The principal studies of traditional
Snow White variants are Ernst Böklen's,
Schneewittchen Studien of 1910, which reprints fifty Snow White variants, and studies by Steven Swann Jones. In their first edition, the
Brothers Grimm published the version they had first collected, in which the villain is Snow White's jealous biological mother. In a version sent to another folklorist prior to the first edition, additionally, she does not order a servant to take her to the woods, but takes her there herself to gather flowers and abandons her; in the first edition, this task was transferred to a servant. It is believed that the change to a stepmother in later editions was to tone down the story for children. Another version of the story is the 1937 American animated film
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by
Walt Disney, which was so influential that its popularity has surpassed the original Grimm tale and all other versions. Disney's variation of Snow White gave the
dwarfs names and included a singing
Snow White who is shown to be more mature. Other changes include: • The Queen forces Snow White to work as a
scullery maid, a motif borrowed from
Cinderella. • Snow White and her prince meet and fall in love before she bites the apple. • Instead of her lungs and liver, the huntsman is asked by
the queen to bring back Snow White's heart. While the heart is mentioned, it is never shown in the box. • Snow White is discovered by the dwarfs after cleaning the house, not vandalizing it. • The evil queen tries only once to kill Snow White (with the poisoned apple) and fails. The dwarfs then chase her through the forest, after which she dies by falling down a cliff and being crushed by a boulder. • The prince wakes Snow White by
kissing her, a detail borrowed from Grimm's
Little Briar Rose. This innovation has been repeated in many subsequent versions
Variants and parallels to other tales This tale type is widespread in Europe, in America, in Africa and "in some Turkic traditions," the Middle East, in China, in India and in the Americas. Jörg Bäcker draws a parallel to Turkic tales, as well as other tales with a separate origin but overlapping themes, such as those in Central Asia and Eastern Siberia, among the Mongolians and Tungusian peoples. Due to Portuguese colonization, Sigrid Schmidt posits the presence of the tale in modern times in former Portuguese colonies, and contrasts it with other distinct African tales.
Europe A primary analysis by Celtic folklorist
Alfred Nutt, in the 19th century, established the tale type, in Europe, was distributed "from the Balkan peninsula to Iceland, and from Russia to Catalonia", with the highest number of variants being found in Germany and Italy. This geographical distribution seemed to be confirmed by scholarly studies of the 20th century. A 1957 article by Italian philologist Gianfranco D'Aronco (
it) studied the most diffused
Tales of Magic in Italian territory, among which
Biancaneve. A scholarly inquiry by Italian
Istituto centrale per i beni sonori ed audiovisivi ("Central Institute of Sound and Audiovisual Heritage"), produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, found thirty-seven variants of the tale across Italian sources. A similar assessment was made by scholar Sigrid Schmidt, who claimed that the tale type was "particularly popular" in
Southern Europe, "specially" in Italy, Greece and the
Iberian Peninsula. Another study, by researcher Theo Meder, points to a wide distribution in Western Europe, specially in Ireland, Iceland and Scandinavia. The Grimms collected at least eight other distinct variants of the tale, which they considered one of the most famous German folktales. They found that it was particularly well known in
Hesse, noting that even in that district—where
High German predominates—the
Low German name
Sneewitchen persisted, sometimes altered to
Schliwitchen. From these stories, they drew and combined various elements, partially shortening them to create the definitive version. The opening, with the drops of the mother's blood, recalls a motif found in the tale
The Juniper Tree, recorded by the painter
Philipp Otto Runge.
