Eglė's Dress
In the Lithuanian tale 'Eglė the Queen of Serpents', the garment Eglė wore when she bathed at the lake: a coiled grass snake slipped into her sleeve and would return her clothing only if she promised to marry its king. That pledged dress drives the whole tale — the serpent bridegroom, nine years lived beneath the sea, three impossible tasks set for her children — and at the end Eglė, refusing to follow her transformed husband's cruelty, is changed into a spruce tree, while her children become the oak, ash and birch of the Lithuanian forest. The dress is the object that binds the human and the