“Three Dwarfs of the Forest.” The Snow Queen and other tales : a selection of traditional Russian fairy tales, André Bay, Marie Ponsot, New York: Golden Press, 1962, pp. 25-28.

Tale Summary

There was once a widower and a widow who each had a daughter. One day, the widower’s daughter passed a message to her father from the widow that the woman would like to marry him, and if he agreed, his daughter would wash in milk and drink cream while her own girl would wash and drink water. The man wasn’t sure what to do, and so told his daughter to fill one of his boots, which had a hole, with water. If the water stayed, he would marry the widower. The daughter did this obediently and the water stayed, so her father married the woman. The day after the wedding, the widower’s own daughter bathed in milk and drank cream, but the widow’s daughter only had water. The second day they both had water, and the third day only the widow’s daughter had milk and cream, and that is the way things stayed. The stepmother began to hate her stepdaughter, especially because her own daughter was plain and unpleasant. One day in winter, the woman instructed her stepdaughter to go out into the woods and not return until she had a basket full of strawberries. She gave her a cape made of paper and the crust of some old bread, hoping she would starve or freeze to death. The child searched until she came to a small cabin, which was home to three dwarfs who greeted her kindly. She warmed herself at their fire, and when they asked for food, she graciously shared her crumbs. She told the dwarfs of her predicament, and they requested that she sweep the snow just outside the cabin. She agreed and unearthed dozens of strawberries, and each dwarf gave her a gift for her kindness: she would grow more lovely each day, a piece of new-minted gold would fall from her mouth with every word she speaks, and a good king would marry her. She thanked them and presented the berries to her stepmother, gold tumbling to the floor with each word. Her stepsister was jealous and convinced her mother to let her go strawberry-hunting as well, given a warm cloak and a good lunch of bread, butter, and roast beef. When the greedy girl made it to the cabin, she let herself in and helped herself to the best seat by the fire without a word of greeting. She refused to give them food or help them sweep the snow, and left without a word when she realized they were not going to give her any presents. After she left, the dwarfs each gave the unpleasant girl a curse: every day she would become more ugly, at each word a toad would slither from her lips, and death himself would take her. When she arrived home and tried to explain what had happened, she filled the room with hundreds of toads. Her mother blamed the stepdaughter and gave her another cruel task. She was to go to the frozen lake with an ax and fishing net and was not to return until it was filled with fish. While the girl toiled in the cold a king in his carriage happened by. Stunned by her beauty, he took her to be his queen, and a year later they had a son. When the stepmother heard, she and her daughter invited themselves to the castle, and when the king was away hunting they threw the sleeping queen into the river. The ugly stepsister took the queen’s place in bed, and her mother tricked the king into thinking it was his wife who slept there, ill. A king’s watchman saw a swan that night, which sang about the royal lord and asked the watchman about the queen’s guests and the infant boy. He told her that they slept with closed fists, and the son in his royal crib. The swan took the shape of the queen and went to nurse her baby, returning to the river as a swan after. This happened again the next night. On the third night, the swan told the watchmen to bring the king, as he must tap her head three times with his sword. After this was done the swan turned back into his wife, and the king realized he had a score to settle. He hid away his wife until the next Sunday when the baby was christened. He asked his stepmother for advice on how to punish someone who had drowned a sleeping person, and she responded that she would put such a murderer in a locked box which would be rolled from the top of a hill into the river. He revealed that she had pronounced her own sentence, and did just that to the woman and her daughter.