Italy The
Pentamerone, published 1634–1636, contains some stories with similarities to Snow White, such as an enchanted sleep in "
The Young Slave" and a female character with snow-white skin in "
The Raven." In most Italian versions of Snow White, the heroine is not the daughter of a king but an innkeeper, the antagonist is not her stepmother but her biological mother, and instead of dwarfs she takes refuge with robbers. For instance, in
La Bella Venezia, an
Abruzzian version collected by Antonio De Nino, the mother asks her customers if they have seen a woman more beautiful than she. If they say they did not, she only charges them half the price, if they say they did she charges them twice the price. When the customers tell her that her daughter is prettier than her, she gets jealous. In
Maria, her Evil Stepmother and the Seven Robbers (
Maria, die böse Stiefmutter und die sieben Räuber), a
Sicilian version collected by Laura Gonzenbach the heroine also lives with robbers, but the antagonist is her stepmother and she's not an innkeeper. Sometimes the heroine's protectors are female instead of male, as in
The Cruel Stepmother (), a variant collected by
Angelo de Gubernatis in which, like in the Grimm's version, Snow White's counterpart, called here Caterina, is the daughter of a king, and the antagonist is her stepmother, who orders her servants to kill her stepdaughter after she hears people commenting how much prettier Caterina is than she. One day the two women are going to mass together. Instead of a male protector, Caterina takes refuge in a house by the seashore where an old woman lives. Later a witch discovers that Caterina's still alive and where she lives, so she goes to tell the queen, who sends her back to the cottage to kill her with poisoned flowers instead of an apple. A similar version from
Siena was collected by Sicilian folklorist
Giuseppe Pitrè, in which the heroine, called Ermellina, runs away from home riding an eagle who takes her away to a palace inhabited by fairies. Ermellina's stepmother sends a witch disguised as her stepdaughter's servants to the fairies' palace to try to kill her twice, first with poisoned sweetmeats and the second time with an enchanted dress. Pitré also collected a variant from
Palermo titled
Child Margarita (''La 'Nfanti Margarita'') where the heroine stays in a haunted castle. There's also a couple of conversions that combines the ATU tale type 709 with the second part of the type 410
Sleeping Beauty, in which, when the heroine is awakened, the prince's mother tries to kill her and the children she has had with the prince. Gonzenbach collected two variants from Sicily, the first one called
Maruzzedda and the second
Beautiful Anna; and Vittorio Imbriani collected a version titled
La Bella Ostessina. In some versions, the antagonists are not the heroine's mother or stepmother, but her two elder sisters, as in a version from
Trentino collected by Christian Schneller, or a version from
Bologna collected by Carolina Coronedi-Berti. In this last version, the role of both the mirror and the dwarfs is played by the Moon, which tells the elder sisters that the youngest, called Ziricochel, is the prettiest, and later hides her in his palace. When the sisters discover Ziricochel is still alive, they send an astrologer to kill her. After several attempts, she finally manages to turn her into a statue with an enchanted shirt. Ziricochel is revived after the prince's sisters take the shirt off.
Italo Calvino included the version from Bologna collected by Coronedi Berti, retitling it
Giricoccola, and the Abruzzian version collected by De Nino in
Italian Folktales.
France Paul Sébillot collected two variants from
Brittany in northwestern France. In the first one, titled
The Enchanted Stockings (
Les Bas enchantés), starts similarly to Gubernatis' version, with the heroine being the daughter of a queen, and her mother wanting to kill her after a soldier marching in front of her balcony says the princess is prettier than the queen. The role of the poisoned apple is fulfilled by the titular stockings, and the heroine is revived after the prince's little sister takes them off when she's playing. In the second, titled
La petite Toute-Belle, a servant accuses the heroine of stealing the things she stole and then throws her in a well. The heroine survives the fall and ends up living with three dragons that live at the bottom of the well. When the heroine's mother discovers her daughter is still alive, she twice sends a fairy to attempt to kill her, first with sugar almonds, which the dragons warn her are poisoned before she eats them, and then with a red dress. In another version from Brittany, this one collected by François Cadic, the heroine is called Rose-Neige (Eng: Snow-Rose) because her mother pricked her finger with a rose in a snowy day and wished to have a child as beautiful as the rose. The role of the dwarfs is played by
Korrigans, dwarf-like creatures from the Breton folklore. Louis Morin collected a version from
Troyes in northeastern France, where like in the Grimm's version the mother questions a magic mirror. A version from
Corsica titled
Anghjulina was collected by
Geneviève Massignon, where the roles of both the huntsman and the dwarfs are instead a group of bandits whom Anghjulina's mother asks to kill her daughter, but they instead take her away to live with them in the woods.
