Patreon Membership! Merch! Book! Etc!

 Okay, so! The winning pin design was this one:

And now to discuss what we're doing with the pins. As you may have noticed, I'm really trying to improve Patreon membership and engagement for 2024. This includes a lot of new rewards for various support tiers, as well as plans to, like, actually post things on Patreon regularly.

One of our new things is that everyone who is a member on the page by January 1, 2024 gets one of these pins. This means free members, paid members, members who signed up on January 1, and members who've been here for five years. Everyone gets a free pin. (Unless you're not comfortable giving out an address, in which case I guess you don't get a pin, because how would I send it to you? I guess you can have a copy of the file so you can make your own pin at home?)

Another new thing is that everyone who's a member by January 1 is entered in a drawing for a free, signed copy of either Shards of Glass or Lindworm, your choice, with a personalized message. All free members get one entry; all paid members at all tiers get two entries. I'm giving away 5 books. (To five different people—if your name is entered twice and gets drawn twice, you only get one book. I'll draw again.) If you don't want a copy, you can waive it, or you can take it and give it to a friend.

(It is worth noting that given the current member breakdown, there are 7 people total who are eligible for 1 of 5 books, and 50% of entries go to my family members. So if there seems to be a significant bias in the drawing results, well. That's just math. Become a member to improve the math!)

https://www.patreon.com/konglindorm

The book is here! The book is here!

https://www.waxheartpress.com/books

Lindworm: Chapter 1

(This is a little over half of the first chapter I had planned to share the whole thing, but then I realized it was 7,000 words. You can buy and read the rest of Lindworm here!) 

“Thank you so much for thinking of me,” Marit said, “but really I would rather not marry a monster.”

Marit would not have thought herself the sort of person to talk back to kings, had she ever had cause to contemplate such matters. But then she never would have thought the king the sort of person to sacrifice a girl to a lindworm, and yet here she was, the third victim.

She was only seventeen, and this wedding was a death sentence.

Six months ago, Prince Harald had set out to find a bride, and had been stopped by a great serpent in the road. Since then, the serpent—the lindworm—had eaten two foreign princesses, both after a sham of a wedding. Both women had thought they were coming to marry Prince Harald.

Here, in the forest outside the capital city, rumors had flown. Rumors that they would shortly be at war with both kingdoms that had lost a princess, and rumors, more interesting to their small family with no members likely to be sent to the battlefield, of the lindworm, of why a man-eating dragon would be welcomed to the palace and fed. Rumors that said the lindworm was Prince Harald’s brother, that the king humored it instead of killing it because the monster was family.

Marit didn’t know how much truth there might be to such rumors. She didn’t know how a queen could bear and birth a serpent, but she did know the world was full of strange, incomprehensible things.

The king stared at her, his men standing stiffly by. It had not, of course, been thoughtfulness that led him to her cottage in the woods. Marit knew this, and knew that the marriage was not optional, and that one could not speak to a king in this manner and expect to keep one’s head. But when one has already been sentenced to death, such things as respect for royalty matter very little.

“It is not an offer,” the king informed her when he found his voice. “It is a command, and you may choose to obey or not, but willing or unwilling, you will find yourself before a priest in my great hall one week from now.”

One week, she thought. One week to live the rest of her life. She could run—could she run?

No, if the king was leaving her a few days to say her goodbyes, it was only because he knew she could not run. There would be guards posted. She would be caught and brought back. She would still end the week dead, and likely her father and sister, too, if the king suspected they had helped her. As they certainly would.

Her family—they were away from the house now, deeper into the woods, scavenging. There was little left to eat, their winter stores almost empty by March, and the ground still too frozen to begin the year’s planting. She had stayed behind to tend to the animals, too likely to slow them down after twisting her ankle yesterday, falling from a tree; it had barely hurt, and would be healed by tomorrow. The king would be long gone before they returned, and it would fall to her to explain her upcoming death.

“There will be a bride price, of course,” said the king.

Marit wasn’t quite sure what a bride price was, thought it may be like a dowry—she’d sewn items, slowly, over the last several years for her dowry, but doubted the lindworm would demand her linens as well as her life.

The king went on to explain the bride price, the amount of money her father would be given for this farce of a marriage—the opposite of a dowry, then, and a staggering amount.

It had been a long, brutal winter following a short, dry summer, and for that price Marit may have volunteered herself. Any number of young women may have; it was enough to save not only their own small farm, but those of a few near neighbors. Enough to buy a second goat, a few more chickens, enough to pay all of their debts in the city and have their broken tools repaired.

For such a sum, she would have volunteered. She would have gladly given her life to so dramatically improve the lives of her father and younger sister.

But the king had not asked. The king had demanded, and Marit knew she would resent him for however many days she had left to do so.

He left her, as she’d expected, with guards posted nearby, and she led the animals back to their shed and let herself back into the cottage, not wanting to look at them, their clean uniforms with shiny brass buttons, their polished boots slowly gathering mud, their faces as they avoided her eyes, because they knew, must know, that this was wrong, and yet they were loyal to their king, and would not let her run.

~

Marit watched through the back window, working idly on her knitting, unable to stay focused on the difficult stitch she’d meant to master this week, until she saw her sister and her father coming out from the woods. She ran to meet them, and hurried them inside before they could ask about the soldiers scattered about. And then she told them.

“Why you?” Greta cried. “Why you?”

She hadn’t asked how he’d chosen her, out of all the unwed maids within walking distance of the palace. She didn’t think she wanted to know why it was her that must die, and not Annette, who had no father to protect her, or Martine, who was more beautiful, or Signe or Gretchen or any of the other girls she knew.

She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who wished death on her friends, either.

Besides, the lindworm had already eaten two women, and there was no reason to expect he might stop at a third. They may all be dead before this ended, Gretchen and Signe and Annette and Martine, and the younger girls, Greta and her friends, all the forest, all the city, someday all the kingdom sacrificed to satisfy the appetite of a monster that should have been killed the moment it showed itself to Prince Harald.

She could only hope that the fathers of the dead princesses would declare war, that they would kill her king and his lindworm with him before the whole country was devoured.

King Olaf had always been known as a kind and noble king. He’d lowered taxes and held festivals and been much loved, before these last six months, and Marit didn’t understand. She didn’t understand how a good king could become a bad one overnight because of one monster.

Maybe it was his son. Marit would throw the whole world over for Greta, she knew, but she’d been at Greta’s side since she’d emerged from their mother’s stomach, been the first to hold the new baby, tiny and wrinkled and red, getting blood all over her vest, as their father had said his goodbyes to Mama, only turning his attention to Marit and the new baby when his wife was gone.

For Greta, for her father, for Mama if she’d lived, Marit would do anything. But if a boar walked out of the woods and claimed to be her long lost brother, she wouldn’t take him at his word, wouldn’t escort him into the city to trample the blacksmith just because he asked her.

She didn’t think the king could hide a paternal relationship with a lindworm for several years. They must have met only when he stopped the prince on the road. And Marit didn’t understand.

