Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (21 page)

The queen hurried back and threw off her disguise before standing in front of the magic mirror. She said:

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who in this land is the fairest of all?’

And the mirror answered:

‘Your majesty, you are still lovely, it’s true,

But as soon as you’d gone, the good dwarfs arrived home

And with care and with caution they took out the comb,

And Snow White is alive and far lovelier than you.’

That made the queen stagger and clutch at the wall. The blood drained out of her face, leaving it a dirty white with patches of yellow and green. Then she drew herself up to her full height, and sparks flew out of her eyes.

‘Snow White shall die!’ she cried.

She went into her most private room and locked the door behind her. No one was allowed in there, not even the servants. Then, with the help of a book of spells and several little dark bottles, she set about making a poisoned apple. It was white on one side and rosy red on the other; anyone who saw it would want to take a bite; but if they did, even just the tiniest nibble, they would fall down dead at once.

Then the queen disguised herself a third time, put the apple in her pocket, and set off for the dwarfs’ cottage.

She knocked on the door and Snow White looked out of the window.

‘I can’t let anyone in,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed.’

‘That’s all right, my dear,’ said the queen, who looked like an old peasant. ‘I just wondered if you’d like an apple. I’ve had such a crop this year I don’t know what to do with them all.’

‘No, I’m not supposed to take anything,’ said Snow White.

‘Oh, what a pity,’ said the old woman. ‘They taste so good, too. Look, I’ll take a bite in case you’re worried.’

She had made the apple so cunningly that only the red half was poisoned. Of course she took a bite from the white half, and then held it out to Snow White.

It looked so delicious that the poor girl couldn’t resist. She reached out through the window, took the apple, and bit deeply into the red part, and she’d hardly bitten off a piece when she fell to the floor, dead.

The wicked queen leaned in and saw her lying on the floor, and she laughed a loud laugh.

‘White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony! And now dead as a doornail! Those little monkeys won’t wake you up this time.’

When she got back to her boudoir she asked the mirror:

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who in this land is the fairest of all?’

And the mirror answered:

‘
Your majesty, you are the fairest of all.
’

She sighed a deep and happy sigh of satisfaction. If an envious heart can be at rest, hers was then.

When the dwarfs came home that evening, they found Snow White on the floor, stark and still. She wasn’t breathing, her eyes were closed, she wasn’t moving at all. She was dead. They looked around for whatever might have killed her, and found nothing; they unfastened her laces in case she couldn’t breathe; they looked through her hair for a poisoned comb; they warmed her by the fire, they put a drop of brandy on her lips, they laid her on a bed and they sat her up in a chair, but nothing helped.

Then it struck home to them that she must be really dead, and they laid her out gently on a bier and sat beside her, weeping for three days. They had intended to bury her, but she still looked so fresh and beautiful, just as if she was only sleeping, that they couldn’t bring themselves to put her under the black earth.

So they had a glass coffin made, and laid her inside. With letters of gold they wrote ‘
PRINCESS SNOW WHITE
’ on it, and they carried it up to a mountain top. From then on one of the dwarfs stayed beside her all the time. They took it in turns to watch over her, and the birds came and mourned for her as well: first an owl, then a raven, and finally a dove.

And so things remained for a long, long time. The body of Snow White did not decay, for she still looked as white as snow, as red as blood and as black as ebony.

One day a prince happened to be hunting in the forest, and he came to the dwarfs’ house and asked for shelter for the night. Next morning he saw the sunlight glitter on the mountain top and went to see what was there. He found the glass coffin, he read the golden inscription, and he saw the body of Snow White.

He said to the dwarfs, ‘Let me take the coffin away with me. I’ll pay you as much as you want.’

‘We don’t want money,’ they said. ‘We wouldn’t sell that coffin for all the money in the world.’

‘Then please give it to me,’ he begged. ‘I’ve fallen in love with Princess Snow White, and I can’t live without being able to see her. I’ll treat her with all the honour and respect I’d feel for a living princess.’

The dwarfs went away a little and spoke together quietly. Then they came back and said they’d taken pity on him, and they were sure he’d treat their dear Snow White properly, so he could take her back to his kingdom.

The prince thanked them and told his servants to pick up the coffin with great care and carry it along with him. But as they were going down the mountainside, one of the servants tripped and stumbled, and shook the coffin; and that dislodged the piece of apple from Snow White’s throat, for she had never quite swallowed it.

And slowly she woke up, and then she pushed open the lid of the coffin and sat up, fully alive once more.