Belgium and the Netherlands A
Flemish version from
Antwerp collected by Victor de Meyere is quite similar to the version collected by the brothers Grimm. The heroine is called Sneeuwwitje (Snow White in Dutch), she is the queen's stepdaughter, and the stepmother questions a mirror. Instead of dwarfs, the princess is taken in by seven
kabouters. Instead of going to kill Snow White herself, the queen twice sends the witch who had sold her the magic mirror to kill Sneeuwwitje, first with a comb and the second time with an apple. But the most significant difference is that the role of the prince in this version is instead Snow White's father, the king. Another Flemish variant, this one from
Hamme, differs more from Grimm's story. The one who wants to kill the heroine, called here Mauricia, is her own biological mother. She is convinced by a demon with a spider head that if her daughter dies, she will become beautiful. The mother sends two servants to kill Mauricia, bringing as proof a lock of her hair, a bottle with her blood, a piece of her tongue and a piece of her clothes. The servants spare Mauricia's life, as well as her pet sheep. To deceive Mauricia's mother, they buy a goat and bring a bottle with the animal's blood as well as a piece of his tongue. Meanwhile, Mauricia is taken in by seventeen robbers who live in a cave deep in the forest, instead of seven dwarfs. When Mauricia's mother discovers that her daughter is still alive, she goes to the robbers' cave disguised. She turns her daughter into a bird, and she takes her place. The plan fails and Mauricia recovers her human form, so the mother tries to kill her by using a
magic ring which the demon gave her. Mauricia is awoken when a prince takes the ring off her finger. When he asks her if he would marry her, she rejects him and returns with the seventeen robbers.
Iberian Peninsula One of the first versions from
Spain, titled
The Beautiful Stepdaughter (
La hermosa hijastra), was collected by
Manuel Milà i Fontanals, in which a demon tells the stepmother that her stepdaughter is prettier than she is when she's looking at herself in the mirror. The stepmother orders her servants to take her stepdaughter to the forest and kill her, bringing a bottle with her blood as proof. But the servants spare her life and instead kill a dog. Eight days later the demon warns her that the blood in the bottle is not her stepdaughter's, and the stepmother sends her servants again, ordering them to bring one of her heart and bare-toes as proof. The stepdaughter later discovers four men living in the forest, inside a rock that can open and close with the right words. Every day after she sees the men leave she enters the cave and cleans it up. Believing it must be an intruder, the men take turns to stay at the cavern, but the first one falls asleep during his watch. The second one manages to catch the girl, and they agree to let the girl live with them. Later, the same demon that told her stepmother that her stepdaughter was prettier gives the girl an enchanted ring, that has the same role that the apple in the Grimm's version. The version in
Catalan included by
Francisco Maspons y Labrós in the second volume of
Lo Rondallayre follows that plot fairly closely, with some minor differences. In an
Aragonese version titled
The Good Daughter (
La buena hija) collected by Romualdo Nogués y Milagro, there's no mirror. Instead, the story starts with the mother already hating her daughter because she's prettier, and ordering a servant to kill her, bringing as proof her heart, tongue, and her little finger. The servant spares her and brings the mother the heart and tongue from a dog he ran over and says he lost the finger. The daughter is taken in by robbers living in a cavern, but despite all, she still misses her mother. One day an old woman appears and gives her a ring, saying that if she puts it on she'll see her mother. The daughter actually falls unconscious when she does put it on because the old woman is actually a witch who wants to kidnap her, but she can't because of the
scapular the girl is wearing, so she locks her in a crystal casket, where the girl is later found by the prince. In a version from
Mallorca collected by
Antoni Maria Alcover i Sureda titled
Na Magraneta, a queen wishes to have a daughter after eating a pomegranate and calls her Magraneta. As in the Grimm's version the queen asks her mirror who's the most beautiful. The dwarf's role is fulfilled by thirteen men who are described as big as giants, who live in a castle in the middle of the forest called "Castell de la Colometa", whose doors can open and close by command. When the queen discovers thanks to her mirror that her daughter is still alive she sends an evil fairy disguised as an old woman. The role of the poisoned apple is fulfilled by an iron ring.
Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Sr. collected two Spanish versions. The first one, titled
Blanca Flor, is from
Villaluenga de la Sagra, in
Toledo. In this one the villain is the heroine's own biological mother, and like in
Na Magraneta she questions a mirror if there's a woman more beautiful than she is. Instead of ordering a huntsman or servant to kill her daughter, after the mirror tells the woman her daughter has surpassed her, she tries to get rid of her daughter herself, inviting her to go for a walk in the countryside, and when they reach a rock she recites some spells from her book, making the rock swallow her daughter. Fortunately thanks to her prayers to the Virgin the daughter survives and gets out the rock, and she is later taken in by twelve robbers living in a castle. When the mother discovers her daughter is still alive, she sends a witch to kill her, who gives the daughter an enchanted silk shirt. The moment she puts it on, she falls in a deathlike state. She's later revived when a sexton takes the shirt off. The second one, titled
The Envious Mother (
La madre envidiosa), comes from
Jaraíz de la Vera, Cáceres. Here the villain is also the heroine's biological mother, and she's an innkeeper who asks a witch whether there's a woman prettier than she is. Instead of a shirt, here the role of the apple is fulfilled by enchanted shoes. Aurelio de Llano Roza de Ampudia collected an
Asturian version from
Teverga titled
The Envious Stepmother (
La madrastra envidiosa), in which the stepmother locks her stepdaughter in a room with the hope that no one will see her and think she's more beautiful. But the attempt fails when a guest tells the mother the girl locked in a room is prettier than she is. The story ends with the men who found the heroine discussing who should marry the girl once she's revived, and she replies by telling them that she chooses to marry the servant who revived her.
Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr. collected four versions. The first one is titled
Blancanieves, is from
Medina del Campo,
Valladolid, and follows the plot of the Grimm's version fairly closely with barely any significant differences. The same happens with the second one, titled
Blancaflor, that comes from
Tordesillas, another location from Valladolid. The last two are the ones that present more significant differences, although like in Grimm's the stepmother questions a magic mirror.
The Bad Stepmother (
La mala madrastra) comes from
Sepúlveda, Segovia, and also has instead of seven dwarfs the robbers that live in a cave deep in the forest, that can open and close at command. Here the words to make it happen are "Open, parsley!" and "Close, peppermint!" The last one,
Blancaflor, is from
Siete Iglesias de Trabancos, also in Valladolid, ends with the heroine buried after biting a poisoned pear, and the mirror proclaiming that, now that her stepdaughter is finally dead, the stepmother is the most beautiful again. One of the first
Portuguese versions was collected by
Francisco Adolfo Coelho. It was titled
The Enchanted Shoes (
Os sapatinhos encantados), where the heroine is the daughter of an innkeeper, who asks muleteers if they have seen a woman prettier than she is. One day, one answers that her daughter is prettier. The daughter takes refugee with a group of robbers who live in the forest, and the role of the apple is fulfilled by the titular enchanted shoes.
Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso collected another version, titled
The Vain Queen, in which the titular queen questions her maids of honor and servants who's the most beautiful. One day, when she asks the same question to her chamberlain, he replies the queen's daughter is more beautiful than she is. The queen orders her servants to behead her daughter and bring back her tongue as proof, but they instead spare her and bring the queen a dog's tongue. The princess is taken in by a man, who gives her two options, to live with him as either his wife or his daughter, and the princess chooses the second. The rest of the tale is quite different from most versions, with the titular queen completely disappeared from the story, and the story focusing instead of a prince that falls in love with the princess. In another Scottish version, ''Lasair Gheug, the King of Ireland's Daughter'', the heroine's stepmother frames the princess for the murder of the queen's firstborn and manages to make her swear she'll never tell the truth to anybody. Lasair Gheug, a name that in
Gaelic means Flame of Branches, take refugee with thirteen cats, who turn out to be an enchanted prince and his squires. After marrying the prince and having three sons with him the queen discovers her stepdaughter is still alive, also thanks to a talking trout, and sends three giants of ice to put her in a death-like state. As in
Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree the prince takes a second wife afterwards, and the second wife is the one who revives the heroine. Thomas William Thompson collected an English version from
Blackburn simply titled
Snow White which follows Grimm's plot much more closely, although with some significant differences, such as Snow White being taken in by three robbers instead of seven dwarfs.
Scandinavia One of the first
Danish versions collected was
Snehvide (
Snow White), by Mathias Winther. In this variant, the stepmother is the princess' nurse, who persuades Snow White to ask her father to marry her. Because the king says he won't remarry until grass grows in the grave of the princess' mother, the nurse plants magic seeds in the grave so grass will grow quicker. Then, after the king marries the nurse, Snow White gets betrothed to a prince, who chooses her over the nurse's three biological daughters, but after that the king and the prince had to leave to fight in a war. The queen seizes her opportunity to chase Snow White away, and she ends up living with the dwarfs in a mountain. When the queen finds out Snow White is still alive thanks to a magic mirror, she sends her daughters three times, each time one of them, with poisoned gifts to give them to her. With the third gift, a poisoned apple, Snow White falls into a deep sleep, and the dwarfs leave her in the forest, fearing that the king would accuse them of killing her once he comes back. When the king and the prince finally come back from the war and find Snow White's body, the king dies of sorrow, but the prince manages to wake her up. After that we see an ending quite similar to the ones in
The Goose Girl and
The Three Oranges of Love the prince and Snow White get married, and the prince invites the stepmother and asks her what punishment deserve someone who has hurt someone as innocent as Snow White. The queen suggests for the culprit to be put inside a barrel full of needles, and the prince tells the stepmother she has pronounced her own sentence.
Evald Tang Kristensen collected a version titled
The Pretty Girl and the Crystal Bowls (), which, like some Italian variants, combines the tale type 709 with the type 410. In this version, the stepmother questions a pair of crystal bowls instead of a magic mirror, and when they tell her that her stepdaughter is prettier, she sends her to a witch's hut where she's tricked to eat a porridge that makes her pregnant. Ashamed that her daughter has become pregnant out of wedlock she kicks her out, but the girl is taken in by a shepherd. Later a crow lets a ring fall on the huts' floor, and, when the heroine puts it on, she falls in a deathlike state. Believing she's dead the shepherd kills himself and the heroine is later revived when she gives birth to twins, each one of them with a star on the forehead, and one of them sucks the ring off her finger. She's later found by a prince, whose mother tries to kill the girl and her children. A
Swedish version titled
The Daughter of the Sun and the Twelve Bewitched Princes () starts pretty similarly to the Grimm's version, with a queen wishing to have a child as white as snow and as red as blood, but that child turned out to be not the heroine but the villain, her own biological mother. Instead of a mirror, the queen asks the Sun, who tells her that her daughter will surpass her in beauty. Because of it the queen orders that her daughter must be raised in the countryside, away from the Royal Court, but when it's time for the princess to come back the queen orders a servant to throw her in a well before she arrives. In the bottom, the princess meets twelve princes cursed to be chimeras, and she agrees to live with them. When the queen and the servant discover she is alive, they give her
poisoned candy, which she eats. After being revived by a young king she marries him and has a son with him, but the queen goes to the castle pretending to be a midwife, turns her daughter into a golden bird by sticking a needle on her head, and then the queen takes her daughter's place. After disenchanting the twelve princes with her singing, the princess returns to the court, where she's finally restored to her human form, and her mother is punished after she believed she ate her own daughter while she was still under the spell.