She gathered Greta in her arms and listened to the younger girl cry, unable to shed any tears for herself, unsure why. She looked over Greta’s head at her father, and saw the same desperate sadness in his eyes that she had seen when she was five years old, and her mother was dying in childbirth. Her father loved her, but he could do nothing to save her, and they all knew it. He could not defy the king; to try would only make him angry, would likely risk Greta’s life too.

He came and wrapped himself around them both, and Marit thought, but was not quite sure, that he wept too. She sat, dry-eyed, between them, for long hours, until it was time for dinner and bed.

They watched out the window as a new group of soldiers marched in, and the first group left. At least they weren’t expected to feed and board their prison guards.

In the morning they found that the soldiers would let Marit go where she pleased, but one or two would always follow, from a respectful distance. No one followed her sister or father, so they went in three different directions, to the neighbors and to the city, Marit to make her farewells, and all of them to give warning. The king is feeding maidens to his lindworm. Marit is the first; she will not likely be the last. Send your daughters quietly to family in other cities, if you can. Marry them quickly to boys in the village, if you can. We do not know why the lindworm wants weddings, but he does, so make your daughters unweddable.

Gretchen, when Marit told her, said it probably had to do with a dragon’s fondness for virgins. She then said that if the king came to her, she would rid herself of virginity with the first man she could find before she would go to the lindworm, with the whole town to watch as proof, if necessary.

Gretchen’s older brother, the only other person there save the guards, too far away to overhear, made a sound of disapproval in the back of his throat, but said nothing.

Marit wondered if it was too late to try Gretchen’s plan for herself, and concluded it probably was—if the lindworm demanded a virgin, then the soldiers would not let her cease to be one. The small chance of success wasn’t worth giving herself to a man she didn’t want and wouldn’t be allowed to keep. And the kind of man who might cooperate with such a plan would likely not make it a happy experience to cherish in her final days. She reminded Gretchen of the soldiers before moving on to the next neighbors.

~

Marit spend her days wandering, mostly. There was work to be done, and she helped, or tried to—her father said not to trouble herself with anything in these last few days, and when she insisted, she often found herself too distracted to finish, or at least to finish well, haunted constantly by imaginings of what the lindworm might be like, how it might feel to be eaten. She remembered breaking a finger in a slamming door as a child, the sharp crack of it, the pain. She imagined the pain and the cracking both amplified as an enormous snake swallowed her whole, as snakes will do, and then, bizarrely, imagined cowering on a banquet table as the lindworm sliced her to pieces with a knife held in its tail, popping each slice into its mouth one at a time, sometimes dipping a slice in a butter-sauce first.

She still had not cried, though she had found herself several times laughing hysterically at humorless jokes she couldn’t explain. Greta didn’t need to know about the butter sauce.

When there were two days left before the wedding, she went out intending to collect eggs from the chickens, and her feet carried her, instead, deeper into the woods.

The guards followed at a distance.

Marit stopped when she saw an old woman ahead. She was short, with white hair spilling from her cap, bright and cheerful in a blue skirt and red vest, and she smiled like an old friend at Marit, and asked why she was so sad.

Marit wasn’t a fool. She knew how it was with mysterious old women in forests, knew they were to be respected. Knew how often they carried magic within themselves. Knew that to cross them was idiocy, and that to be kind and respectful could change the course of one’s life.

So Marit told the woman her troubles, and the woman smiled again. “It will be all right,” she said. “If you obey me, it will be all right. Now, here is what you must do.”

Marit wasn’t foolish enough to think she might live through this, but she wasn’t foolish enough to ignore the gift of a wise woman in the wood, either, even when that gift was the strangest advice she’d ever been given. Wear ten shifts beneath your dress, have milk and lye and whips waiting in your bedchamber.

She was already going to die; what did it matter if the king’s servants thought her a madwoman?

Ten shifts, though, would not be an easy thing to manage. Marit had two shifts, and two night shifts, which were wool instead of linen, with sleeves too wide to be hidden beneath her dress. She would have to rip them off. Greta owned the same, not much smaller as she was tall for her age, but Marit could not deprive her sister of all her undergarments, so only took one day shift and one night shift from her. That brought her to six, and four more yet to find. She couldn’t buy them; the king’s money wouldn’t come to her father until the day after the wedding. She had her dowry linens, unneeded now, and could use the fabric to make more shifts. But she had two days left to live, and wasn’t willing to spend her last precious moments sewing. With Greta’s help she converted one white bedsheet into a shift, but would sacrifice no more time when she had so many goodbyes to say—to friends, to livestock, to trees and streams and every future she had ever imagined for herself.

She begged one more shift from Olga, whose family was wealthier and who had one to spare for an acquaintance going to her death. Eight shifts, eight, two short, and no time to find more. It would have to be enough.

~

The morning she was to be taken away, Marit’s father pulled out her mother’s wedding dress and offered it to her.

Marit shook her head. “It should go to Greta. To a real wedding.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” her father said. “Take it, so your mother can be with you, as Greta and I cannot.”

So Marit put on her eight shifts, and she put on the dress. She was a bit smaller than her mother had been when she married, and it still fit despite the extra layers. Greta had wanted to make her a crown of flowers to match, but there were still few flowers in bloom, so she wove the crown from evergreen branches instead, coating her hands in sap, and placed it carefully on her sister’s head.

The three of them waited, solemnly, for Marit to be taken away. There was nothing left to say. All of the goodbyes were finished, all of the plans made. The next morning someone would come from the palace with the bride price and whatever was left of Marit to be buried. Her father would sell the animals and the house, give them away if he couldn’t sell them fast enough, and he would hire a wagon to take them far, far from the capital, to start a new life where the lindworm would never touch Greta. They’d gone over the details last night. Greta had cried again.

Marit still hadn’t cried, and thought she might be able to, now, but would not let herself; she didn’t want her tears seen by whoever took her away. She found she was more angry than sad. She felt a sharpness growing within her. Her life was forfeit, and so too was her sense of obligation to respect, to loyalty. The king, the queen, the prince, the priests who’d performed the weddings and the soldiers and couriers who’d stood by—damn them, she thought, damn them all, and damn the idea she owed them the barest amount of anything.

The king came to fetch her himself, and she refrained from spitting in his face only because of the guards that surrounded him, the fear they might kill her where she stood and cost her father the bride price.

The king was different, not angry and demanding as he had been a week ago, but stiff with an awkwardness that might almost be shame. Marit hugged her father and Greta one last time, and followed him back toward the city, his guards forming a circle around them. She didn’t care that he may feel shame; she had enough anger by now for the both of them.

He was quiet, and Marit didn’t want quiet. Not quite understanding the compulsion, she found herself goading him.

“What will happen after this?” she asked, and the king looked at her, then quickly away again. It was a long walk on foot, and she didn’t know why a king wouldn’t take a carriage, but she didn’t mind the extra time in her forest.

“You will be prepared for the wedding by lady’s maids. The wedding will be in the great hall, and after that we will have a banquet.”

“Not tonight,” Marit said, spurred by the thought of Annette being sent hundreds of miles away to an uncle she’d never met, of Gretchen searching for a man to defile her rather than be eaten. “Not to me. What will happen to your kingdom? After me, you’ll kill off every maid in the country, and then I suppose you’ll have to go to war, and find slaves to feed his appetite? Discipline is important for growing boys, Your Majesty. Learn to say no to your son.”

