Sneewittchen

Snow White

In the middle of winter a queen sews at a window with an ebony frame, pricks her finger, and three drops of blood fall in the snow; she wishes for a child white as snow, red as blood and black as the ebony. Her daughter Sneewittchen is born and the queen dies. The king's new wife is beautiful but proud, and her magic mirror tells her she is the most beautiful in the land, until Sneewittchen at seven is a thousand times more beautiful. Green with envy, the queen orders a huntsman to kill the girl in the forest and bring back her lung and liver. He pities her and lets her run; he brings the lung and liver of a young boar instead, and the queen eats them. Sneewittchen runs through the wild forest to a little house where everything is small and seven of everything stands ready; she eats and drinks a little from each place and falls asleep in the seventh bed. The seven dwarfs, who dig for ore in the mountains, come home, find her and let her sleep. She stays to keep their house, and they warn her to let nobody in. The mirror tells the queen where she is. Disguised as an old pedlar, the queen laces her bodice so tight that she falls as if dead; the dwarfs cut the lace. Disguised as another old woman, she puts a poisoned comb in her hair; the dwarfs pull it out. In a secret chamber she makes an apple whose red half is poisoned, comes as a farmer's wife, eats the white half herself, and Sneewittchen bites the red half and falls dead. Now the mirror says the queen is the most beautiful. The dwarfs cannot wake her; they weep three days and lay her in a glass coffin on the mountain with her name in gold letters, and an owl, a raven and a dove come to mourn. After a long time a king's son sees her, begs the dwarfs for the coffin, and they give it to him out of pity. His servants stumble over a bush, the poisoned bite falls from her throat and she wakes. The prince asks her to marry him. The stepmother, invited to the wedding, hears from the mirror that the young queen is more beautiful, goes, recognises Sneewittchen and must dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls dead.

Retold from Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 1, 7. Auflage (Ausgabe letzter Hand, 1857), KHM 53 by Brüder Grimm (public domain).