Greece and Albania French folklorist Henri Carnoy collected a
Greek version, titled
Marietta and the Witch her Stepmother (), in which the heroine is manipulated by her governess to kill her own mother, so the governess could marry her father. Soon after she marries Marietta's father, the new stepmother orders her husband to get rid of his daughter. Marietta ends up living in a castle with forty giants. Meanwhile, Marietta's stepmother, believing her stepdaughter is dead, asks the Sun who's the most beautiful. When the Sun answers Marietta is more beautiful, she realises her stepdaughter is still alive, and, disguised as a peddler, goes to the giants' castle to kill her. She goes twice, the first trying to kill her with an enchanted ring, and the second with poisoned grapes. After Marietta is awoken and marries the prince, the stepmother goes to the prince's castle pretending to be a midwife, sticks a fork on Marietta's head to turn her into a pigeon, and then takes her place. After several transformations, Marietta recovers her human form and her stepmother is punished. Georgios A. Megas collected another Greek version, titled
Myrsina, in which the antagonists are the heroine's two elder sisters, and the role of the seven dwarfs is fulfilled by the Twelve Months. Austrian diplomat
Johann Georg von Hahn collected a version from
Albania, that also starts with the heroine, called Marigo, getting manipulated by the governess into killing her mother. She snaps her mother's head off with a marble lid, while she was leaning over the marble chest to get her figs and almonds. After Marigo tells her father to marry the governess, the king refuses, making up various excuses, like his shoes turning red or his robes being full of holes. All of them are fulfilled by Marigo under the manipulation of her governess, therefore, the king keeps his promise and marries her. Some years after, Marigo grows up to be a beautiful young woman, even more attractive than the queen. Jealous, the stepmother forces her husband to choose between them. Either she kills herself or the king kills his daughter. But the king doesn't have the heart to murder his own child, so he takes Marigo into the woods and tells her to fetch him the loaf of bread and the wooden flask which he threw off the cliff. When Marigo comes back, she fails to find her father and realises that he has abandoned her. As it was dark, the girl climbs up a wooden tree to spend the night. While she is asleep, the three
Fatia, goddesses of fate, take pity on her and decide to wish her good. Each of the fatia suggest a choice for the girl. The third goddess tells her to find the castle inhabited by forty dragons who are all brothers. They take Marigo as their surrogate sister and she helps them with the castle chores, while they gift her precious jewellery. After discovering her stepdaughter is still alive thanks to the Sun, the queen twice sends her husband to the dragons' castle to kill Marigo, first with enchanted hair-pins and the second time with an enchanted ring. After the dragons fail to bring her alive, they decide to bury her in a coffin adorned with pearls. They hang it in a young king's garden where an ancient tree near a beautiful fountain is to be found. The dragons suspend the coffin on four silver chains so that it would dangle right over the fountain. When the king finds the coffin, he takes it to his bedchamber and hides it for an entire year, refusing to eat, drink or sleep out of sorrow. His mother, the dowager queen, finds Marigo's corpse and tells the maids to burn her. Marigo wakes up when one of the maids steals the ring off her finger. Eventually, she marries the young king and lives happily aver after. In another Albanian version, titled
Fatimé, collected by French folklorist
Auguste Dozon, the antagonists are the heroine's two elder sisters.
