Remember a few weeks ago when I shared this post on Beauty and the Beast? Well, here’s a follow up! This time we’re talking about Snow White (AKA “tales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther Type 709”).

You can find Ashliman’s page about Snow White and related tales here. The collection includes six “original” Snow White stories, which is much more manageable than the number of Beauty and the Beast stories. But these SW stories go on a wild ride!

We start off with the familiar Grimm version, with the rhyming mirror and the queen’s poisoned apple (and corset laces, and comb). (There’s also a very Goldilocks moment with the dwarves!)

Then comes a Scottish version called “Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree.” I first came across this story in a published collection of Scottish fairy tales, and it cracked me up! First of all, instead of a mirror, there’s a talking trout. The story also takes a Bluebeard-esque turn with the daughter being married to a king before being struck down by her mother, and the king then keeping the “looks-like-she’s-dead” daughter in a locked room while he goes out and marries another woman. The new wife finds not-dead-Snow-White, revives her, and presents her to the king. The king is super excited (having made no bones about the fact that he loved his first wife better than his second, I suppose) and so the new wife says, “okay, well, you married her first so I’ll leave you to it.” To which the king says “no way! I now have two wives.” New wife then becomes de facto guardian of first wife, the Snow White character. What?

The Scottish version is my favorite, I think. After that there are three different Italian versions, the first of which is a bit gruesome. The following two are great examples of how funny the removing-cursed-object-from-Snow-White-so-she-wakes-up sequence can be. In both stories, it’s the mother of the besotted prince who accidentally revives Snow White. (In “The Crystal Casket,” the third story, the poor mother thinks her son’s gone crazy and fallen in love with a doll! Um . . . maybe not too far off, seeing as he never met SW when she was alive).

The collection ends with a terrifyingly down-to-earth interpretation of the story. It’s a Swiss tale told essentially from the dwarves’ point of view and in the end (spoiler) everyone dies/disappears for not being appropriately prudish (although it must be said the dwarves’ behavior in the story is questionable).

These days, plenty of versions of the Snow White story exist, and more are being made all the time. IMDB put together a list of Snow White movies (mostly imitations of the original animated film, it seems). And, like Beauty and the Beast, Snow White is a popular subject for novels. I have to admit, Snow White has never been my favorite fairy tale — but I do enjoy some of the spin-off versions!