Snow-White and Rose-Red

There was once a poor widow who lived alone with her two daughters in a little cottage far from any village. In the garden in front of it grew two rose trees, one bearing white roses and the other red, and her two children were like the two trees. One was called Snow-White and the other Rose-Red.

They were as good and cheerful and hardworking as any two children in the world, only Snow-White was the quieter and gentler of the two. Rose-Red loved to run about the meadows and fields after flowers and butterflies, while Snow-White stayed at home with her mother, helping with the housework or reading aloud when there was nothing to do.

The sisters were so fond of each other that they always went out hand in hand. When Snow-White said, “We will never leave each other,” Rose-Red answered, “Not as long as we live,” and their mother would add, “Whatever one of you has, she must share with the other.”

They often wandered in the forest alone and gathered red berries, and no animal ever did them any harm. The creatures came to them trustingly instead. The hare ate a cabbage leaf out of their hands, the deer grazed at their side, the stag leapt merrily past them, and the birds stayed on their branches and sang every song they knew.

Nothing bad ever happened to them. If they stayed too long in the woods and night came on, they lay down side by side on the moss and slept until morning, and their mother knew it and never worried about them.

Once, when they had spent the night in the forest and the red of dawn woke them, they saw a beautiful child in a shining white dress sitting close to where they lay. The child stood up and looked at them very kindly, but said nothing and walked away among the trees. And when the girls looked around, they saw that they had been sleeping right at the edge of a deep drop, and that a few steps further in the dark would surely have carried them over. Their mother told them it must have been the angel who watches over good children.

Snow-White and Rose-Red kept their mother’s cottage so neat that it was a pleasure to look inside. In summer Rose-Red looked after the house, and every morning, before her mother woke, she set a bunch of flowers by her mother’s bed, with one rose from each tree in it. In winter Snow-White lit the fire and hung the kettle on the hook above it. The kettle was only brass, but it was scoured so bright that it shone like gold. In the evening, when the snow came down, the mother would say, “Go, Snow-White, and bolt the door,” and then they sat by the hearth, and the mother put on her spectacles and read aloud out of a great book while the two girls listened and spun. Near them a lamb lay on the floor, and behind them a white dove sat on its perch with its head tucked under its wing.

One evening, as they sat together like that, somebody knocked at the door as if he wished to be let in.

“Quick, Rose-Red, open it,” said the mother. “It will be a traveller looking for shelter.”

Rose-Red went and drew back the bolt, expecting a poor man. It was not a man at all. It was a bear, pushing his broad black head in at the door.

Rose-Red cried out and sprang back, the lamb bleated, the dove fluttered up, and Snow-White hid behind her mother’s bed. But the bear began to speak.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I will not hurt you. I am half frozen, and I only want to warm myself a little beside you.”

“You poor bear,” said the mother. “Lie down by the fire, only take care that you don’t burn your coat.” Then she called, “Snow-White, Rose-Red, come out. The bear will do you no harm. He means well.”

So they both came out, and little by little the lamb and the dove came nearer too, and were not afraid of him.

“Children,” said the bear, “knock the snow out of my coat for me.”

They fetched the broom and swept his fur clean, and he stretched himself out by the fire and growled with contentment. It was not long before they were quite at home with him and up to all sorts of tricks with their clumsy guest. They tugged at his fur, set their feet on his back and rolled him about, or took a hazel switch and beat him with it, and when he growled they laughed. The bear took it all in good part. Only when they were too rough did he call out, “Let me live, children!”

Snow-White, Rose-Red,will you beat your suitor dead?

When it was bedtime and the others went off to bed, the mother said to the bear, “You may stay there by the hearth. Then you will be safe from the cold and the bad weather.” As soon as the sky grew light the two children let him out, and he trotted away across the snow into the forest.

After that the bear came every evening at the same hour, lay down by the hearth, and let the children play with him as much as they liked. They grew so used to him that the door was never bolted until their shaggy friend had arrived.

When spring came and everything outside was green, the bear said to Snow-White one morning, “Now I must go away, and I cannot come back all summer.”

“Where are you going, dear bear?” asked Snow-White.

“Into the forest, to guard my treasure from the wicked dwarfs. In winter, when the ground is frozen hard, they have to stay below and cannot work their way up. But now the sun has thawed the earth and warmed it, and they break through and come out to pry and to steal. Whatever falls into their hands and goes down into their caves does not easily see daylight again.”

Snow-White was very sad that he was going. As she unbolted the door for him and the bear pushed his way out, he caught against the latch, and a piece of his hairy coat was torn off, and it seemed to Snow-White that she saw gold shining through it. But she could not be sure. The bear ran quickly away and was soon out of sight behind the trees.

Some time later their mother sent the children into the forest to gather firewood. Out among the trees they found a great tree lying felled on the ground, and beside the trunk something was jumping up and down in the grass, though they could not tell what it was. When they came nearer, they saw a dwarf with an old withered face and a snow-white beard a yard long. The end of the beard was pinched fast in a split in the wood, and the little fellow was leaping back and forth like a dog on a rope and did not know what to do.

