A shepherd rescues a trapped snake, only to discover that it isn’t any old snake: it’s the King of the Snakes, with the power to reward his act of kindness. Offered the choice between a bag of gold and the ability to understand what animals are saying, he chooses the latter, because you don’t meet grateful talking snakes every day, whereas he might have another chance of getting the bag of gold later by less improbable means. The snake is true to its word and hey presto, the shepherd does understand animals. But there’s a catch: if he should ever reveal how he acquired this special skill, he will die.
This folk tale is found in many different countries and cultures, and probably originated in India, where snakes are often credited with mystical powers; one version features an early incarnation of the Buddha. Most versions, no matter where found, saddle the shepherd with an inquisitive wife who persistently demands to know how it is that he comes to know the animal language. Eventually he gives in, gets himself a coffin and prepares to tell her what she wants to know and take the consequences. But then he hears a rooster mocking him for being unable (unlike the rooster itself) to control his wife.
Out of the coffin he gets, and proceeds to take a positive step towards wife control:
That’s an illustration of the Hungarian version entitled Az állatok nyelvén tudó juhász (translated in the title of the article), which has also been adapted for the stage. It’s often performed in junior schools for a very young audience – and also sometimes by very young performers, so beware!
There’s some amusing pre-spanking business when the wife thinks she’s being invited to sit on her husband’s lap, and he directs her round to the other side; she sits down again, and then he tells her he wants her the other way up…
This is from a school performance by an adult cast in 2012; the video is here. (Go directly to 16m for the spanking.) It’s a pretty lengthy spanking, but you only get to see the first part of it before the camera pans away to show the audience reaction.
Other performances are available, of the same script but with different casts. Here’s one that ran from at least 2015 until at least 2017, with Andrea Szőke spanked by Zoltán Baráth:
(Video here.)
And from 2017, another relatively long one, with good reactions from the actress, even though the actor is rather obviously faking the spanking:
(Video here.)
Applause for them all!
Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Sganarelle (the reader, not the Moliere character!) for drawing this to my attention.
Vanilla Spanking 
Thank you for the compliments and for writing up this article. I keep hoping to find more adaptations, because it does seem like a quite popular tale type. By the way, I had found one other spanking-related illustration of the tale.
Also, I was looking up something completely unrelated, and I came across this page from Creighton University of one act plays from 2007 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/creighton_ccas/albums/72157628115507081/. I did a bit of looking but I couldn’t find any information on the context.
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The picture is from the 2013 edition of A Legszebb Magyar Nepmezek, a collection of Hungarian folk tales by Kiado Roland, illustrated by Anita Molnar and Szabolcs Fekete (but we don’t know which one did the spanking picture).
As for the 2007 Creighton University performance, it’s difficult to tell with OTS whether or not it’s a spanking (as discussed here and here), but in this case I can tell you for sure that it’s not (though it’s still worth looking at as a good OTS picture).
The play was The Problem (1968) by A.R. Gurney Jr, and the 2007 Creighton performers were Josh Peyton and Kathleen Lawler as the (unnamed) husband and wife. The photo is the first in the flickr album but it shows the very last moment of the play. What happens is that she is pregnant and has started to show. She has to admit it to her husband, because they haven’t made love in five years, and what’s more the child might turn out to be black. He admits to her that he hasn’t been going off to teach an evening class, but blacking up and returning as her lover. She admits that she found a substitute and got herself a real black lover. They are both in search of a more adventurous sex life, and he says he plans on reading some Sade. The problem is then popped like a balloon, because that’s what’s actually under her dress: she’s not pregnant after all. He then goes ‘Tarzan’ on her and picks her up. Final stage direction: ‘She giggles and kicks as he carries her off left’, presumably to the bedroom.
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Thanks so much for the reply. I thought might have shared with you both illustrations and just wanted to be sure.
That’s cool that you knew the source of that image/album.
Thank you for the summary of the play and explanation of the context. I kind of got the sense that there was a pregnancy announcement but that plotline was definitely not what I was expecting to say the least.
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