As she worked, she looked sometimes at the falling snow, and it happened that she pricked her finger with her needle, so that three drops of blood fell upon the snow. How pretty the red blood looked upon the dazzling white! The queen said to herself as she looked it, “Ah me! If only I had a dear little child who had skin as white as the snow, lips as rosy as the blood, and hair as black as the ebony window frame.”
With a chilly beauty, but still it manages to warm the heart until the final lines where the Wicked Queen meets her just deserts. A word of warning: grown-ups may find her punishment rather horrid.
Proofread by Claire Deakin. Read by Natasha.
A very long time ago, in midwinter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a beautiful queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony.
Who is the fairest of us all? Her motivations of vanity and envy are so very human, and that is what gives the tale its power.
Disney followed the Brothers Grimm quite closely in his beautiful 1937 film. The Seven Dwarfs were not the invention of Walt (though their names were). It is a wintry tale