Russia and Eastern Europe According to Christine Shojaei Kawan, the earliest surviving folktale version of the Snow White story is a Russian tale published anonymously in 1795. The heroine is Olga, a merchant's daughter, and the role of the magic mirror is played by some beggars who comment on her beauty. In the Russian tale, titled "Сказка о старичках-келейчиках", a merchant has a daughter named Olga, and marries another woman. Years later, the girl's stepmother welcomes some beggars in need of alms, who tell her Olga is more beautiful than her. A servant takes Olga to the open field and, in tears, tells the girl the stepmother ordered her to be killed and her heart and little finger brought back as proof of the deed. Olga cuts off her little finger and gives to the servant, who kills a little dog and takes out its heart. Olga takes refuge in a cottage with hunters, and asks the beggars to trade gifts with her stepmother: Olga sends a pie, and her stepmother sends her a poisoned pearl-studded shirt. Olga puts on the shirt and faints, as if dead. The hunters find her apparently dead body and place it in a crystal tomb. A prince appears to them and asks to take the coffin with him to his palace. Later, the prince's mother takes off the pearl-studded shirt from Olga's body and she wakes up.
Alexander Afanasyev collected a
Russian version titled
The Magic Mirror, in which the reason that the heroine has to leave her parents' house is different from the usual. Instead of being the daughter of a king, she is the daughter of a merchant, who's left with her uncle while her father and brothers travel. During their absence, the heroine's uncle attempts to assault her, but she frustrates his plans. To get his revenge he writes a letter to the heroine's father, accusing her of misconduct. Believing what's written in the letter, the merchant sends his son back home to kill his own sister, but the merchant's son does not trust his uncle's letter, and after discovering what's in the letter are lies, he warns her sister, who escapes and is taken in by two bogatyrs. The elements of the stepmother and the mirror are introduced much later, after the merchant returns home believing his daughter is dead and remarries the woman who owns the titular magic mirror, that tells her that her stepdaughter is still alive and is more beautiful than she is. In another Russian version the heroine is the daughter of a Tsar, and her stepmother decides to kill her after asking three different mirrors and all of them told her her stepdaughters is more beautiful than she is. The dwarfs' role is fulfilled by twelve brothers cursed to be hawks, living at the top of a glass mountain.
Arthur and Albert Schott collected a
Romanian version titled
The Magic Mirror (; ), in which the villain is the heroine's biological mother. After the titular mirror tells her that her daughter is prettiest, she takes her to go for a walk in the woods and feeds her extremely salty bread, so her daughter will become so thirsty that she would agree to let her tear out her eyes in exchange for water. Once the daughter is blinded her mother leaves her in the forest, where she manages to restore her eyes and is taken in by twelve thieves. After discovering her daughter is still alive, the mother sends an old woman to the thieves' house three times. The first she gives the daughter a ring, the second earrings, and the third poisoned flowers. After the heroine marries the prince, she has a child, and the mother goes to the castle pretending to be a midwife to kill both her daughter and the newborn. After killing the infant, she's stopped before she can kill the heroine. The
Pushkin fairytale
The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights bears a striking similarity to the tale of Snow White. However, the Dead Princess befriends 7
knights instead of dwarfs, and it is the Sun and Moon who aid the Prince to the resting place of the Dead Princess, where he breaks with his sword the coffin of the Tsarevna, bringing her back to life.
Americas In a Louisiana tale,
Lé Roi Pan ("The King Peacock"), a mother has a child who becomes more beautiful than she, so she orders her daughter's nurse to kill her. The daughter resigns to her fate, but the nurse spares her and gives her three seeds. After failing to drown in a well and to be eaten by an ogre, the girl eats a seed and falls into a deep sleep. The ogre family (who took her in after seeing her beauty) put her in a crystal coffin to float down the river. Her coffin is found by the titular King Peacock, who takes the seed from her mouth and awakens her. The King Peacock shares "motifs and tropes" with Snow White, according to
Maria Tatar. == Adaptations ==