Snow-White and Rose-Red

A POOR    WIDOW    ONCE    LIVED    WITH    HER    TWO daughters in a lonely cottage at the edge of a forest. The cottage was pretty and neat and in the garden, one on each side of the path, grew two rose trees. All the summer long one would be covered with white roses and the other with red. Perhaps it was because of these flowers that her two little girls were always called Snow-White and Rose-Red.

Snow-White was very fair, with blue eyes and long silky hair, while Rose-Red had dark curling hair, sparkling black eyes and rosy cheeks. The two children were very fond of each other and generally went about together.

Their mother was glad to have two such good and friendly children and, as long as they were together, she never feared that any harm would come to them. So they often went into the fields and the forest alone, either just for a walk or to pick flowers in the summer or berries or mushrooms in the autumn. Sometimes their mother would send them to collect a sack of firewood, or down to the stream to try to catch some fish for dinner. They were quite used to all the animals that lived in the forest: and it really seemed as though not even the fiercest creatures would do the pretty little sisters any harm. In fine weather, in the summer, they would sometimes even spend the night in the forest, curled up together on the soft moss that grew under the trees, and wouldn't go home till it was light again. Their mother was sure that as long as they were together they were quite safe, so she never either worried or scolded them if they did this.

In the winter it was different and the two little girls always stayed at home after dark. The winters are very cold in those parts, snow covered the ground for months, and their fun in the frosty time when the nights were long was to polish up the copper cooking-pans and the furni­ture till everything shone. After supper it would generally turn bitterly cold outside. But when the door was shut and bolted and when the firelight winked and blinked cosily in the warm kitchen and shone reflected in their polished pans, everything indoors looked cheerful. Their mother would often light a candle and the two girls would get out their spindles and, as they sat by the warm fireside, they would spin while she read to them out of a big book.

One evening when the frost was hard, as they were sitting like this, there came a loud knocking at the door.

"Open the door, Rose-Red,” said the mother, "that must be some poor traveller who has lost his way. Be quick, he must be half frozen, it's bitter cold outside!"

Rose-Red jumped up, pushed back the big bolt and began to open the door. But all of a sudden she screamed, for instead of a lost, shivering traveller, what should she see but a very large shaggy black bear! He peered round the door blinking in the light, and when Snow-White, too, caught sight of his broad black head, both the children were so frightened that they ran and hid behind their mother's bed. But now the bear began to speak in a deep hoarse voice.

"Don't be afraid!" he said. "Only let me come in and warm myself a little! I'm half frozen! I'll do you no harm!"

"Poor bear!" said the mother, putting down her spectacles. "Come in and lie down by the fire! Only mind you don't get too close and singe your fur."

So the huge shaggy creature pushed the door wide and came in and lay down, peaceably enough, while the mother got up and shut the door after him to keep out the cold.

"Snow-White! Rose-Red!" called she. "Come out! The bear is quite friendly!"

So the two little girls came out and stood looking rather doubtfully at the huge black creature.

"Children," said the bear in his deep growling voice, "could you please knock some of the snow out of my coat?"

Rather timidly they fetched the big house-brush and began to sweep the melting snow out of the bear's thick, heavy fur. It was like sweeping a very thick carpet! As they brushed, the bear kept turning and stretching him­self, this way and that, as if he enjoyed it. Soon he seemed to be quite warm and dry again and began grunting contentedly, for all the world as if he were a great purring cat.

Now these two girls were used to animals, and though they had been so much frightened at first, this brushing and sweeping soon made them feel quite at home with the big, sleepy, clumsy creature, so that it wasn't long before they began to pound him with their fists and tug at his fur under pretence of getting more snow off, and at last they were climbing all over him as he lay. They got so rough that they almost knocked the breath out of the bear so that he grunted aloud, and then the two children laughed.

The bear took all this play in good part, and only said, now and then, “Leave me alive, children. Don't kill me!"

" Snowy- White and Rosy- Red,
 Will you beat your lover dead?"

At last, when it got late and she had sent the children to bed, the mother banked up the fire with ashes, put out the candle, said goodnight to the bear, and, as she too went to bed, she told him that he might lie by the warm hearth till morning.

As soon as daylight came he seemed anxious to be off, so the children opened the door, and watched him trot across the snow and disappear into the forest.

And now, all that winter, every evening, the bear came at the same time, exactly as he had done on the first night. He knocked at the door, the children opened it for him, and he lay down on the hearth directly and let the children brush out the snow and play with him till he could bear it no longer and had to beg for mercy.

"Snowy- White and Rosy-Red,
 Will you beat your lover dead?"

After a while, they all got so used to him that the door was never bolted till their large black friend had arrived.

