EglÄ— the Queen of Serpents

Egle, the queen of snakes, or Egle, Queen of Serpents ( Lithuanian Egle žalčių karalienė ), is one of the most famous Lithuanian legends and folk tales. The story is one of the most original and archaic tales of its kind and probably the one with the most diverse allusions to the Lithuanian mythology. The different versions of the story, which were collected in writing, differ only in details. Your diverse mythological background has always been attracted by researchers in the early culture and mythology of the Indo-European peoples. Among the interesting details of the legend as compared to similar fairy tales is that in it not only the permanent transformation of a human being is described in a reptile, but also the permanent transformation of human beings into trees.

Egle is on one hand a very popular female first name of Lithuania, on the other hand also the Lithuanian word for the conifer spruce. The snakes of the narrative hot in Lithuanian žaltys, so grass snake, a harmless and land-dwelling reptile, but since they live in the story at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, it can be assumed that more likely mythical " water snakes " than in the concrete sense biologically classified Grass snakes are meant.