He raised a hand as if to slap her, and she tilted her chin forward, daring him—let him hit her, here surrounded by a small army, let all these soldiers, already uneasy with their roles, go home and report to their friends and families that their king was a man who struck defenseless maidens.

He lowered his hand, leaving Marit oddly disappointed. It would have been another reason to be angry, and her anger was protecting her from her fear.

The king sighed heavily. “We all do foolish things for our children.”

She wondered if he meant the lindworm, or only Prince Harald, who could not be married until it was satisfied. It didn’t matter—the result was the same for her.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said, suddenly exhausted. Maybe a king could afford to do foolish things for his children. Her own father had to be sensible—foolishness would only have hurt Greta. She felt the anger draining away, the fear rising up again. She didn’t want to die.

~

They arrived at the palace from a side gate, not taking the wide, paved road beneath the cherry trees, where any number of people might have seen their arrival. The king and his soldiers handed her off to a large group of women, some more elegant than others, and she asked him, before he left, what time the wedding would be.

“At eight o’clock,” he said. “Will that give you enough time to prepare?” One of the more elegant women assured him it would, and he told her, “Give the girl whatever she wants. It’s her wedding day, after all.” He laughed, unamused, more bitter than cruel, and then he was gone.

“Is there anything special we can do for you, miss?” asked one of the plainer women, who was likely a maid.

Marit thought of the old woman in the forest. “This is going to sound a little strange.”

All of the more plainly dressed women left to carry out her last request, leaving Marit with a flock of beautiful women whose most simple everyday clothes were likely ten times more expensive than her mother’s wedding dress. They tried to have her out of it, into borrowed silks instead, but she refused. It was the last gift from her father, the only familiar thing in this place. She kept her evergreen crown as well, but let them take it away long enough to clean away the sap, rubbing it from the branches and brushing it out of her hair.

They re-braided her hair into a more elaborate style, stringing in gemstones to match her dress, and applied powders and creams to her face, which itched and made her sneeze. She watched them carefully, picking out one who seemed both kind and fancy enough to know little of a peasant’s daily life. She drew her away from the crowd and explained, in a whisper, “I haven’t any underthings. I only own the one shift, and I left it for my sister, so she would have one to wear on laundry day. I didn’t think it would matter, when I’m only to die tonight, but I’m—I’m embarrassed to have all these fine people watching me, thinking that if the light hits just so they’ll see I’m not dressed properly.”

The woman believed, somehow, that a peasant girl might have come to a royal wedding with no undergarments, and offered to find a spare shift.

“Could I have two, please?” The woman raised her eyebrows, and Marit ducked her head. “It’s a tradition—I know it shan’t be a real wedding night, but it’s a tradition to make the groom work a little harder the first time.”

The woman believed the tradition she’d never heard of, as well, and came back shortly with two more shifts, beautiful, silken things, bringing Marit to the required ten.

The next problem came when she realized the women had no intention of leaving her alone while she took off her wedding dress and put on the shifts, which was awkward for more reasons than the eight shifts she already wore. She explained that she was not accustomed to being seen undressed by strangers, and finally they left her, for the first moment of privacy she’d had in hours, and the last she expected to have in her life.

She took off the dress and put on the shifts. She paused to look in the mirror—a thing she’d heard of but never before seen—and wondered if that was what she truly looked like, or only the effect of the powders and creams. She pulled the dress back on, took a few deep breaths—she had not cried yet, she would not cry now—and reopened the door so that the women could help re-fasten the dress in the back.

They set the evergreen crown back on her head, and took her to the priest that would read her last rites.

The hall where they held the wedding was gorgeous, with shining wood floors and dark walls covered in rosemåling, blue and gold and red. All the court was seated when she arrived, dressed in their finest clothes, looking horrified. She recognized the king and the queen and the prince, familiar from a dozen parades, sitting in the front row. The rest were strangers.

And then she saw the lindworm.

It was the height of six or seven men, white like a maggot, or the mold on stale bread. It had dark wings on its back, too small to hold its weight in flight, and shiny white fangs quite visible even when its mouth was shut. It had no legs. There was a crown balanced at the top of its head, the size a man would wear, which might have been funny if it hadn’t planned to eat her.

It was staring at her with an expression of mild curiosity, recognizable because its eyes were the eyes of a man, over-large, but still small in its serpent head, the same shade of blue as a dozen young men she’d seen in the city.

 

 

Transformation Through Love

I've talked before about the transforming power of love, and specifically about the transforming power of love in "Prince Lindworm." But that was a 20+ page academic essay, and who wants to read a 20+ page academic essay? (Although, if you do, it's here.) So let's talk about it again, in a more casual setting. 

We've gone over the bizarro transformation sequence before, but let's run through it again for anyone who's new here: Girl forced to marry snake monster with history of eating wives. Girl wears 10 shifts under her wedding dress. Lindworm asks girl to take off shift, girl demands lindworm take off skin first. Lindworm complies, repeat 10 times. Girl whips nasty mass of skinless lindworm with whips dipped in lye. Girl dunks nasty mass of skinless, whipped lindworm in tub of milk. Girl embraces nasty mass of sticky, skinless, whipped lindworm. Lindworm turns into hot guy.

Now, the majority of the transformation process is extremely violent. It also sort of matches up with the Catholic sacrament of penance, which is consistent with the whole story being a Christian allegory, which you can read about here. And transformation through violence is certainly an established pattern in folklore, as we see most prominently in The Frog King, but also in more minor forms in a number of stories from throughout Europe. Which I will talk about more in a future blog.

But today we're going to focus on that last step. On that embrace.

There are a few things to keep in mind here. Firstly, hugging a dragon-thing that wants to eat you? Really gross and unpleasant. Secondly, hugging any sort of creature that has, through various abuses, become a quivering mass of exposed muscle and veins, likely bleeding profusely? Really, really gross and unpleasant. Thirdly, is "embrace" a euphemism? Maybe. Let's not dwell on the logistics of that. Fourthly, this girl is the lindworm's third bride, which probably means she's the third shot at transformation. An old woman in the forest told her what to do; there's no reason to believe she didn't give the same instructions to the two brides the lindworm ate, even if the text doesn't spell this out; there's a strong tradition in folklore of three people speaking to a mysterious old woman, and the first two ignoring her and dying.

So, my theory: the first two girls may have ignored the instructions entirely, but even if they didn't, they wouldn't have been able to complete the last step. Because it's the last step that makes our heroine remarkable. The last step is a kindness. To take up in your arms a disgusting, suffering thing, which would have destroyed you given the chance, to provide comfort - that takes a special kind of person.

A lot of weird, creepy things went into making the lindworm a man. But ultimately, the thing that changed him was one moment of kindness.

Buy my book here!

Transformation Through Violence

There are a lot of enchanted bridegroom stories out there. And there are a lot of different ways for the spells to be broken. Although a lot of them are at least…subtly sexual in nature. Sometimes, as in the case of the original French novel “Beauty and the Beast,” it’s literally sex that breaks the spell, although this often gets sanitized in translation to an agreement to marry. In stories like “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” it’s sharing a bed for a full year without seeing the enchanted bridegroom’s face. 

