SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED
Once there was a widow who had two young daughters. They all lived together in a cottage with a garden, and in the garden were two rosebushes, one white and one red. The widow thought her children were as lovely as roses, and so she called the first Rose-red and the other Snow-white.
The girls were the sweetest and best in the world, always cheerful and always diligent. Rose-red was the livelier of the two. She loved to run in the fields, picking flowers and catching butterflies. Snow-white was quieter and gentler. She liked to stay at home and help her mother, and she would often read aloud when there was no more work to do.
The children loved each other very much, and always held hands when they went out together. Snow-white would often say, “We will never ever be apart.” Rose-red would answer, “Not for as long as we live.” Their mother would always add, “Whatever belongs to one belongs to both.”
They often went to the forest by themselves to gather berries. The animals neither attacked nor ran away. They were like friends to the girls and trusted them completely. The little hares would eat cabbage leaves right out of their hands. The deer would graze beside them, or spring by playfully. And instead of flying off, the birds remained in the trees and sang with all their might.
No harm ever came to the girls. If they stayed so long in the forest that the evening caught them unawares, they would find some moss on the forest floor and sleep there till the morning came. Their mother knew they were safe, and never worried.
Once, they woke in the forest and found that someone had been watching them as they slept. It was a beautiful child in a shining white robe. As the girls were rubbing the sleep from their eyes, the child stood up and a tiny smile passed quickly across its face. Then it left without a word and vanished into the wood.
They soon discovered they had spent the night on the edge of a steep cliff. Had they walked any further in the dark, they would surely have tumbled to their deaths. Their mother told the girls that the child was probably a fairy, whose job it was to keep good children safe.
The girls kept the cottage so clean and neat that it was a pleasure to be inside. Rose-red looked after the house during the summer, and every morning before her mother awoke, she picked two roses, one red and one white, and laid them on the table by her mother’s bed. In the wintertime, Snow-white lit the fire and put the kettle on. The kettle was made of brass, but was polished so well that it shone like gold. In the evening when the snowflakes fell, their mother would always say, “Snow-white, go and bolt the door.” Then they would gather round the fire, and the girls would sit and spin and listen to their mother as she read them stories from a big old book. On the ground beside them lay a little lamb, and perched behind was a little white dove, with its head tucked under its wing.
One evening, they were sitting by the fire when someone knocked on the door. The mother said, “Open the door, Rose-red. It must be a traveler seeking shelter.” Rose-red unbolted the door and was startled to find that the visitor was not a man, but a huge and hairy grizzly bear instead. When the bear poked his thick brown head through the door, she backed away quickly and sharply drew her breath. The lamb bleated loudly and the dove flapped its wings, and Snow-white hid herself behind her mother’s bed.
But the bear suddenly spoke, saying, “Please don’t be afraid. You are all safe with me. I knocked because I’m frozen stiff. I hoped that I could warm myself a little by the fire.”
“You poor bear,” said the mother. “Quickly, come inside and close the door. Then stretch yourself out on the hearth in front of the fire. But keep an eye on the sparks.” Then she called to her children. “Snow-white! Rose-red! Come and see the bear. He’s quite harmless.” Both the girls went over, and soon the lamb and the dove forgot their fear as well, and settled near the bear.
After a while the bear asked the children to brush some of the snow out of his fur. So they fetched a couple of brooms with sturdy bristles and swept his matted fur until it was clean. The bear then snuggled against the floor until he was comfortable, and then lay perfectly still with his eyes half-closed, humming and growling happily to himself.
It wasn’t long before the girls were wholly at home with the bear. They tugged at his fur, and crawled on top of him, and pushed and pushed until they rolled him over, and poked and tickled and teased him brazenly with the branch of a willow. The bear let them play with him however they wished, and only when they went too far would he say, “Girls! Girls! Have a little mercy, please!” Then he would sing in a low grumbling voice:
Savage Snow-white and ruthless Rose-red
Don’t torture your lover until he’s dead!
