Queen Egle

With no thought for consequence
In folly, she pledged her hand
To the serpentine of human tongue
So her clothing, she could reclaim

But Saule thrice rose and fell
Before the slithering legion came
To claim the maiden, young Egle
For their Prince ‘neath the tides

Yet the Ophidian Prince
Stood not as a serpentine
But as a man, of vast beauty
And her husband, he would be

Three sons and a daughter
She bore him, their fated storm
For one would betray her
When blood meets with kin

Her kin, Egle wished to see,
But her wishes, the Prince denied
Lest three feats, ever hopeless
She could replete in full

But with a Sorcerer’s aid
Iron boots, she wore down
The endless silky tuft, she spun
And a pie baked without the means

Her family, long lost, bright to see her
But to the sea, in the west,
her return, they bequested not
And a guileful plot they made

To lure Egle’s Prince to land,
Her three sons, briskly, they lashed
But his secret, not theirs to say
And in dread, the girl spoke all

And when the butchery did wane
To her fallen Prince, Egle called
Athwart the Western tides
Greeted only by sanguine fluid

With hope dashed, anguish rose
Ash, Oak and Birch, her sons became
And the daughter, an aspen shaking
So after, as a spruce, Egle stood

Queen Egle is set to appear in my upcoming book, She Set The Sky Ablaze, and is my interpretation of the popular Lithuanian myth that follows Egle, a young lady who one day after bathing with her sisters finds that a snake has hid in her clothes. In order to get her clothes back, she agrees to marry the snake. After three days, a large amount of snakes come to take Egle to her future husband but her family successfully trick the snakes for so long until a cuckoo tells the snakes of the deceit.

Egle is surprised to see that her husband is a man and not a snake, and eventually, in their home under the sea, bears four children to him. She asks to visit her family one day, but her husband won't allow it unless she wears down a pair of iron boots, spins an endless tuft of silk and bakes a pie without any utensils. Egle manages to do this with advice from a sorcerer. 

Her family are delighted to see Egle and her children, but they don't want them to return to the sea. So, they beat her three sons to find out how to trick Egle's husband onto land but it's the daughter that reveals how to do so. Egle's twelve brothers slay her husband with scythes.

Egle is worried and calls for her husband on the shore but is only greeted by tides that are foaming red. In her sorrow and rage, she turns her sons into an Ash tree, an Oak tree and a Birch tree. She turns her daughter into a quaking Aspen and finally herself into a Spruce.  

Image source: Europe Is Not Dead.

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