Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/490

 408 would like to live with her and dress her prettily. Snow-white pities her and lets her in, and then the Queen laces her with the poisoned stay-lace, and she falls down dead, whereupon the Queen goes away. But the seven dwarfs come and take a knife and cut the stay-lace in two, and Snow-white returns to life again. And now the Queen questions Mirror (the dog) under the bench, and it gives her the same answer. Then she makes a poisoned hair-ribbon, and goes with it, and speaks so movingly to Snow-white, that she again lets her in. The Queen binds the ribbon round Snow-white's hair, and she falls down dead. But the seven dwarfs see what has happened, cut off the hair-ribbon, and she is restored to life. The Queen questions the dog the third time, and receives the same answer. And now she goes with a poisoned apple, and in spite of all the warnings which Snow-white has had from the dwarfs, she is touched by her lamentations, opens the door, and eats some of the apple. Then she dies, and when the dwarfs come they can do nothing for her, and "Mirror," under the bench, tells the Queen that she is now the most beautiful. But the seven dwarfs make a silver coffin, put Snow-white into it, and place it on a tree in front of their cave. A Prince comes by, and asks the dwarfs to give him the coffin, and takes it with him, and when he gets home has her laid upon a bed and dressed as if she were alive, and loves her above measure. A servant has to wait on her continually; but one day he gets angry at having do to this, and says, "The dead maiden is just to be treated as if she were a living one," and gives her a blow on her back, on which the piece of apple comes out of her mouth, and Snow-white is once more alive. A Viennese version of this story gives the following incidents. There are three sisters; Snow-white is the prettiest and youngest. The other two hate her, and send her out into the world with a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. Snow-white comes to the glass mountain, and keeps house for the dwarfs. And now, when the two sisters ask the mirror who is the fairest, it answers,

They send some one thither to poison Snow-white. See Richilda in Musäus, where the rhyme runs thus:

It is also a genuine incident that, in the end, the dwarfs make steel slippers, heat them till they are red-hot, and put them on the feet of the stepmother, who is forced to dance in them until the floor