Read the fairy tale Lu loves
Snow White
A queen’s wish, a magic mirror, and a girl who finds a home in a cottage of seven small friends: one of the oldest tales the Brothers Grimm ever wrote down.
Long ago, a queen sat sewing by an open window in winter, and as snow drifted past she pricked her finger, letting three drops of blood fall onto the snow below. Struck by how the red looked against the white, she wished aloud for a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as the window frame. Her wish was granted, and she named the girl Snow White, though she did not live to see her grow up.
The king remarried, and his new queen was beautiful but vain, and owned a mirror that answered any question honestly. Each morning she asked it who was the fairest in the land, and each morning it named her, until the day Snow White turned seven and the mirror gave a different answer. Unable to bear it, the queen called for a huntsman and ordered him to take the girl into the forest and never bring her back.
The huntsman’s mercy
The huntsman led Snow White deep among the trees, but when the moment came, he found he could not do what the queen had asked. He told her to run and never return to the castle, and to satisfy the queen he brought back the heart of a young deer instead, letting her believe the terrible task was done.
Snow White ran until the forest grew dark and she stumbled upon a small cottage, tidy but empty, with seven little beds inside. Too tired to go further, she ate a little from each of the seven plates on the table and fell asleep across three of the beds pushed together. When the seven dwarfs who lived there came home from the mountains, they found her sleeping and, moved by her story once she woke and told it, agreed she could stay and keep house for them while they mined by day.
The peddler at the door
Back at the castle, the queen asked her mirror once more, and learned that Snow White was alive and well in a cottage beyond the seven hills. Disguising herself as an old peddler woman, she made her way there and offered a beautiful apple through the window, red on one side and pale on the other, keeping the poisoned half for Snow White and eating the safe half herself to prove it was harmless.
Snow White, who had been warned never to let anyone in but did not think a kindly old peddler could do any harm, took a bite and fell at once into a sleep so deep it looked like death. When the dwarfs came home and could not wake her, they wept and could not bear to bury her, so they placed her in a glass coffin in a clearing where they could still watch over her.
Waking in the clearing
Seasons passed, and a young prince riding through the forest came upon the glass coffin and the girl within it, who looked simply asleep rather than gone. He asked the dwarfs if the coffin might be carried back to his castle, so that she could be honored properly, and they agreed. As his men lifted it over a fallen branch, the coffin jolted, and the piece of poisoned apple caught in Snow White’s throat came loose. She opened her eyes.
She returned first to the little cottage to thank the seven dwarfs who had kept her safe, before going on to the castle to begin a new life. As for the queen, she was never welcome in that kingdom again, and Snow White often said that a home does not need to be a castle, only people who are kind to you when they have no reason to be.
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Swabian Lullaby
Play this softly while you read Snow White aloud: a traditional handplayed lullaby from Swabia, in the south of Germany.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world, each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.