Introduction: the tale’s origins
“The Seven-Headed Serpent” (often told in Iberia and the Basque country, with close cousins across Portugal and Spain) belongs to the great Dragon-Slayer cycle (ATU 300). Its signatures are hard to miss: a kingdom blackmailed by a man-eating monster with seven heads; the princess chosen as the next tribute; a humble hero who keeps faith where nobles fail; a false saviour who steals the credit; and the decisive proof—most memorably the tongues cut from each head—that unmasks the lie in a final court scene. Many versions equip the hero with gifts and counsel from old hermits or smiths; nearly all preserve the taut exchanges at the rock, the seven-round combat, and the stark ultimatum of the impostor. What follows keeps that classic Iberian cast and structure.
The story
There was once a king whose city trembled under a serpent’s shadow. The creature lived in a cave beyond the last fields, and had seven heads, each with a tongue like a whip and teeth like sickles. Every year it crawled forth and cried in a voice that shook stables and shutters:
“Send me a maiden, or I will lick your land bare with my seven tongues!”
So the people drew lots, and the unlucky were led to the rock above the cave. Tribute after tribute was paid, until the lot fell upon the king’s own daughter.
They dressed the princess in white and led her through silent streets. She stood by the rock with the wind in her veil, and the city wept behind locked doors. Toward dusk there came along the road not a knight, but a youth in a plain cloak, with a good sword at his belt and the look of one who listens hard to the world.
“Why do you stand here alone?” he asked.
“I am the king’s daughter,” she answered steadily, “given to the serpent by lot. Go, stranger. I will not have another die for me.”
The youth smiled a little—more a promise than a smile. “My name is João,” he said, “and steel is stubborn when it keeps faith. Sit, Highness, and if I sleep, wake me; if I fall, take this knife and cut the tongues from what I slay, for they are truth’s witnesses.”
She looked at him as the last light thinned. “If you would save me, hide; he hates to be denied his fear.”
João hid behind the stone and waited. The earth began to tremble; a stench like rot and iron came up the path; and the seven-headed serpent hauled itself into the dusk, scales clicking, eyes burning like seven coals.
“Who watches my meat?” roared the leftmost head.
“Your death watches it,” said João, stepping out.
“Little man, little mouth—who dares?” hissed the middle head.
“I do,” said João, “and to-day you dine on steel.”
The serpent struck. One head darted like a spear; João’s sword flashed and a head thumped to the ground. But from the raw neck fire jetted, and the thing writhed to knit itself whole again. João snatched a brand from the princess’s torch and seared the stump; the wound sealed with a stink, and that head rose no more.
So the combat went by sevens—a head for each bell that tolled from the city. The second came low, the third high; the fourth feinted and the fifth struck; João’s arms ached, his breath burned, and still he held his ground. The princess knelt behind the rock, whispering, “Saints keep his footing.” When the seventh head reared up—a cruel, crafty head with a voice like a bellows—it laughed:
“I have supped on kings and captains, boy. Who are you?”
“One who was not counted,” said João, and he leapt as it struck. Steel met scale, flame roared; he drove the blade home to the hilt and cauterised the last neck until the cave itself smelt of pitch and victory. At length the coil shuddered and fell still.
He swayed where he stood. The princess ran to him with water and a kerchief. “You have saved me,” she said, tears bright in the moon. “What shall I call you? What shall I give you?”
“Call me when truth is needed,” said João, and cut the seven tongues from the seven jaws, wrapping them in the kerchief. “Keep these safe. They speak when liars prosper.”
“I will keep them,” she vowed, and bound his bleeding hand with her ribbon.
But João would not be led in triumph. “To-morrow, come when the sun is high,” he said softly. “I will be in the crowd. Let the king hear what he will hear.”
He slipped away toward the dark fields. The princess, weak with relief, sat a while upon the stone, the bundle of tongues against her heart. Then the coachman sent by the king—who had driven her out with white face and dry eyes—came creeping back up the path. His hands were shaking. When he saw the dead serpent, greed steadied him.
“So,” he said, “the beast is slain—by me.”
“Not by you,” said the princess, rising. “By a youth who kept faith.”
The coachman’s mouth twisted. “Then faith will get him nothing. Give me what you hold.”
“I will not,” she said.
He drew his knife. “Then say it was I, or by sunrise you will wish the serpent had fed.”
The princess, alone and exhausted, measured her chances and found them thin. She hid the bundle of tongues within her dress and said through her teeth, “I will say what you force me to say.”
He hacked off the seven heads and heaved them into the cart, smearing his coat with gore to look the part. In the city, to blaring horns, he tumbled the heads before the palace and cried:
“I, your servant, have slain the seven-headed serpent!”
The king, wild with gratitude and relief, promised him anything in his kingdom. The coachman bowed until his greasy hair brushed the floor.
“I ask only,” he said, “the hand of the princess.”
At that word the princess shuddered. She told the king, “Father—” and stopped, remembering the knife and the promise dragged from her at the point of it.
“There, there,” soothed the king, not yet seeing. “What is promised must be kept. A saviour is a saviour.”
Days later, the city glittered for a wedding. But the princess sent a message that she was not ready, and asked for seven days—“to honour the seven deliverances,” she said, and locked her door. On the morning of the seventh day, as bells began to call the court to the chapel, the great doors opened and a youth in a plain cloak walked up the aisle. João bowed to the king.
“Majesty,” he said calmly, “truth petitions an hour.”
“Speak,” said the king, frowning at the delay.
“There are two ways to prove a slaying,” João said. “The heads, which braggarts carry; or the tongues, which only the slayer can take.”
“Tongues?” cried the coachman, going the colour of tallow. “What newcomer’s trick is this?”
João turned to the princess. “Highness, do you have what I asked you to keep?”
She stepped forward with the kerchief. “I kept them,” she said, and her voice steadied. “And I kept silence, fearing a knife more than a lie. Forgive me, Father.”
The hall murmured; the king lifted a hand and the sound died.
“Bring the heads,” he commanded.
They were laid out in a row upon a cloth: seven ghastly masks, mouths gaping. João unwrapped the kerchief and fitted each tongue to its head. Each tongue slid into its seat like a key into a well-cut lock. There was no cheating that sight.
“By this token,” said João, “the truth stands.”
The coachman made for the door. Guards closed it. The king’s face changed like weather from summer to storm.
“You would have had me thank a thief,” he said in a voice that reached the rafters. “You would have had my daughter for wages. What do you deserve?”
The court whispered punishments; some said chains, some said exile. The king chose justice without spectacle: the impostor was stripped of livery and sent to labour beyond the farthest field, “where,” said the king, “you may boast to the thistles.”
Then the king came down from his dais, took João by the hands, and raised him. “Name your reward, true man,” he said.
João looked at the princess. She was already looking at him.
“I ask,” he said quietly, “for what my heart has already chosen.”
The king smiled—tired, relieved, wiser. “Then take her—with my blessing, and my thanks that I will never be done paying.”
They were married that day, not for the pageantry but for the truth of it. The city feasted, the fields lay safe, and old women told the story at doorsteps until the words were worn smooth: how a serpent with seven heads learned what a single stubborn heart could do; how tongues—not trumpets—proved the deed; and how a princess, who had bent to a knife, stood up when truth came to claim her.
As for the cave, it filled with clean rain and sweet frogs. Children went there in summer to shout and hear their echoes. None ever answered with seven voices again.
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