Monday, 25 August 2008

SNOWDROP AND THE DWARFS, as told by the brothers Grimm, before Disney.

SNOWDROP AND THE DWARFS



















O
ne winter day, when the snow lay deep on the ground,
a gentle queen sat by her window working.
As she worked she pricked her finger,
so that two little drops of blood fell from it.
The queen sighed and said:
"How I wish that I might have a little daughter
with cheeks as rosy as those drops of blood,
skin as white as alabaster, and hair as black as Ebony.
To her great delight the queen's wish was granted,
and before long a little daughter came,
the Queen named her Snowdrop.

Alas soon after this the good Queen died,
and Snowdrop's father, the king,

married another lady, she was very beautiful
but she was also very vain and unkind.
She new that she was the most beautiful lady
in the land because when she looked into
her magic mirror and asked:

Say, glass that hangeth on the wall
Who is the fairest of beauties all?
The glass would always answer:
Thou, Queen, art the fairest of beauties all.
As the years rolled by little Snowdrop grew
into a very sweet and lovely girl, and one day
when the vain queen asked the glass the old,
old question to her great surprise it replied:

Fair and lovely though the queen,
Snowdrop is lovelier far, I deem.

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