The Queen, Snow White’s stepmother, knew how much this meant to her husband. At the first chance, she rushed to her magic mirror.  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” said the Queen.  “Who is the fairest of them all?”

 

 

“Snow White is the fairest of them all!” said the Magic Mirror.

 “What?!” yelled the Queen.  “No one is more fair than I!  The Queen must have the best of everything - everyone knows that.  What could be more fair?”

“Snow White is the fairest of them all!” repeated the Magic Mirror.

 “What do you know – you’re a mirror!” roared the Queen.  And she stormed off. 

Still, the Queen was bothered.  So bothered was she that the Queen decided to be rid of the girl, once and for all. 

“I cannot wait another day!” she declared.  The Queen called for her servant, a huntsman.  “Find a reason to take Snow White deep into the woods,” she said, pointing her long finger at the servant. “Then kill her.”

The huntsman was shocked!  But she was the Queen and what could he do?  The next day he took Snow White into the woods.  As he drew his knife to slay her, Snow White turned around.

 

 

“Look,” she said, taking something out of her pocket.  “You have always been good to me.”  She held in front of him six perfect arrowheads that she had carefully shaped. “Do you like them?” she said.  “They are for you.”

“Snow White,” said the huntsman.  “I cannot do this!”

“Of course you can take these,” said Snow White.

"That's not what I meant," said the servant.  He dropped to his knees.  “How can I say this to you?  The Queen, your step-mother, ordered me to kill you,” he said.  “But I cannot!”

“She did what?” Snow White called out with alarm.

“You must run away!” said the huntsman.  “Far into the woods.  Now!  And never come back to the castle!”

Snow White turned and ran into the woods as fast as she could.  Deeper and deeper she ran.  It was getting dark, and the wolves were starting to howl.  She tripped and her skirt was torn.  Tall tree branches seemed to reach down to the very ground to grab her.  She was scratched, bleeding and scared.  Yet she ran on and on.

Then all of a sudden, far away, there was a light.  Who was living so deep in the woods?  She stepped up closer.  It was a cottage!  Yet no sound came from the cottage, only light from the windows.

 

 

“Hello?” she said, knocking softly on the door.  “Hello?” No answer.  The door was a little bit open.  She opened it some more and stepped in.  “Hello, is anyone home?” 

She looked around.  What a mess!  She had never seen a messier living room.

“This cottage may be the biggest mess I ever saw,” she thought.  “But it's a roof over my head for tonight. Maybe if I clean up around here, I can earn my sleep.”

As she cleaned, she thought of someone she already missed.  Before her father had re-married, she and a Prince who lived in the next kingdom were getting to know each other.  They would take long walks in the royal garden and tell each other stories, and laugh.

 

 

After the Queen had moved into the castle, her stepmother had made a new rule – no more visitors.  Now the Prince had to slip over the palace gate in secret. He would call out to her from under her window and they could talk a bit that way. It wasn’t as good as the long walks but it was the best they could manage.  

Now that she had to run away from home, would she ever see him again?

After Snow White cleaned up the living room, she went upstairs.  On the second floor, there were seven little beds lined up in a row, as if for children.  Tired from cleaning, Snow White yawned and lay across all seven of the beds.  Soon she fell fast asleep.

Snow White is a princess who lives in a castle with her stepmother, who is a witch. The witch uses an enchanted mirror to tell her who is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. When the mirror answers ‘Snow White’, her stepmother has her taken into the forest to be killed. The huntsman charged with the task takes pity on the girl, and sets Snow White free. She comes across a little house where seven dwarfs live, and makes her home with them.

On discovering her stepdaughter is still alive, the witch disguises herself as an old woman and makes her way into the forest. She finds Snow White and gives her a poisoned apple to eat. Snow White instantly falls down as if dead. The dwarfs find her, apparently dead, when they return from work, and place her in a glass coffin.

The next day, a prince is riding through the forest and sees the beautiful Snow White in her coffin. He asks to take her back to her father’s castle. During the journey, one of the men carrying the coffin trips, and the piece of poisoned apple is dislodged from Snow White’s throat. She instantly wakes up, and she and the prince are married.

First, a brief summary of the Snow White story. One day, a queen sat working at a window with an ebony frame, with the snow falling outside. She pricked her finger (presumably she was sewing or knitting, though her precise occupation, other than ‘queen’, is not usually stated), and, watching the drops of blood, she made a wish that her little daughter would grow up to be as white as snow, as red as her


When the queen died shortly after this, the king remarried a vain woman who became Snow White’s stepmother. This stepmother liked to look in her magical looking-glass and ask it who was the fairest in the land, to which the obliging mirror would always return the answer, ‘You, queen.’

Except that one day, when Snow White was seven years old and her beauty has surpassed her stepmother’s, the looking-glass returned the answer, when the queen asked it who was the fairest of them all, ‘Snow White is lovelier than you!’ The wicked stepmother can’t be doing with a beautiful rival, so she orders a huntsman to take Snow White out to the woods and kill her. The huntsman can’t bring himself to kill the little girl, so he merely abandons her in the forest.


Snow White wanders, lost and forlorn, through the forest until she comes to a cottage, which she enters in the hope of finding shelter. Instead, what she finds are seven places laid out for dinner, seven beds: seven of everything. She has a bit out of each of the food and drink set out at the dinner table, before trying each of the beds, until she finds one that’s comfortable, and falls asleep. Much like the situation the three bears come back to in the ‘Goldilocks’ story, the occupants of the cottage – seven dwarfs – then return from a hard day mining for gold in the nearby caves, and spot that an intruder’s been nibbling at their food.

But unlike the three bears, who are angry upon discovering a juvenile delinquent in their home, the seven dwarfs are so impressed by Snow White’s beauty that they are overjoyed to see her and leave her to sleep. In the morning she wakes and tells them her story, and they agree to let her stay with them, and look after the cottage while they go out to work.


They warn her, though, that the evil queen is bound to learn that she is still alive, and seek to kill her again. Meanwhile, the wicked stepmother’s talking mirror is busy blabbing about Snow White’s whereabouts, and when the evil queen asks it who is the fairest in the land, the bigmouthed looking-glass replies that Snow White still is, and adds where the girl can be found.


Having learned that her plan has been foiled and the girl still lives, the wicked stepmother disguises herself as a pedlar and travels to the dwarfs’ cottage, and sells the naïve Snow White some new laces for her shoes. She ties the girl’s laces so tightly that Snow White falls down, unconscious.

When the dwarfs return, they undo the laces and revive the girl, warning her to be more vigilant – they, unlike Snow White, have realised that the pedlar was the wicked queen in disguise. When the wicked queen gets home and learns from the mirror that her plan has been thwarted again, she sets off in a different disguise and convinces Snow White to take a comb as a gift. When the comb makes contact with Snow White’s black hair, she drops down again, and the wicked stepmother returns, her mission supposedly accomplished.

But once again the dwarfs manage to revive Snow White, and the wicked queen learns from the mirror that the girl is still alive. So she contrives a third plan, and sets off for the dwarfs’ cottage a third time, this time dressed as an old peasant’s wife.