In fact, this is also an element in “Prince Lindworm”—she embraces him, and when they wake in the morning he’s a man. More about that later, although we won’t get into the sex, exactly, because that’s not really my thing.

But before that part, she makes him shed more layers of skin than can possibly be healthy, then whips him. With lye. Which, just. Ouch.

(And after that there’s the part where she dips him in milk, which has clear baptismal elements, but why milk? I still don’t know. Someday I’ll figure that one out.)

So here we’re going to talk about the transformations that are about violence instead of sex or love. There are stories like “Hans My Hedgehog,” where no harm is actually inflicted on the enchanted bridegroom, only on whatever facilitates his transformation—in most of these variants, it’s an animal skin, which is burned by the bride figure in the story. Also, in most of these stories, the bridegroom has the ability to go back and forth between forms, and it’s the bride who gets fed up and puts a stop to the transformations. It’s probably no surprise that transformation-through-violence stories feature brides who are a little less friendly and sympathetic than most.

But the only fairy tale I know of that features such explicit violence as a catalyst for transformation (though I’m sure there are others out there; I can only know so many stories) is “The Frog Prince”—you can read what I’ve written about that in the past here.

This does, of course, include variants of what we’re going to call the Frogged Bridegroom, specifically. (There are a surprising number of frog-based enchanted bridegroom stories. Which, for the record, should not be confused with frog bride stories—eventually I’m going to make a post about the Russian “Frog Princess.”) So we’ve got the German “Frog King” and the Scottish “The Well of the World’s End,” among several others, but we’re going to focus on those two, as they’re the ones I have hard copies of on hand at the moment.

In “The Frog King,” the frog tries to get in bed with the princess, and she responds by picking him up and flinging him into the wall. Which, for a frog, is pretty much a death sentence. But instead of going splat, he turns into a hot dude who, inexplicably, decides to marry her. (I mean, I guess his eagerness to get in her bed while still a frog indicates a certain romantic interest, but for me, a crush would not survive attempted murder. Although, does it count as murder when the victim is a pervy amphibian?)

In “The Well of the World’s End,” a girl agrees to do whatever a frog asks for one night in exchange for a favor. This frog also gets in bed with the girl, but her subsequent violence isn’t an understandable reaction to that skeeviness—the last thing the frog asks her to do before the night is over is chop off his head. Which she does, and, bam! Handsome prince. (Gonna make a full blog about this story too—it has a lot more nuance than “The Frog King.”)

So there’s a significant difference, obviously, between these two stories—one girl is attacking her enchanted bridegroom, and one is doing something she’s been asked to do to help him. And “Prince Lindworm” exists, weirdly, in the middle.

Is our girl’s initial attack a response to unwanted sexual advances? No, because she was given instructions on what to do before she even met the lindworm. But also, sort of, maybe? I mean, she knew she was going to be marrying the lindworm, so unwanted sexual advances are likely a given. And the fact that he was willing to shed several layers of skin—certainly more than his body seems able to handle—just to get her naked is…well, that’s a little worrying.

But does the lindworm want to be attacked because he knows it’s an avenue for transformation? Maybe. We don’t know. Probably not? As far as we can tell his plan is just to spend the rest of his life marrying and eating a girl every few months. Which doesn’t seem really sustainable. The thing is, he knows his parents are the king and queen. So presumably he knows that he should be a human. Is he attempting to provoke the girls by threatening to eat them, knowing that a sufficiently violent response is going to restore his true form? Again, probably not. But maybe.

The question, I think, is why does violence trigger a transformation? Love, I get. And sex, as an indication of love, yeah, sure. But why violence?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So, as bizarre and nonsensical as “Prince Lindworm” seems to me at times, I think it actually makes more sense than the frog stories—it combines the violence with these other elements in a way that makes the whole thing more complex and meaningful. (And this is the second time in this post I’m going to link to my Lindworm as an Allegory post.)

(Reminder that you can preorder my book based on "Prince Lindworm" here!)

Growing Up Beastly

As you probably know by now, I’m kind of obsessed with Beauty and the Beast. And I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the nature of the Beast, and especially on his origins and on the idea of the Beast as a victim. (Like this post in my Sexual Abuse in the Folk Tradition series, and this post and this one about why we don’t curse children.) 

Today we’re going to talk about a slightly different Beast, from a different variant of this story type. This is, of course, Prince Lindworm.

Like our usual beloved Beast, it’s not the lindworm’s fault that he’s a lindworm, although for slightly different reasons—his mom screwed up, and he was born a lindworm. This enchanted bridegroom has literally never been unenchanted; there’s no natural state for him to return to. He’s always been a beast. (Sort of like Hans My Hedgehog, actually; maybe I’ll come back to that in another post.)

Before the lindworm gets transformed into a man, he eats two princesses. Which is…not great. However. He is a lindworm. Which is a kind of dragon. Which is, you know—I mean presumably they have dietary needs that differ from a human’s?

I have so, so many questions about this story that are not addressed in the original text. But the main one is what on earth did the lindworm think was going on here? So. Several points.

Firstly. There is a distinct possibility that he’s sort of a baby lindworm. (At least in the early Danish version. In the later version incorrectly attributed to Asbjorsen and Moe, we have a clearer timeline.) The queen gives birth while the king is at war. The lindworm slithers away, and reappears as the king is coming home from war.

Is this a war that’s lasted fifteen to twenty years? Did the king come home from the first war, stay home for several years, then go fight in another war that he’s returning from when the lindworm approaches him? Did the queen give birth to a fully grown lindworm that met the king a few months later? Did the queen give birth to a baby lindworm that was an adult by the time the king got home, either because lindworms grow faster than humans or because magic? Did she give birth to a baby lindworm that’s still a baby? How old is this lindworm?

Secondly. How did the lindworm know the king was his dad? Because he clearly did. He just slithered up one day and said “Hey, I’m your son. I wanna get married.”

Who raised this lindworm? Who told him who his real parents were? The text says he burrows under the bedchamber as soon as he’s born, and doesn’t mention him having any further contact with the queen or with anyone else.

Thirdly. Did the lindworm even know he was under a spell? Dude’s been a lindworm for his entire life. He knows his parents are human, but, like, do lindworms have access to comprehensive sex education? For all he knows, all lindworms might have human parents. Is he aware that he’s not supposed to be a lindworm? Even if he is, does that necessarily mean he wants to stop being a lindworm?

Fourthly. What was his ultimate goal here? He demands brides. He eats them. He demands more. Why?

Personally, I know nothing about lindworm culture and tradition. Maybe they’re, like, reverse black widows or praying mantises, and eating their wives is just, like, what they do. Or maybe he was just really hungry—though surely there would be people other than his new wives available to eat.

Why did he want to get married? Did he ever intend for a wife to survive past the wedding night?

Fifthly. The transformation. Did he see this coming? Again, did he even realize it was a possibility? When this chick starts demanding that he molt out of season and then whips him and bathes him in milk, what does he think is happening? Does he realize it’s a transformation spell? Was he expecting it or hoping for it? Does he think it’s just a bizarre human wedding tradition? Did the other two girls try to break the spell too, and do it wrong?

