The Serpent Prince

The Serpent Prince or The Snake Prince (Hungarian: Kégyókirályfi or Kígyókirályfi) 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: a human maiden marries an animal that is a prince in disguise, breaks a taboo and loses him, and she has to seek him out. The story shares motifs with other tales of the region, like Serbian Again, The Snake Bridegroom, and Romanian Trandafiru and The Enchanted Pig: the heroine must search for her husband under a curse not to bear their child until he touches her again. According to Hungarian scholars, the snake appears as the form of the enchanted husband in most of the Hungarian variants.

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