At last it was time for the girls to go to sleep. Then the mother spoke to the bear. “Spend the night on the hearth,” she said. “I won’t have you out in the cold and the wet.”
At dawn the next day, the children opened the door and let him out. He lumbered over the snow and into the wood. But from that time on, he reappeared each night at the selfsame hour, and lay on the hearth, and let the children play as much as they liked. The bear was such a fixture in the house that they never bolted the door until he was home.
Winter passed and spring arrived, and all the trees in the forest were green again. One day, as the bear was leaving, he said to Snow-white, “Don’t wait for me tonight. From now until the fall I will stay in the forest.”
“But why?” replied Snow-white. “You’re welcome here.”
“My treasure is at risk,” said the bear. “The dwarfs who live beneath the earth stay in their homes in the winter. The ground is hard, and so their shovels break if they try to dig through to the surface. But now, the sun has brought the land to life again. The ground is warm and yielding. The dwarfs will shovel their way to the top, and sneak around, and steal whatever they can. And when something disappears into their caves, it rarely sees the light of day again.”
Snow-white was sad that the bear was leaving. But she opened the door without a word, and the bear hurried on his way. But a strange thing happened as he went through the door. A piece of his fur was snagged on the latch, and for an instant, Snow-white thought she saw a flash of glittering gold beneath the fur. But she couldn’t be sure, and the bear was soon out of sight.
A short time after this, the mother sent the girls into the forest for firewood. It wasn’t long before they saw a large tree in the distance that had been chopped down and was lying on the ground. There was something hopping up and down on the trunk, but they couldn’t see what it was. It was only when they reached the tree that it finally came into focus. It was a dwarf with a leathery squinched-up face and a long white beard that went all the way down to his feet.
The beard appeared to be stuck in the tree. The little man was dancing about like a dog on a chain and tugging the beard with all his might. He glared at the girls with his fiery eyes, and screamed, “Why are you just standing there? Get over here and help, for goodness’ sake!”
“What happened to you?” Rose-red asked.
“It’s none of your business, you stupid little girl!” spat the dwarf. He looked at the tree, at his beard, at the girls. “I was splitting the trunk,” he said, in a clipped and deliberate voice. “I was hammering in the wedge, and everything was fine, but the stupid wedge was wet and so it popped out of the tree. Then the wood snapped shut like a pair of giant jaws. And my beard–my beautiful beard–was stuck in the tree! But what do you care? You just stand and stare and giggle behind your hands! I hate you!”
The girls did everything they could to help, but the tree would not let go of the beard. Finally, Rose-red gave up.
“I’ll go and get someone,” she said.
“You idiot,” said the dwarf. “What’s the good of getting someone! Anyway, there are two of you here already, and that’s more than enough for me! Think of something, for goodness’ sake!”
“Don’t be such a grouch,” said Snow-wh
ite. “I have thought of something.” She took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and snipped off the end of his beard.
No sooner was he free than he leapt to the ground and grabbed a bag of gold he had hidden between the roots of the tree. He swung it over his shoulder as he muttered to himself. “What a stupid, stupid little girl, cutting off some of my beautiful beard!” Then he scurried off like a frightened spider, without so much as a backward glance.
Not long afterwards, the girls went fishing. A little way down the stream, they saw what seemed to be a grasshopper, but a grasshopper the size of a cat. It was bounding towards the water’s edge as if it wanted to jump in the stream. The children ran along the bank, and soon they recognized their friend the dwarf.
“What are you doing?” Rose-red asked. “Are you going in the water with all your clothes on?”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” screamed the dwarf. He pointed with his finger to the stream. “That fish is trying kill me!”