Shedding ten layers of skin in a row is gonna be pretty incapacitating for any sort of reptile. Once he’s done that, there’s no defending himself from things like the whipping. If the other girls tried to break the spell too, but skipped the shedding step and went right to whipping, he might have eaten them in self-defense.

Sixthly. The aftermath. So our lindworm is now a handsome prince. Okay, now what? What does that even mean? He’s literally always been a lindworm, with, as far as we can tell, lindworm behaviors and a lindworm palate. You aren’t turning him back into a prince—you’re turning him into a prince. Even if he always knew he was under a spell and it would someday be broken, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s like, inherently, fundamentally, a lindworm. He grew up as a lindworm, doing lindworm things.

He has no idea how to be a person, much less a prince. Walking, gesturing, chewing food—all exciting new experiences.

I mean, on the bright side, the king and queen didn’t actually miss out on their only child’s babyhood, after all—they still get to have all those fun experiences, just with an adult man who’s on his third wife and ate the first two.

I just, like, I don’t get how this whole thing is going to work. I have questions. I have concerns. I have many, many concerns.

Th circumstances are wildly different, but ultimately I think he’s a victim, too. Brides for lunch and all.

It’s not his fault he’s a lindworm, and while he was a lindworm, he did, presumably, what lindworms do. And now he’s a man, whether he wants to be or not. So he’s lost everything he’s ever known and been, and now he has to learn how to be a different kind of creature, from scratch, twenty years too late. (And depending on that whole king-at-war timeline, he may have just transitioned over night from a baby dragon to an adult man, which….yikes.)

What is the learning curve going to be like here? Let’s assume he’s not going to try to eat any more people, because of the sizing issue if nothing else—lindworms are probably a lot bigger than men. (How does he feel about the bride eating, looking back? Does he feel guilty? Does he shrug it off as a lindworm thing that he did when he was a lindworm? Is it all just kind of awkward?) Is he going to eat—or try to eat—a few cats or rats or lap dogs? How many months or years will it take him to remember he has to step out of bed in the mornings, instead of trying to slither and falling in a heap on the floor? When molting season comes around, is he going to try it and sprain something? (Or will molting forever be associated with terrible, terrible trauma after that bizarro transformation sequence?)

This guy has been totally screwed over since literally the moment of his conception. And for the stupidest reason. He didn’t insult someone, didn’t turn down their advances or refuse to share or help. His mom ate too many flowers. That’s it. That’s the whole reason he’s a monster, the whole reason two innocent girls are dead.

(Also, on the subject of those flowers, he should have been a girl. The queen ate the girl flower first, then the boy flower; she should have had a girl. I think I’ve done everything I’m going to with this story, but if you want to write a retelling where the lindworm is a girl, hit me up in like five years when my publishing company has expanded a little and I’ll publish it for you.)

(I wrote a book about the crazy aftermath, and you can get it here.)

The Second Half: Related Stories

So I’ve been thinking more about the second half of King Lindorm, though I still haven’t put together a more thorough translation. But that’s just a good reason to take a more thorough look at other, similar stories.

The second half deviates significantly from the first; it’s categorized by Aarne-Thompson as a completely different tale type—707.

Some other notable stories that fit into this type are The Girl Without Hands, Mary’s Child, Bearskin, and the entire Bird Brothers category (This includes The Six Swans, The Twelve Brothers, The Twelve Wild Ducks, etc.). You can read more about Mary’s Child here, and you can read a post I wrote about Bird Brothers for Blooming Twig in 2015 here.

Now, most of these stories are, like King Lindorm, two part stories, where the first part ends with a girl marrying a king, and in the second part we have type 707. And a lot of these stories have pretty different first parts, though obviously the entire Bird Brothers category is very similar in both parts. And for the second half we split into two variants. In the Bird Brother types and Mary’s Child, the king’s wife is accused eating her own children and can’t defend herself because something in the first half of the story has made her unable or unwilling to speak. In Bearskin, The Girl Without Hands, and King Lindorm, the king’s wife is accused of giving birth to animals, and is unable to defend herself because she has no idea what’s going on—the king is away, and they’re sending letters to each other which are being switched out by someone with a grudge.

The one thing that I find really important about all of these stories is that the king is totally on his wife’s side. Their baby is dead and in pieces, and her mouth is smeared with blood? Clearly she’s being framed, or there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. His wife gave birth to puppies? Okay, that’s a little weird, a little concerning, but we’ll sort it all out when I get home.

These are men who love, trust, and defend their wives. Which is kind of rare in folklore.

And a lot of these guys are just straight up being good husbands, but the lindworm, specifically? He had better be a good husband. He was literally a dragon and she fixed him. Dude owes her. He had better be sticking up for his wife, and he has exactly zero room to judge when it comes to giving birth to non-humans.

(I think it’s worth noting that of all the stories in this category I’ve ever read, King Lindorm is the only one that features the king’s wife, um…feeding her breast milk to two other enchanted princes to break their spells? Don’t quote me on that, because I still don’t have a totally solid translation.)

Rambling about my book and signing copies

Born a Monster

While animal bridegrooms are an extremely popular folktale motif, it’s fairly rare to encounter bridegrooms who were originally born non-human. (This is particularly interesting as it is much more common for brides to be born nonhuman—see “The Little Mermaid,” anything about selkies, “Undine,” “Melusine”—there’s also a distinct aquatic theme here, but I’m getting off-topic.)

There are only two other stories like this that come to mind: “The Pig King” (Italian and French) and “Hans My Hedgehog.” (German) (I am sure there are other stories out there that fit into this category, but there are hundreds of thousands of fairy tales in the world, and I can only read a small percentage of them, and can remember even less.)

“Prince Lindworm” differs from these other two born-a-monster stories in that his reason for being a monster is slightly more traditional. Monster bridegrooms are generally turned into monsters as a punishment—usually for a fairly minor offense, such as general rudeness or turning down romantic advances. The lindworm is a lindworm because of his mother’s minor offense of eating too many flowers. There’s no punishment involved in Hans’ or the Pig King’s monstrousness; their parents wanted desperately to have children, and someone magical heard their pleas and said yeah, okay, sure—but with a fun little twist. (Although Hans’ dad totally brought it on himself by saying “I want a kid so bad I wouldn’t even care if he was a hedgehog.”)

All three stories involve the beast marrying before his transformation. But while Hans and both versions of the Pig King remain beasts at least part-time for some time after their marriage (we’re talking months, here), the lindworm is transformed on their wedding night. Hans and French pig are the types of characters that can only be permanently freed from their animal forms when the animal skins are destroyed. Which their wives handle, having become extremely fed up with this whole bestiality situation. The terms of transformation for the Italian pig are just that he be married three times. (Which, by the way, no one actually knew about. The terms and conditions were totally secret in this situation. And personally, if I didn’t know about the 3 weddings deal, I probably wouldn’t have kept getting married after multiple spouses attempted to kill me, but whatever, you do you.)

Prince Lindworm just feels more like an enchanted bridegroom story than the others—partly because of the consequences-for-your-actions element of his lindworm-iness, but mostly I think because of the transformation sequence? And the role the main girl plays.

