A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
The unnamed woman in The Water Snake is taken beneath a pond after promising marriage to the snake Osip. She lives there for three years and has two children, a boy and a girl. When she finally visits her mother, she carries the daughter and leads the son by the hand. Her account describes a satisfactory underwater household, although her initial removal from home had been violent.
Her mother kills Osip during the visit, using the call that the daughter had explained. Back on the bank, the wife recognises her husband’s severed head and laments. She tells her daughter to fly as a wren and her son as a nightingale, then declares that she will fly as a cuckoo crying its call forever. This particular ending names three different birds, not three identical cuckoos. Ralston’s subsequent comparisons with Nāgas, water sprites and other serpent marriages are the translator’s commentary; they do not rename this mother or establish a shared genealogy with those beings.
Origins & earliest records
W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Fairy Tales, hosted Hurst edition: The Water Snake, pp. 126–128; note 141. Footnote source: Erlenvein 2, Ujak, Tula Government.
Records & interpretation
The complete English narrative and its numbered source note identify these actions. The hosted Hurst title page is undated; no physical-copy date is inferred from modern catalogue metadata.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Russian Fairy Tales: The Water Snake, pp. 126–128; note 141
Complete English narrative; source note: Erlenvein 2, Ujak, Tula Government. Original Russian not independently collated.
Family, evolution & connections
The Water Snake’s wife and her maternal family — Ralston
Complete The Water Snake, printed pp. 126–128, hosted Hurst edition.
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- Unnamed maternal grandmother
- Unnamed daughter; later wren
- Unnamed son; later nightingale
Explicit mother–daughter and mother–children statements; Osip is recorded as spouse in the daughter’s label. All human relatives are unnamed. The son and daughter’s birth order is unstated. Bird forms preserve narrative identities, not zoological genealogy. No extended snake family, Water King identity or Nāga ancestry is inferred from the translator’s commentary. Physical edition date is not supplied here.
Her unnamed son and daughter
The woman explicitly has a son and a daughter. At the ending she assigns the girl a wren form and the boy a nightingale form, and herself a cuckoo form. These remain the tale’s mother and children; no natural bird ancestry is implied.
Her unnamed mother, who kills Osip
The old woman is expressly the wife’s mother. She learns Osip’s summons from her daughter and kills him while the daughter sleeps. Neither the gathered snakes nor the underwater men and women receive additional stated kinship roles.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary historical translationRalston, hosted Hurst edition: The Water Snake, pp. 126–128; note 141Research access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.