“If you’ll marry me, I’ll give you back your shift.”
Now she wasn’t at all inclined to marry him, but the other girls said:
“As if it were possible for you to be married to him! Say you will!” So she said, “Very well, I will.” Then the snake glided off from the shift, and went straight into the water. The girl dressed and went home. And as soon as she got there, she said to her mother,
“Mammie, mammie, thus and thus, a snake got upon my shift, and says he, ‘Marry me or I won’t let you have your shift;’ and I said, ‘I will.’”
“What nonsense are you talking, you little fool! as if one could marry a snake!”
And so they remained just as they were, and forgot all about the matter.
A week passed by, and one day they saw ever so many snakes, a huge troop of them, wriggling up to their cottage. “Ah, mammie, save me, save me!” cried the girl, and her mother slammed the door and barred the entrance as quickly as possible. The snakes would have rushed in at the door, but the door was shut; they would have rushed into the passage, but the passage was closed. Then in a moment they rolled themselves into a ball, flung themselves at the window, smashed it to pieces, and glided in a body into the room. The girl got upon the stove, but they followed her, pulled her down, and bore her out of the room and out of doors. Her mother accompanied her, crying like anything.
They took the girl down to the pond, and dived right into the water with her. And there they all turned into men and women. The mother remained for some time on the dike, wailed a little, and then went home.
Three years went by. The girl lived down there, and had two children, a son and a daughter. Now she often entreated her husband to let her go to see her mother. So at last one day he took her up to the surface of the water, and brought her ashore. But she asked him before leaving him,
“What am I to call out when I want you?”