At last, when spring came, and when the sun shone warm once more, and the soaked meadows grew green again, the bear said to Snow-White one morning:

"Now I must go away, and not come back for the whole summer."

'Where are you going, dear bear?" asked she.

"I must stay in the forest to look after my treasure,^” said he. "Some dwarfs are good, but the dwarfs that live round here are as spiteful as can be, and they're a pack of thieves into the bargain."

"Don't they steal in the winter?" asked Snow-White.

"No," said the bear. "Treasure is safe from them as long as the ground is frozen hard. They go below before it freezes to keep warm, and there they have to stay. They can't work their way through the hard ground, but as soon as the earth has thawed soft again, out they come, the spiteful thieving creatures! These dwarfs will always do a bad turn if they can. They steal anything valuable that they can lay their hands on, and once they've managed to carry a thing down into their caves, it doesn't often see daylight again."

Snow-White felt sorry to think that they wouldn't see their black friend for such a long time. However, as he seemed determined to go, she unbolted the door for him. As he was hurrying out he caught his fur on the latch and tore out a bit of his shaggy coat. It seemed to Snow-White as if, as he did it, she had seen something glittering like gold under the black fur, but she wasn't sure about it, for the bear was in such a hurry that he didn't turn to wait, but trotted off directly and was soon out of sight among the trees.

Now, they had of course had good fires all winter, so, by this time, the store of firewood which they kept dry under the broad eaves of the cottage had nearly all been used up. As the weather was fine, their mother sent the two children out into the forest to get some more.

They hadn't gone far when, in the distance, they saw a big tree lying on the ground, and thought they would be able to chop off some of the smaller branches. As they got nearer they saw that, close by the trunk, something small seemed to be jumping backwards and forwards on the grass. But it wasn't till they got quite close that they saw that this something wasn't a squirrel or a mouse but a little dwarf. He had a white beard as long as himself, and a bad-tempered, withered face, and they could see that what had happened was that his beard had somehow got caught in the tree. The angry little creature was jumping backwards and forwards like a chained-up dog, and, as they got nearer, he glared at them out of his two red eyes.
 

"What are you two standing there for?" he called out in a cross, squeaky voice. "Come and help me, you stupid creatures!"

"What's the matter, little man?" asked Rose-Red.

"What's that to you, you inquisitive thing?" answered he. The children said nothing, so he went on sulkily, "If you must know, I was trying to split a little bit from this tree for some wood for cooking. Big logs are no good, they get too hot! The little bit of food that one of us wants gets burnt up directly with thick logs! I’d just driven my wedge in nicely when out the wretched thing flew again and now the split has closed on my beautiful white beard! Can't you see?"
 

"I'm so sorry!" said Snow-White kindly, but neither of the girls could help smiling a little, because the cross little creature looked so funny.

"Don't stand there grinning and saying you're sorry, you silly milk-faced things!" screamed the dwarf. "Do something to help, and be quick about it!"

"Don't be so impatient, little man," said Snow-White. "I'll help you," and with that she pulled her scissors out of her pocket, and cut off just the tip of his long white beard.

No sooner did the dwarf feel himself free than he stooped down, and snatched up a bag of gold which lay at the roots of the tree. He lifted it on to his back without a word of thanks and all the time grumbling to himself:

"Fancy cutting off a piece of my fine beard! Wretched creatures!" Then, off he went, and indeed the last thing he did was to call down bad luck on the children who had helped him.

Quite a long time after that their mother sent Snow-White and Rose-Red down to the stream to see if they could catch some fish for dinner. As they came near the water they could see that something was jumping and hopping along by the stream and that with each hop it seemed to be getting closer to the water. It looked as if a large grasshopper was just going to jump into the little river. Running forward to see what this could possibly be, they saw that it was the dwarf again.

"Where are you going?" called out Rose-Red. "You'll be in the water in a minute if you go on like that!"

"Don't you see, you stupid creature?" screamed the dwarf. "It's this wretched fish that's trying to pull me in!"

What had happened was that the little man had been sitting there fishing. The wind had happened to catch his beard and had tangled it up with the fishing-line, just at the moment when a big fish had taken the hook. The fish had pulled and the dwarf had pulled, but now—by the time the girls saw him—the fish had begun to get the better of it, and, though the dwarf held on to all the clumps of reed and rushes as he passed, in another minute he would have been pulled, splash! into the water. The two girls lost no time. One held the dwarf fast and the other tried to untwist his beard from the line. But it was all in vain for the fish kept jumping and pulling so much that try as they would, the tangle only got worse. There was nothing to be done but to bring out the scissors again and once more to cut his beard.

This time the dwarf was absolutely furious and his voice rose to a regular squeak.

