staff in a treeless place and gave piercing whistles on a small pipe. Then there was a swishing and a rustling through the grass and the forest leaves and the bushes, and snakes appeared from all directions, large ones and small ones, so that fear and anguish took hold of the woman, and she wanted to jump out of the circle – but the conjuror signalled to her, intimating that she stand still; and he kept blowing, and then all the snakes began to raise up their heads and upper bodies into the air, as straight as a taper, and to dance; and all of a sudden the snake at the woman’s breast became restless, its body made gentle movements, its head let go of her breast, and it swiftly slipped out of the pouch, slid down to the ground, and wriggled towards the other snakes to dance with them while the conjuror played lively pieces on his pipe.

And so the woman was free all at once, and she was delighted; she could now work unhindered again, she was no longer the object of an unreasonable repulsion on the part of her fellow-beings, who believed the poor woman was compelled to carry the lindworm around because she had committed goodness knows what sin, and she raised her lively child with loving care.

When the child was several years old, he ran one day into the nearby forest with the neighbours’ children to look for berries. It was now almost evening but the children had not yet come back home. The mother sat with her work at her door, looking every now and then towards the exit from the forest. Suddenly she heard, coming from that direction, children screaming horribly all at once, and she saw a bunch of them hurtling out of the wood, fleeing as precipitately as they could towards the village, but her own little child, who could not yet run like the bigger ones, was not among them. And then a boy yelled: ‘A wolf! A wolf!’ and a second yelled, ‘A bear! A big bear!’ and a third, ‘A snake, a horrible snake!’ and the mother’s heart filled with terror and she leapt to her feet and hurried towards the forest.

In vain did she ask the children who ran past her in feverish haste about her own child; no one would answer her, fear drove all of them past her and away. Directly afterwards, the woman saw a large wolf which was making some peculiar leaps but then collapsed before her eyes and gave up the ghost. Horrified, the woman rushed past the wolf and reached the edge of the forest, where a dreadful sight presented itself to her eyes. A roaring bear was rearing up, not towards the woman, but in a struggle with a large snake which had tightly coiled itself around him and was constricting his throat – and no sooner had she seen him standing upright than he crashed down, and beside the place where he lay on the ground, throwing out his breath and thrashing – oh miracle! – there lay, unscathed and sweetly slumbering, the woman’s child, and she flung herself at him with a loud cry of joy. Now the snake uncoiled itself from the neck and body of the bear, and a wave of cold horror swept over the woman anew – she knew this snake. But the snake said to her, ‘You do not need to fear me. Snakes do not play false and are not ungrateful, as you humans imagine and persuade yourselves, stamping us as symbols of your own hatred. It was you who suckled me so big and strong that I was able to exanimate the wolf and the bear who threatened danger to your child. I have returned good for good! Farewell!’ – And it wriggled into the bushes.”