‘Dear God, where am I?’ she said.

The prince said joyfully, ‘You’re with me!’ He told her everything that had happened, and then said, ‘I love you more than anything else in the world. Come with me to my father’s castle, and become my wife.’

Snow White loved him at once, and their wedding was arranged with great splendour and magnificence.

Among the guests invited to the ceremony was Snow White’s wicked stepmother. After putting on the most beautiful of her dresses she stood in front of the magic mirror and said:

‘
Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who in this land is the fairest of all?’

And the mirror answered:

‘Your majesty, you are still lovely, it’s true,

But the young queen’s a thousand times fairer than you.’

The queen gasped with horror. She was so frightened, so terrified, that she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go to the wedding and she didn’t want to stay away, and yet she felt she had to go and see the young queen; so in the end she went. And when she saw Snow White she recognized her at once, and was struck with horror. She could only stand there trembling.

But a pair of iron shoes had already been placed in the fire. When they were red-hot they were brought out with tongs and placed on the floor. And the wicked queen was made to step into them, and dance till she fell down dead.

***

Tale type:
ATU 709, ‘Snow White’

Source:
a story told to the Grimm brothers by the Hassenpflug family

Similar stories:
Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Snow-White’ (
Folk Tales of Britain
); Italo Calvino: ‘Bella Venezia’, ‘Giricoccola’ (
Italian Folktales
)

The great gravitational attraction of Walt Disney’s
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
will always pull at this tale, unless the storyteller simply decides to ignore it, which isn’t actually very hard to do, if you take your lead from Grimm.

Disney was a great storyteller, though, and it’s interesting to see how the artists in the Disney studio, working under his direction, focused not only on one aspect of the tale that is in Grimm (the wickedness of the stepmother/queen) but also on another that isn’t (the comedy of the dwarfs, their individual names and personalities). ‘Work to your strengths’ is a good storytelling maxim. The Disney corporation was very good at visual gags and the easily read charm of little children, which are embodied in the forest animals (big eyes, simple trusting natures, round bodies) and in the dwarfs, who are toddlers with beards.

And I am all in favour stealing anything that works. What works in one medium won’t necessarily work in another, though, and I don’t think characterizing each separate dwarf works at all off the screen. They don’t function like that in Grimm: here they are a band of little earth-spirits, benevolent and anonymous. They are perfectly capable of looking after themselves, unlike the bearded babies of Disney, who have to be cooked for and cleaned up after by Snow White the all-American mom.

In both Disney and Grimm they can mourn Snow White but they can’t bring her back to life. Only a happy accident, engineered by a prince, can do that.

In the Grimms’ first edition, of 1812, the wicked queen was Snow White’s mother. She didn’t become a stepmother until the second edition of 1819, when Snow White’s mother died in childbirth. What happened to her father? Dim, faint and sketchy, like many of the males in Grimm, he was simply obliterated by the power of the monstrous queen.

TWENTY-SEVEN

RUMPELSTILTSKIN

There was once a poor miller who had a beautiful daughter. One day he happened to fall into conversation with the king, and in order to impress him he said, ‘You know, your majesty, I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold.’

The king said to the miller, ‘I like the sound of that. If your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her to the castle tomorrow, and we’ll see what she can do.’

When the girl was brought to him, he took her to a room that was filled with straw right up to the ceiling. He gave her a spinning wheel and several spools and said, ‘There you are. Work all day and all night, and if you haven’t spun all this straw into gold by tomorrow morning, you’ll be put to death.’

Then he himself locked the door, and she was left there all alone.

The poor girl sat there with no idea what to do. Of course she couldn’t spin straw into gold, and the longer she sat there the more frightened she became, and finally she began to cry.

Then suddenly the door opened, and in came a little man.

‘Good day, Miss Miller, and what are you blubbering for?’

‘I’m supposed to spin this straw into gold, and I don’t know how to do it, and if I don’t they’re going to kill me!’

‘Oh. Well, what will you give me if I do it for you?’

‘My necklace!’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’

He peered at the necklace and nodded, and put it in his pocket, and then he sat down at the spinning wheel. He set to work so fast she could hardly see his hands.
Whir! whir! whir!
went the wheel, and the first spool was full. He put another one on, and
whir! whir! whir!
and that one was full too. It went on like that till morning, and then all the straw was spun, and all the spools were filled with gold. Then the little man left without another word.