Hans’ bride comes off more like a Brave Little Tailor girl than an enchanted bridegroom girl; you don’t really get the sense that she’s saving him from enchantment. He won the right to marry her through tailor-typical feats, and their relationship is something that she endures until she figures out she can make it a little more bearable by trashing his hedgehog skin.

The pig king’s bride lying with him every night when he’s not wearing an animal skin is actually pretty common in folklore, with the best example being “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”—and of course there’s “Cupid and Psyche” there, too. But I do feel that a fundamental part of those stories is the journey that the girl goes on after seeing his face. “The Pig King” just feels—I don’t know.

I think an important part of enchanted bridegroom stories is the step where the girl does something to save the beast—whether that’s going on a journey to find him, initiating a bizarro transformation sequence, or searching frantically through the palace to find him and marry him before he dies of sorrow.

I don’t know. I just think that "Prince Lindworm" is better than the other born-enchanted stories I’ve encountered. It just feels right.

I can’t think of a good ending, here. Whatever. Remind me to come back to that whole girls-more-commonly-start-out-non-human thing sometime when I have the energy to spare for anything non-Lindworm related. (Even when bridegrooms are born monsters, they’re still distinctly enchanted, born from normal humans. Brides are more likely to be just naturally nonhuman, which is—there’s something significant in that, I’m sure, and I actually meant it to be a part of my seminar paper five years ago, but the professor made me narrow my focus, which was probably a good idea as the paper was still like 25 pages long.) 

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Prince Lindworm and Prince Marcassin

So the Italian “The Pig King” (Straparola) was, at one point, I don’t remember when or where, advertised to me as the closest equivalent to “Prince Lindworm.” And I finally got around to tracking it down, as well as the longer, more detailed “Prince Marcassin,” which is a very similar, but expanded, French story by Madame D’Aulnoy.

I have the full text of “The Pig King” from the library, and the Surlalune text of “Prince Marcassin,” as I was unable to find it in English anywhere else, and we’re just going to go through the stories, and then compare them to Prince Lindworm at the end.

Now, “The Pig King” and “Prince Marcassin” are two separate stories, but they’re so similar that for the purposes of today’s blog, we’re mostly going to treat them as one. I’ll let you know when we run into significant differences.

(Marcassin is, according to google translate, French for wild boar.)

Both of the pig stories are the type where three siblings undertake a task, and only the youngest succeeds, by virtue of being an all-around better person. I’m not a big fan of this in cases where the task is “survive a marriage.” (The only other story like this I can think of right now is the Grimms’ “The Sea Hare;” you do see this in Bluebeard variants like “Fitcher’sBird,” but that’s a lot less distressing since the groom is explicitly the bad guy. Generally I just don’t love it when the protagonist lives happily ever after with a spouse who killed their older siblings. It’s awkward.)

So. Now that that little tangent is out of the way, let’s take it from the top. Barren queen longs for a child, takes a walk, falls asleep. Three fairies come by and decide to give her one, but to make him (temporarily) a pig. In “The Pig King,” the queen sleeps through the fairies’ visit and never knows about it. In “Prince Marcassin,” she dreams of the fairies’ visit, but only hears what the first two fairies say, about how she’ll have a son, and misses the pig element added by the third.

Nine months after this little nap, she gives birth to a pig.

I do think the relationship between mother and son here is really sweet. She just loves her monster baby. I’m reminded, a little, of that ancient piece of pottery featuring Pasiphae and the young Minotaur (see here).

She gave birth to this pig. She raised him. She loves him. He rests his muddy head in her lap. He roots around for truffles and brings them home for her. He’s kind of just treated like a normal prince, and we all dance around the awkwardness of the pig situation. (In “The Pig King” the dad is pretty on board with this arrangement too; in “Prince Marcassin” he sort of humors his wife but makes it clear that he feels the correct thing to do when one births a pig is to cast it into the sea.)

When Marcassin falls in love with a girl who doesn’t feel the same, Mom tells him he can do better. Unfortunately, when she says that, he says, “No, Mom, I cannot do better. Like, seriously, come on, I am literally a pig.” So she arranges the marriage. And when that goes wrong, another marriage.

In “Prince Marcassin,” the first wife kills herself on the wedding night rather than be married to a pig. The second wife attempts to kill him, and he kills her in self-defense. In “The Pig King,” he ends up killing both of the first two brides in self-defense.

This is the point where the plot begins to differ significantly. In “The Pig King,” the third bride agrees to marry the pig. They have an extremely muddy wedding night, which they both survive. She stays apparently happily married to the pig for some time before he decides to show her that he can cast off his pig skin and become a hot guy at night. After this, they stay even more happily married until they have a (normal, human) son. Finally, the bride can’t bear to keep the secret anymore, and tells her mother-in-law about the nighttime-shapeshifting. They destroy the discarded pig skin, and he stays a hot guy from then on.

(Let’s just take a moment here to appreciate how sensible the third bride is. Like, yeah, this dude is a pig, but he’s also the king and queen’s only child, and therefore the future king. This means two absolutely critical things. 1) if you can handle being married to a pig, you get to be queen someday. 2) even if your attempt to kill your unwanted husband was successful, you would be in big, big trouble afterwards. Fate worse than pig-marriage. So bride number 3 here definitely made the right call. Although, to be fair, it does appear that the marriage was actually consummated prior to even the nighttime-only transformation, so. Well. I also would not want to have sex with a pig. But murder is not the answer.)

In “Prince Marcassin,” after being forced to kill his second wife in self-defense on their wedding night, Marcassin says, “Screw this, humans suck; I’m gonna go live like other pigs,” and takes off into the woods to befriend some more normal wild boars.

He does, however, write letters home so everyone knows he’s okay.

The mother of his first two (deceased) brides has now moved out into the countryside with her one remaining daughter. Prince Marcassin encounters this third daughter while living like a pig, and somehow convinces her to come live with him? In the woods? Where he’s just being a standard wild boar?

And they live together in the woods until she gets pregnant. Which. I have concerns. I have so many concerns.

This girl’s two older sisters died after being forced to marry this pig. While he was living like a man. Now he’s living like a pig, and she’s run away from home to have sex with him in a cave in the woods?

I do kind of love how the French fairy tale writers don’t pull their punches. A lot of stories from a lot of cultures sort of imply that maybe some sex is going on behind the scenes in enchanted bridegroom situations, but the French ones just come out and say it. This girl’s been lying with a pig and now she’s pregnant. Villeneuve’s Beast doesn’t ask “Will you marry me?” every night; he asks “Will you sleep with me?” There’s just something refreshing about that refusal to dance around the issue.

But still. Deeply, deeply concerned.

Killing yourself or your pig groom is not a good solution to the problem. But neither is running away with him and letting him knock you up! Surely there must be some sort of acceptable middle ground in this very messed-up situation.

Anyway. Eventually she finds his discarded pig skin, figures things out, and gets rid of it, and they go home to the palace and live happily ever after. (At which point Marcassin mentions that he’s been discarding the skin every night? And we’re supposed to believe that this girl just never noticed? Like, it doesn’t matter how dark it is, she’s gonna notice a difference between a pig and a dude when they’re sleeping together.)

