The whole of this address is a single glint on water. A king's son, given over to a wild man of the forest, is set to keep watch beside a well — "the gold well is as bright and clear as crystal" — and warned to let nothing fall in. As the boy sits there, "a golden fish or a golden snake" shows itself in the water and sinks again. That serpent is treasure turned animal: when the boy's sore finger dips into the well it comes out gilded, and later, when his long hair trails across the surface, his whole head turns to gold.

The witness is the German tale the shelf keeps as Iron John, in the Grimms' Household Tales (collected 1812–1857; this English translation 1884). Its wild man is a body the colour of rusty iron, dredged from a forest pool and caged in the king's courtyard until the boy frees him; at the tale's close he stands revealed as a spellbound king who thanks the youth — "set me free" — and gives over his hoard. Between capture and reward the golden snake surfaces only this once, in the crystal well, a warden's wealth wearing scales; and it is the gold it leaves behind, "his golden hair", that drives the rest of the story, through red and white and black armour to a won bride.

No other tradition stands beside this German witness on the shelf, and the serpent itself is a single line inside a longer tale about a gilded head. Why should hidden treasure rise to the surface in the shape of a snake, when what it finally gives is gold?