Snow White

Snow White was a girl who escaped her wicked stepmother's attempts to murder her. She was taken in by the Seven Dwarfs.

Background
The girl, Snow White, was the child of a queen who had wished for a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. The queen died shortly after Snow White was born, and the king remarried. His new wife, Snow's stepmother, was a wicked woman who played around with the blacker forms of magic. She had a magic mirror; its power was to tell who was the fairest woman in the land. For years, the new queen asked the same question:
 * Looking glass, mirror, on the wall,
 * Who's the fairest one of all?

Always the answer was the queen; always, that is, until Snow White started becoming a woman. From then on the answer was always her stepdaughter, Snow White. This enraged the queen more and more until, one day, she called in the king's huntsman and commanded him to take the girl into the forest and kill her. Then he was to bring back her lungs and liver as proof of the deed. Snow White was able to talk the reluctant man out of the foul deed; she promised she would hide deep in the forest forever if he would spare her. He did, she ran, and the huntsman brought the heart and lungs of a boar to the queen, saying they were Snow White's. The woman accepted the man's story and ate the innards, thinking she was done with Snow White forever.

Snow, however, went deeper and deeper into the woods until she could go no further. She found a small house, and when there was no answer at the door, entered to find a messy home with only cold food in the kitchen. There were seven chairs, seven bowls, seven mugs, seven pipes, and seven beds in the house. Snow White tested them all and then fell asleep. When she awoke, she was surrounded by the seven dwarfs. They took pity on her when she told them her story and said that she could live with them and they would protect her, if she would clean house and cook for them. Thus they lived happily until the evil queen asked the mirror yet again who was the fairest in the land. The mirror told her it was Snow White in the dwarf's house. The evil stepmother was not at all pleased.

Three times did the queen try to kill Snow White. She would dress as an old woman and go to the house in the woods and give the sweet girl something fatal. The first time it was ribbons to choke her, the second, a poisoned comb. Both times though the dwarfs returned in time to save the girl. On the third occasion Snow White was given a poisoned apple, which she bit into and died. The grieving dwarfs placed her body in a glass coffin and put the coffin in the prettiest part of the woods. The coffin was found by a young prince, who was smitten by the dead girl's beauty. He told his servants to carry the coffin back to his palace, but as they picked it up, one of them stumbled and jarred the coffin. The shock dislodged the piece of poisoned apple from Snow White's throat, and she came back to life. Then they journeyed to his palace and were married.