The dwarf had been fishing for his dinner, when suddenly a gust of wind had whipped his beard around the line. At that very moment he had hooked a powerful fish. Now the fish was dragging him around like a kite dragging its tail. Every couple of feet he hit a rock, and for a second he was stuck, but then the fish pulled twice as hard and he went flying through the air. He grabbed at the grass and the rushes on the bank, but his strength was nothing compared to that of the fish.
The girls arrived just in time to prevent the dwarf from bouncing into the water. They did what they could to untwist his beard, but the task was truly impossible. There was nothing left to do but get the scissors and cut the beard.
When the dwarf saw what they had done, he shrieked.
“You stupid, stupid, stupid little girl!” He grabbed his beard, which now went down no further than his chest. “You’re nothing but a savage! You’ve butchered my beautiful beard! You couldn’t just give me a trim, could you! You had to cut the whole thing off! I can’t bear it! I can’t let anyone see me like this! I hope that on your wedding day, the devil cuts the nose right off your face! Then you’ll know what it’s like to lose a beard!” He grabbed a sack of pearls he had hidden among the rushes, and he and the sack then vanished beneath a rock.
Not long afterwards, the girls were sent to town by their mother. She wanted needles and thread, and she asked them to buy some laces and ribbons too. The way to town was across a barren field that had boulders scattered here and there. In the sky ahead, they saw an eagle that was slowly circling down to earth. It landed on the ground beside a rock and suddenly they heard a piercing cry. They ran in the direction of the noise, and were horrified to see that the bird had their old friend the dwarf in its claws and was flexing its wings to carry him off.
The children grabbed hold of the dwarf and struggled so fiercely that the bird abandoned his prey and took to the skies.
The dwarf was in shock, but he soon recovered. “Did you have to be so rough?” he screamed. “Look at my coat, for goodness’ sake! Does it look like a coat? It’s more like strips of cloth! The two of you are great big stupids!” Then he grabbed a bag of precious stones and crawled under a rock and into his cave.
By now, the girls had grown accustomed to the dwarf’s unthankful nature, so they just ignored his words, and continued on their way. After they had bought their things in town, they were once again crossing the field when they surprised the dwarf. He had emptied a bag of precious stones on the ground, and was inspecting them when the children came by. The stones seemed almost to be dancing as they gleamed in the light of the evening sun. The children stopped and gazed at them in wonder.
“What are you gaping at, you stupid girls?” The dwarf was red with rage and had knives in his eyes. He was poised to go on with his rant when he suddenly heard a sound behind him. It was an ominous growl, fierce and very loud.
He turned and saw a huge brown bear come trotting out of the forest. The dwarf began to shake with fear and frantically looked around for somewhere to hide. But the bear was already much too near.
So he fell to his knees and pleaded for his life. “Dear Mister Bear,” he said, “please don’t kill me! I’ll give you everything I own! Look there, on the ground. Don’t you think they’re beautiful? I don’t deserve to die! And I’m sure I’d make a terrible meal! Just look at me! I’m skinny, and I’m old and tough, and I probably taste like crumbling powdery wood! But I bet those girls would make a tasty treat! And they are wicked girls, they’re very bad, but nice and fat and juicy just like Rock Cornish hens!”
The bear ignored the dwarf and raised his paw, and with a single blow he silenced him forever.
The girls had begun to run away when the bear called out to them. “Snow-white! Rose-red! Please don’t be afraid! Let’s walk home together.”
They recognized his voice and so the girls stopped running and turned to greet their old friend. He sauntered up to them and then, to their astonishment, his bearskin suddenly fell off. There stood a handsome young man, dressed in gold.
“My father is a king,” he said. “I was under the spell of that evil dwarf. He stole my treasure and turned me into a bear, condemned to roam the woods until his death, which would finally set me free. Now he has the punishment he deserves.”
Snow-white eventually married the prince, and Rose-red married his brother. The dwarf had amassed a huge hoard of treasure in his cave, and this they divided between themselves. The mother moved from the cottage to the castle, but took the rosebushes with her. She lived for many happy years, and every year the roses were lovelier than before.