At sunrise the king came and unlocked the door. He was pleased to see all that gold, and a bit surprised, too, that the miller’s daughter had managed to do it. But it wasn’t enough for him, so he took her to another room, even larger, that was filled with straw like the first one.

‘Spin all this in one night, or lose your life!’ he said, and locked the door.

Once again the poor girl began to cry, and once again the door opened, and there was the little man.

‘What will you give me if I spin all this into gold for you?’

‘The ring from my finger!’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’

He squinted at it, and put it in his pocket. Then he began to spin. The wheel went
whir! whir! whir!
all night long, and by morning all the straw was turned into gold.

The king was even more delighted, but he still hadn’t got enough gold. He took the miller’s daughter to an even larger room filled with straw like the others, and said, ‘Spin this into gold, and I’ll make you my wife.’ He was thinking: ‘She’s only a miller’s daughter, but I’ll never find a richer wife in all the world.’

When the girl was alone, the little man opened the door a third time.

‘What will you give me?’

‘I’ve got nothing left!’

‘Then you’ve got to promise me that when you’re queen you’ll give me your first child.’

‘Well, who can tell what’ll happen in the future?’ she thought, and she promised the little man what he asked for.

He set to work, and by the morning all the straw had been spun into gold. When the king saw it he kept his promise, and the miller’s lovely daughter became the queen.

A year later she brought a beautiful child into the world. She’d put the little man out of her mind, but all of sudden there he was.

‘Now you must give me what you promised!’ he said.

‘Oh, no, no, please, anything but that! I’ll give you all the wealth in the kingdom.’

‘What would I want that for, when I can spin gold from straw? I want a living baby, that’s what I want.’

The queen began to cry and weep so much that the little man felt sorry for her.

‘All right, I’ll give you three days,’ he said. ‘You find out what my name is in three days, and you can keep your child.’

The queen sat up all night trying to remember every name she’d ever heard. She sent a messenger into the town to ask for any unusual names, and wrote down everything he came back with. When the little man returned, she began:

‘Is it Caspar?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Melchior?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Balthazar?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

She went on through all the names the messenger brought back, and each time the little man said, ‘No, that’s not my name.’

The second day she sent the messenger out into the country. There must be some strange names out there, she thought, and there were. When the little man came back she tried them out.

‘Is it Pickleburster?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Hankydank?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it McMustardplaster?’

But he always answered, ‘No, that’s not my name.’

She was getting desperate. On the third day, though, the messenger came back with a strange tale.

‘I haven’t heard any more names of the sort I found yesterday, your majesty, but when I was near the top of the mountain in the thickest part of the forest, I saw a little house. There was a fire burning in front of it, and a little man – you should have seen him, he looked absurd – was dancing about in front of it, hopping on one leg and singing out:

‘One more day and then she’ll see

The royal child belongs to me!

Water, earth, and air, and flame –

Rumpelstiltskin is my name!’

Well, you can imagine how pleased the queen was to hear that.

When the little man came in he was rubbing his hands together and hopping with glee and saying, ‘Now, milady, what’s my name? Eh? Eh?’

‘Is it Tom?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Dick?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it – let me see – Harry?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Well, I wonder if it could be . . . Rumpelstiltskin?’

‘The Devil told you that! The Devil told you that!’ the little man yelled, and in his fury he stamped his right foot so hard that he drove it into the ground right up to his waist. Then he took hold of his left foot with both hands and tore himself in two.

***

Tale type:
ATU 500, ‘The Name of the Supernatural Helper’

Source:
a story told to the Grimm brothers by Dortchen Wild

Similar stories:
Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Duffy and the Devil’, ‘Peerifool’, ‘Titty Tod’, ‘Tom Tit Tot’, ‘Whuppity Stoorie’ (
Folk Tales of Britain
)

No selection from Grimm would be complete without ‘Rumpelstiltskin’. The brothers revised the tale after the first edition, of 1812, mainly in the direction of greater elaboration: for example, in the first edition Rumpelstiltskin simply runs away angrily once his name is discovered, instead of bisecting himself in the ingenious manner described here, which comes from the edition of 1819. Stories with a repetitive structure can take a fair amount of elaboration.

Spinning was a household occupation of great economic importance before the Industrial Revolution put paid to that mode of subsistence. A wife who could spin well was a prize worth having, even (in a story anyway) for a king. We still talk about spinning a yarn when we mean telling a story, though the connection is long lost.

The English ‘Tom Tit Tot’ (from
Folk Tales of Britain
), with its greedy, slatternly, sexy heroine, is to my mind an even better version of this tale.