It’s kind of a messed up story.

So, onto the Prince Lindworm comparison: literally all these stories have in common is the born-already-enchanted element and the three brides. Even the circumstances of the brides’ deaths and the success of the third bride are totally different. They were fun to read, though.

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The Missing Half

So if you’ve been around for a while, you’ve probably heard me talking about Prince Lindworm, and not just recently, as I prepare to release my book. I’ve been obsessed with this story for a long time, I’ve written several blog posts and essays about it, and it’s even the source of my username on many websites—konglindorm. 

But today, I’m going to talk about something new: the second half of the story.

I honestly didn’t know until very recently that this story did not end with the lindworm being transformed and everyone living happily ever after. I’ve been working for a long time on my own translation of the story, from a 100+ year old Danish book, and last month I finally reached the end of it.

And then saw that there were three more pages.

Now, I’m preparing to publish my first novel, and I don’t have the time or the energy to translate another three pages. But I did a quick read-through, enough to get the basic idea, and I did some more research. Then I ran it through Google translate, which produced something that’s…pretty rough, but it’s useful to having something in English to glance back at as I work on this post.

So it’s not relevant to my retelling at all, and it’s actually a really common fairy tale type that I’ve encountered many times before, but I’m really excited about this. Quick recap, before we start: Barren queen wants baby. Queen is instructed to eat one flower if she wants a son, another if she wants a daughter, but not, under any circumstances, both. Queen eats both. Queen gives birth to lindworm. Lindworm eventually demands bride. Eats her. Demands second bride. Eats her. Demands third bride, third bride does some really weird stuff that somehow turns him into a human. Great rejoicing, etc., etc.

Now on to part two. I’m gonna be honest; some really weird stuff happens here. Which shouldn’t be surprising, coming from the same fairy tale that brought us “To turn a snake into a man, make him molt ten times, dip some whips in lye, whip him a bunch, and dunk him in a tub of milk.” My understanding of the story is hindered somewhat by lack of a complete and accurate English translation, but it looks like at some point our girl helps break the spells on two other enchanted princes by feeding them her breast milk? It’s, um. It’s something, and something I’ll need to fully translate eventually to understand better. I think I’m missing a fair amount of context and nuance.

(Between the two halves, I ‘m thinking I need to do a lot of research on the healing properties of milk in folklore. Is that a thing? Does it come up elsewhere? This story is Danish; anyone from Denmark know if there’s some cultural element to this or something?)

But for now we’re going to focus on the main thing, the basic plot of the second half.

Our girl gets pregnant. Lindworm and his dad go off to war, leaving pregnant girl with Lindworm’s mother the queen. Now, normally, that would cause some trouble in the fairy tale world, because usually, old queens are not fond of their daughters-in-law, and often try to frame them for horrible crimes.

But not our queen. She gave birth to a monster. Her only heir was a dragon, and he was eating people. Then our girl came along and turned him into an upstanding member of human society. This queen loves her daughter-in-law. So we need a different bad guy.

Our girl gives birth to twins. She sends a letter to the lindworm, letting him know. Normally, in this story type, the queen swaps it out with a letter saying she gave birth to something else, but not our queen, so that role is filled by the Red Knight. No information on who this dude is, what he has against our characters, or why it’s his job to run letters back and forth between the palace and the war zone.

He gets rid of the letter saying our girl had twins, replaces it with a letter saying she had puppies. Lindworm gets the letter, thinks, “well, that’s super weird, but who am I to judge, my mom didn’t give birth to a human either.” Sends back a letter saying, “Okay, we’ll sort that all out when I get home.”

Red Knight was apparently hoping for a less go-with-the-flow type answer, because he replaces that letter with one telling the queen to set our girl and her babies on fire.

The queen gets the letter, and I guess she’s probably thinking that maybe the transformation didn’t quite work after all, maybe her son still has some monster in him, because what the heck, dude? I’m not burning my grandbabies.

So she doesn’t know when the lindworm is coming home, and she’s afraid of what he’ll do to his family when he does; she sets our girl up with some supplies and sends her and the babies out into the world where they’ll be safe.

(This is when she turns a couple birds into princes by nursing them, and apparently hangs out with them in their palace for quite some time. Not clear on the nature of their relationships, a little concerned, will update you guys someday when I’ve sorted it all out; if anyone’s read this entire story in Danish and fully understands it, or if you’ve encountered a complete English translation, please do let me know!)

Lindworm comes home, looking for his wife. Queen is pissed at her son. Son isn’t sure what she’s so upset about; he thought he was pretty chill about the whole gave-birth-to-puppies thing. Queen isn’t sure what puppies have to do with anything, but setting your family on fire is in no way chill. They argue for a while, eventually get to the bottom of things, Red Knight is in big, big trouble. Lindworm goes looking for his wife and kids. Eventually finds them hanging out with these two other princes.

This is where Google translate really breaks down on me, and things just make less and less sense, and I can’t go down to the source material with my Danish-English dictionary and sort it out right now; I’m on a bit of a tight schedule. But it’s looking like the Lindworm and the two other princes sort of fight over our girl, all three of them drink her milk (it seems like it’s been long enough that she shouldn’t be producing milk anymore; it also seems like these two dudes are drinking her milk regularly? I am so concerned about so many things.)

Somehow the conflict is resolved, the other two princes marry other princesses, and our girl and the twins go home with the lindworm.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here, obviously, and a lot of it is going to have to wait until another time. It is nice to know that King Lindorm is consistently just absolutely bizarre through both halves.

But what I really, really like about the second half is that some new dude is our bad guy, and the queen is fully and firmly on our heroine’s side.

Before I made any effort at even the crappiest translation of the second half, I did some research on what it was about. And I was so concerned about it as soon as I found out what story type it was, because some sort of mother figure is almost always the bad guy. (Shout out to the Grimms for not doing that in “The Girl Without Hands,” too.) And it just seemed really awful that the queen would turn around and try to sabotage our girl after she fixed the lindworm. So I was really relieved to find the Red Knight in my first quick skim-through.

I’m just really impressed with Grundtvig, Adjunct Levisen, and Maren Mathisdatter for deviating from the norm here.

(Another notable deviation, aside from “The Girl Without Hands,” listed above, is the French fairy tale “Bearskin,” by Marie-Madeleine de Lubert; I doubt it’s a coincidence that women were definitely involved in the telling/recording of 2 of these 3 stories where people are not out to get their daughters-in-law.)

Also, like. Can we just take a moment to appreciate the incredible stupidity of the Red Knight? The lindworm was born as a giant snake monster, and for some reason Red thinks he’ll be shocked and horrified that his children were born as puppies? The lindworm is pretty much the only person in the world who has no right to be upset by that. He, of all people, should know that these things just happen sometimes, and they’re totally fixable, though not, perhaps, without bloodshed.

(Also, also. As I said above, I don’t know who the Red Knight is or what he has against our characters. It’s possible that the text does tell us and it just didn’t come across in my incredibly quick and crappy translation. But my theory is that he’s somehow connected to one of our two dead and eaten princesses. In which case he’s entitled to be upset, even if he’s handling it poorly.)

