SNOWDROP
Once upon a time, in the middle of winter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat sewing at a window framed in black ebony. And as she sat sewing and looking out upon the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell on the snow outside. Because the red looked so beautiful on the white snow, she thought to herself, “How I should like to have a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of this ebony frame!” [[131]]
Very soon after this she had a little daughter whose hair was black as ebony, and whose cheeks were red as blood, while her skin was white as snow; so they called her Snowdrop. But not long after her birth the Queen died.
When Snowdrop was a year old the King took another wife. She was a beautiful woman, but so proud and haughty that she could not bear to have any one surpass her in beauty. She had a magic mirror, and when she stood before it gazing at herself, she would say,
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is fairest of us all?”
Then the mirror would reply,
“Queen, so beautiful and tall,
Thou art fairest of them all.”
Then she was content, for she knew the mirror always spoke the truth.