He glared at the girls with his fiery red eyes and shouted, “What are you standing there for? Can’t you come here and help me?”

“What have you been doing, little man?” asked Rose-Red.

“You silly, prying goose!” answered the dwarf. “I was splitting the tree for small firewood. Thick logs burn up the scrap of food that folk like us need, for we do not gobble the way you coarse, greedy people do. I had driven the wedge in nicely and everything was going as I wanted, but the wretched thing was too smooth and sprang out, and the tree snapped shut so fast that I could not pull my fine white beard out again. Now it is stuck, and here I am, and the smooth-faced ninnies stand and laugh. Ugh, how horrid you are!”

The children tried their hardest, but the beard was held too fast to pull free.

“I will run and fetch somebody,” said Rose-Red.

“Fetch somebody? You senseless creature,” snarled the dwarf. “Two of you are two too many already. Can’t you think of anything better?”

“Don’t be so impatient,” said Snow-White. “I will help you.” She took her little scissors out of her pocket and snipped off the end of the beard.

The moment the dwarf felt himself free, he reached for a sack full of gold that lay among the roots of the tree, and heaved it out, grumbling to himself, “Rude people, to cut a piece off my splendid beard! Bad luck go with you.” Then he swung the sack onto his back and went off without so much as another look at the children.

Not long afterwards Snow-White and Rose-Red went out to catch a dish of fish. As they came near the brook they saw something like a big grasshopper hopping towards the water as if it meant to jump in. They ran to it and found it was the dwarf.

“Where are you going?” said Rose-Red. “You surely don’t mean to go into the water?”

“I am not such a fool as that!” cried the dwarf. “Can’t you see that this wretched fish is trying to pull me in?”

The little man had been sitting there fishing, and the wind had tangled his beard with the line. Then a big fish had bitten, and the feeble creature had no strength to pull it out. The fish had the better of him and was dragging him along, and though he clutched at every reed and rush within reach, it did him little good. He had to follow wherever the fish went, and at any moment he might have been pulled into the brook.

The girls came just in time. They held him fast and tried to work his beard loose from the line, but it was no use, for beard and line were knotted tight together. There was nothing for it but to bring out the little scissors and cut, and a good part of the beard was lost.

When the dwarf saw it he shrieked, “Is that any way to behave, you toadstools, spoiling a man’s face? It was not enough to clip off the end. Now you have cut away the best of it. I cannot let my own people see me. I wish you had to run until there were no soles left on your shoes!” Then he pulled a sack of pearls out of the rushes and dragged it away without another word, and vanished behind a stone.

Soon after that their mother sent the two girls to town to buy needles and thread, and laces and ribbons. Their road took them across a heath where huge blocks of rock lay scattered here and there. They noticed a great bird circling slowly in the air above them, sinking lower and lower, until at last it dropped down beside a rock not far off. A moment later they heard a piercing, pitiful cry. They ran to look, and saw with horror that the eagle had seized their old acquaintance the dwarf and was about to carry him away.

The girls were full of pity. They caught hold of the little man at once and pulled against the eagle until at last it let go of him. As soon as the dwarf had recovered from his fright, he screeched in his shrill voice, “Couldn’t you have handled me more carefully? You dragged at my thin coat until it is torn and full of holes, you clumsy, blundering things!” Then he took up a sack of precious stones and slipped back under the rock into his hole.

The girls were used to his ingratitude by now. They went on their way and did their errands in the town.

Coming back across the heath in the evening, they came upon the dwarf without meaning to. He had tipped out his sack of precious stones on a clean patch of ground, never thinking that anyone would pass so late. The evening sun shone over them, and they glittered and sparkled in every colour so beautifully that the children stopped and stood looking.

“What are you gaping at?” shouted the dwarf, and his ash-grey face turned red with rage. He was going on with his scolding when a loud growling was heard, and a black bear came trotting out of the forest towards them. The dwarf jumped up in terror, but the bear was too close now for him to reach his hole. In his fright he cried out, “Dear Mr. Bear, spare me! I will give you all my treasure. Look at the lovely jewels lying there! Let me live. What good is a thin little fellow like me? You would not even feel me between your teeth. Take these two wicked girls instead. They are tender morsels for you, plump as young quails. Eat them, do!”

The bear paid no attention to a word of it. He struck the spiteful creature down with one blow of his paw, and the dwarf never stirred again.

The girls had already run off, but the bear called after them, “Snow-White, Rose-Red, do not be afraid. Wait, and I will come with you.”

Then they knew his voice and stood still, and when he reached them, the bearskin suddenly fell away, and there stood a handsome man, dressed all in gold.

“I am a king’s son,” he said. “That wicked dwarf stole my treasure and put a spell on me, so that I had to run wild in the forest as a bear until his death should set me free. Now he has the punishment he earned.”

Snow-White was married to him, and Rose-Red to his brother, and between them they shared the great treasure the dwarf had gathered in his cave. Their old mother lived quietly and happily with her children for many long years. She brought the two rose trees with her, and they stood in front of her window, and every year they bore the most beautiful roses, white and red.