The Role and Status of Snake in Animal- wife Stories

One of the prominent actions occuring in many fairy tales is the ritual and symbolic marriage of princesses. In some of these stories, contrary to the norm, we face Animal-wife.one of the most famous of them being snake. In the course of history, in Aryan as well as global culture, snake has played various and sometimes contradictory roles, at times attaining a divine status and at another time behaving as an evil. It seems that snake, for various reasons, is one of the most ancient animal- bridegrooms, and other birds and animals like frog, bear, swan have assumed this role at later stages. The influence of the Abrahamic religions on the degradation of the snake is significant. In folk tales, marrying a snake could have different reasons which are historically justified. In addition to the common motives for animal-bridegroom tales, the main reasons for the emergence of snake-wife stories are the antiquity, holiness, and symbolic fertility of the snake wife. In tale symbolism; The snake is both a female and a male sexual symbol. That is why sometimes he is the bride and sometimes the groom. The presence of this beautiful animal in the tales as a wife who continues to transform into a human being, can dispel the child's fear of a marriage from which those around him have made a taboo.