This time the king told the mother that if her son could give his daughter a better palace than his own, he should have her for a wife. The mother went back without looking behind her, and found that her house had changed into a palace, and everything in it was three times as good as in the king's palace. All the furniture was made of pure gold.
Then the serpent asked his mother to go back to the palace and fetch the king's daughter, and this time the king told the princess she must marry the serpent. There was a splendid wedding, and in due course the young wife found she was to become a mother. Then her friends grew inquisitive, saying, "If you are living with a serpent how can you hope to have a child?" At first she would not answer, but when her mother-in-law insisted on putting the same question, she replied, "Mother, your son is not really a serpent, but a young man, so handsome that there is none other like him. Every evening he strips off his snake-skin and in the morning he enters it again."
When the serpent's mother heard this she rejoiced greatly, and longed to see her son after he had stripped off his snake-skin.
Presently the two conspirators arranged that when the young man had gone to bed, they should burn the discarded skin, and while his mother put it in the oven, his wife was to pour cold water on her husband lest he should be destroyed by the heat. No sooner had he laid himself down to sleep, than they carried out their plan, but the smell of the burning skin made him cry out, "What have you done? May God punish you. Where can I go in the condition I now am?" But the women comforted him and said it was better for him to live among ordinary mortals than in the snake form, and before long the king resigned his throne in his favour, and all turned out happily.
A very similar story is told of a queen who also gives birth to a serpent.[116] She is allowed to nurse and fondle her offspring in the usual fashion, but for twenty-two years it does not speak and its first utterance is to demand from its parents a wife.
When the parents remark that no nice girl would care to marry a serpent, he tells them not to look in too high a class for a mate.
In this case the father does the wooing, but the mother evokes the truth about her son. When she learns about the snake-skin, she makes the young wife help to burn it, and tragedy results. The husband curses his wife, saying that she will not see him again until she has worn through iron shoes, and that she shall not give birth to her child until he embraces her once more by putting his right arm round her. Then he vanishes for three years, and all that time she is unable to bear her child, so she decides to seek her husband. She travels through the world and comes to the house of the Sun's mother, and when the Sun comes indoors she inquires whether he has seen her husband. But the Sun can do nothing for her but to send her to the Moon. The same disappointment awaits her there, and the Moon sends her to the Winds. After many striking adventures she finds her husband, makes him undo his curse, and gives birth to a son who has golden locks and golden hands.
In another story of serpent-marriage a woman stands in doubt because she cannot cross a river. A serpent comes out of the river and says, "What will you give me if I carry you across?" The woman, having no other possessions, promises to give her coming child; if it is a girl as a wife, if a boy as a "name friend." In after years she has to fulfil her promise and, taking her daughter to the bank of the river, she sees the snake draw her beneath the water. In the course of time the girl bears her husband four snake sons.[117]
An Ainu girl gave birth to a snake as the result of the sun's rays shining on her while she slept, and the snake turned into a child.