The two-TAILED serpent thing is just a thing that was in the castle, not a prop.
However, interesting legend.
Quote:
Mélusine (French: [melyzin]) or Melusina is a figure of European folklore, a female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down (much like a mermaid). She is also sometimes illustrated with wings, two tails, or both.
One tale says Mélusine herself was the daughter of the fairy Pressyne and King Elinas of Albany (now Scotland). Mélusine's mother leaves her husband, taking her daughters to the isle of Avalon after he breaks an oath never to look in at her and her daughter in their bath.
The same pattern appears in stories where Mélusine marries a nobleman only after he makes an oath to give her privacy in her bath; each time, she leaves the nobleman after he breaks that oath.
Shapeshifting and flight on wings away from oath-breaking husbands also figure in stories about Mélusine. According to Sabine Baring-Gould in Curious Tales of the Middle Ages, the pattern of the tale is similar to the Knight of the Swan legend which inspired the character "Lohengrin" in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival.[1]
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