"You toadstool!" he cried to Rose-Red. "What a mess you've made of my face between you! First one of you cuts off the tip, and now, today, the other one has cut off the best part of my beautiful beard! I shan't dare to show myself to the other dwarfs!" And with that, trembling with rage, he picked up another sack—full of pearls this one was—which had been hidden in the rushes. Then he hoisted the sack on to his back, and once more without a word or even a look of thanks, he disappeared among the willows.

Quite a long time passed, but the two girls didn't see the dwarf again. Then, one day in the autumn, their mother sent them to the town, to buy needles and thread and a few other things she needed for sewing their winter dresses. They were nearly grown up now so that their little girls' dresses were no good to them.

The way to the town lay across a big bare heath where heather and bog-myrtle grew and where huge pieces of rock lay strewn here and there. As they walked along, the girls noticed a huge bird which hovered in the air or sailed slowly round and round on its outspread wings, sometimes almost above them. At last they saw the eagle dart off and then swoop down behind a rock which was not far off. As soon as it dropped they heard a loud and pitiful screaming, and running up they saw that the huge bird was seizing their old acquaintance, the dwarf, in its talons. It was plain that the eagle was just going to make off with him. Full of pity, the girls reached up and took hold of the little man and, pull­ing and tugging, they managed to get him out of the eagle's claws and to drive off the great bird.

For a moment the frightened dwarf lay on the ground, not saying anything. Then at last he sat up, looked himself over, and then shouted in his shrill voice:

"Couldn't you have done it more carefully? You've dragged at my brown coat so that it's all torn! Look, it's full of holes! Clumsy creatures!" Then he got to his feet and again picked up a bag—full of all sorts of precious stones this time—and, once more without a word or a look to say Thank you, he slipped away among the rocks.

The two girls, who were, by this time, quite used to the dwarf's bad temper and rude ways, only laughed a little and went on their way to the town and thought no more of what had happened.

On the way home, when they had done their shopping and as they crossed the heath again, they decided to take a short cut, and there, near a flat piece of rock, they saw the dwarf. He had laid out all the precious stones that had been in his bag, on the flat rock, never thinking that any­one would come along so late. The evening sun shone on the bright jewels, which glistened and sparkled, green, blue and fiery red, while the diamonds flashed white. They looked so beautiful that the two girls stood still for a moment to look at them.

"Why do you stand there gaping?" cried the dwarf. "What are you doing here? Spying on me, I suppose!" His ash-grey face went copper-red with rage as he spoke and he began to shake his little fist at them. "Be off with you!"

Just as he finished screaming at them there was a sound like a deep growl, and what should come trotting round one of the rocks, but a large black bear. The dwarf who had been so bold and rude to the girls took fright at once, when he saw the bear, but he had no time to run, still less to gather up the rubies, emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, for the great animal was quite close.

"Dear Mr. Bear, spare me!" begged the dwarf, dropping to his knees and speaking in a voice that trembled with fright. "You can have all my treasure! You can have all these precious stones. Don't eat me! Eat these two great girls instead! They'll make you a lovely dinner! They're as fat as young quails. For mercy's sake, eat them!"

The bear, who had stood quite still while the dwarf was speaking, now gave another deep growl, reared up on his hind legs, then, with a heavy front paw, he gave the wicked little creature one blow. The blow would have killed a much heavier creature than the dwarf, who now lay there dead, sprawled across his stolen jewels.

While all this was going on and while the ungrateful dwarf was inviting the bear to eat them, the two girls had run off in a fright, but as they ran, they soon heard a familiar voice calling to them:

"Snow-White! Rose-Red! Don't be afraid! Wait for me!"

They then knew that the bear was none other than their old friend who had so often warmed himself at their fire and so, no longer afraid, but very much pleased, they waited for him. When he came up with them, great was their surprise when suddenly the rough bearskin fell off him, and before them there stood a handsome young man, all dressed in crimson and gold.

"I am a king's son," he said, "and I was bewitched by that wicked dwarf who had also stolen all my treasure. But now at last the spell is broken, and the dwarf has got the punishment he deserved."

So they all three started off home to the cottage to tell the girl's mother what had happened and a merry evening they all had when she had heard the tale.

Next day the Prince had to go back to his father, the King, but before he went he promised to come back in a year and a day.

Faithful to his word he did come back and not only did he come himself, but he brought with him his younger brother. The end of it was that he asked Snow-White to marry him, and Rose-Red was asked in marriage by his brother.

As soon as they were married they all four went in search of the stolen treasure which they felt sure the dwarf must have gathered together in his cave.

When they had found it, and when it was time for Snow-White and Rose-Red to go back with them to their father's kingdom, their old mother came too and with her she took the two rose trees that had stood for so long on either side of the path of the cottage.