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Prince Lindworm: Version Comparison

Over the years, I have managed to find three different versions of King Lindorm—the one that appears in Svend Grundtvig’s Gamle Dansk Minder i Folkemunde, the one that appears in Andrew Lang’s Pink Fairy Book, and the one that appears in the Folio Society’s East of the Sun and West of the Moon. (There is no indication of where this story came from originally or who translated it, so we’re just going to call it the Folio version here.)

 I’ve talked a lot before about the origins of this story; the earliest version, Grundtvig’s, is from Denmark. The Folio Society attributes theirs to Asbjørnsen and Moe, in Norway, which we know is incorrect as it doesn’t appear in any other edition of their work. Lang attributes his version to Sweden.

So today, we’re just going to work our way through the three versions and compare/contrast. 

They all start the same way. Queen wants baby, queen can’t have baby, old woman tells her how to make it happen. Lang’s version deviates most from the others in the beginning. In the other two versions, the queen encounters the old woman while out on a walk; in Lang’s, the old woman comes to the palace and seeks out the queen specifically to impart her wisdom.

In both Gruntvig’s version and the Folio version, the queen is to eat only one of two differently-colored roses that will grow up overnight under a two-handled cup left in the garden. Very specific, perfectly identical. The lindworm comes because the queen eats both roses.

In Lang’s version, the queen is to take a bath in her room. Two red onions will appear under the bathtub afterwards, and she is to peel and eat both. Her mistake is that she eats the onions without peeling them. (Note that in this version the queen is not given the option to choose the gender of her child.)

Another little deviation in Lang’s version is that the queen apparently doesn’t know she’s given birth to a lindworm? Her waiting woman tosses the lindworm out of the window as soon as it’s born, and the queen doesn’t notice it at all.

Lang and Folio both feature a normal, human prince born after the lindworm. In Gruntvig’s version the lindworm is an only child. Since Gruntvig’s version has no siblings, he approaches the king directly to ask for a bride. In the other two, he waits until the prince goes out to find a bride, and then goes up to him and says, “Hey, I’m your secret brother, and since I’m older, I get to get married first.”

Here, again, Lang’s version deviates significantly. The other lindworms both marry (and eat) two foreign princesses, then a local shepherd’s daughter selected by the king. Lang’s lindworm marries and then eats an unspecified number of slave women before a wicked stepmother offers up her stepdaughter as a bride. Specifically, she tells the king that her stepdaughter would like to marry the lindworm, and the king apparently doesn’t question this? He for some reason finds it believable that a young woman would volunteer to marry a monster who’s already eaten multiple previous wives, without asking for any kind of compensation for her family or anything?

And, okay, Lang is going full German-Cinderella here. After the stepmom screws her over, girl goes to her mom’s grave, where she’s given three nuts. This is what happens in the place of her meeting an old woman and getting instructions in the other two versions.

Lang’s main girl goes through similar basic wedding prep steps to the others, with no indication of where she got the idea from; while the other girls have a tub of lye, tub of milk, whips, and ten gowns/shifts, Lang’s girl has the tube of lye, only seven shifts, and three scrubbing brushes. After they go through the whole take-off-your-shift-take-off-your-skin situation, Lang’s girl just, like, scrubs all the lindworm-iness out of him? She just scrubs until he turns into a dude.

The other two versions, of course, have the much more complex and disgusting transformation sequence of dip whips in lye, whip lindworm, dunk lindworm in milk, take lindworm to the bed, embrace.

The Folio version ends immediately after this, with the girl and the transformed prince living happily ever after. The other two stories continue.

In the second half of Lang’s version, the old king dies, the lindworm becomes king, the lindworm goes to fight in a war, and the girl’s stepmother steals a bunch of letters and tells a bunch of lies that result in the girl and her two young sons fleeing the palace until the lindworm comes to find them. During this time, the girl uses her magic nuts to save a man named Peter.

In the second half of Gruntvig’s version, the old king and the lindworm both go off to war, it’s a character called the Red Knight who switches the letters, and while she and the babies are away, our girl somehow uses her breast milk to help two other men who’ve been transformed into animals? IDK, I don’t have a full English translation yet, but what we do have to work with is seriously weird.

Lang’s version definitely deviates significantly from the others; it has no points in common with Grundtvig’s aside from the most basic plot—barren queen, ignoring food instructions=lindworm, brides eaten, transformation involving shedding/undressing and lye, heroine flees into the woods with children due to mail-tampering, saves someone else before reunion with lindworm.

The Folio version deviates from Grundtvig’s only in that it ends halfway through and includes a second prince.

Today is the first time I’ve read through Lang’s version in several years, at least, and somehow, despite its differences from the others, it feels the least unique? I was definitely first drawn to “Prince Lindworm,” as a child, because despite falling into my much-beloved Enchanted Bridegroom category, it felt very different from any other story I’d read. The beast as a snake-like creature, the brides being eaten, the unsettling transformation sequence—it was all just great. This was the Folio version, that I was reading as a child. But when I first encountered the second half of the story in Grundtvig’s version, it was also delightfully unique and bizarre, even if I can’t fully understand it. The lindworm’s mother—the girl’s mother-in-law, often a villainous figure—is 100% on her side, and the main person to try to help her through what happens next. And the milk situation is just—well, it’s something.

Lang’s version, despite being the same basic story, just feels bland and unoriginal. There’s an evil stepmother, which is just, sort of cliché, you know? The transformation sequence has been cut down and seriously sanitized. And then the situation where he marries an unspecified number of slave women in the place of two princesses—well, I have a number of issues with that.

Firstly, the number three is so often symbolic in fairy tales, and to replace the three total marriages with an unspecified number is lame, but that’s a dumb, nitpicky issue. The marriages to slave women indicate that this is a country that holds slaves, which I don’t love. But my big issue with this is that a significant part of the charm of the other versions is just the absolute, idiotic absurdity of marrying your monster son to a second princess after he eats the first. Like, you know what’s going to happen now—the same thing that happened last time. He’s gonna eat the princess and another powerful king is going to be rightfully angry with you. Marrying him instead to someone who won’t be missed lowers the stakes and raises the rationality in a way that bores me, and also implies that some potential brides are worth less? Like, with the first couple brides as princesses, we know they matter even though we never properly meet them, because their deaths put the threat of war over our heads—which is probably why the king and the lindworm go off to war shortly after the spell is broken in Grundtvig’s version. “A whole bunch of random slave girls died with no consequences and then we met our main character” just seems sort of…cheap.

So! While I did enjoy reading Lang’s version, I don’t think I would have fallen in love with this story if it was the first I encountered. I think the other versions are both more absurd and more meaningful.

Preorder my book based on this story here!

Lindworm cover reveal!

 

When a lindworm comes to the palace and begins demanding—then eating—brides, Marit is the third victim chosen to marry him. Against all odds, she survives her wedding night, but the trouble has only just begun. Separated from her family, bound to a traumatized prince who doesn’t know how to be a man, Marit must protect her unwanted husband from his family, from his enemies, and from himself.

Preorder here!