Snow White
Brothers Grimm · faithful family retelling
One winter, a queen sat sewing beside a black ebony window frame. She pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell onto the snow. “If only I had a child white as snow, red as blood, and black as ebony,” she wished. Soon she bore a daughter with those colors and named her Snow White. The queen died, and the king later married a proud woman who owned a magic mirror.
Every day the new queen asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is fairest of us all?” For years it named her. But when Snow White was seven, the mirror answered that Snow White was a thousand times fairer.
The queen ordered a huntsman to take the girl into the forest and kill her. But when Snow White begged for her life, he let her flee and brought the queen the organs of a wild animal as proof.
Snow White ran until she found a tiny cottage. Inside were seven little beds and seven little places set for supper. She tasted a little from each plate, drank a little from each cup, and fell asleep across the beds. That night seven dwarfs returned from their mine. They found her, heard her story, and offered her safety if she would keep house for them. They warned her never to open the door while they were away.
The mirror told the queen Snow White still lived. Disguised as an old peddler, she came to the cottage with bright laces. Snow White let her in. The woman laced her bodice so tightly that she fell as if dead. The dwarfs returned and cut the lace, and Snow White breathed again.
Next the queen came with a poisoned comb. Snow White opened the door, and the comb dropped her senseless. The dwarfs found it and pulled it from her hair.
At last the queen made an apple white on one side and red on the other, poisoning only the red half. She disguised herself as a peasant and offered it through the window. To prove it safe, she ate the white half. Snow White bit the red half and fell dead.
The dwarfs could not revive her. Because she looked as fresh as if asleep, they placed her in a glass coffin on the mountain. One day a prince saw her and begged to carry the coffin away. As his servants lifted it, they stumbled; the piece of poisoned apple flew from Snow White’s throat, and she opened her eyes.
The prince asked her to marry him. At their wedding the wicked queen’s mirror named the young bride as fairest. The queen went to see her rival and found Snow White alive. In the old tale, iron shoes were heated in coals, and the queen was forced to dance in them until she died. Snow White and the prince lived on, freed from her envy.