The story of Snow White can’t be told unless it includes the witchery that was going on in those days and there was a lot of it. It seems that anyone who wanted to keep up with the neighbors felt they had to dabble and have a reputation or they would get pushed around by those who said they had powers. These were mostly women; some men claimed to have witches powers but no one believed them and if people don’t believe the magic is no good.
Some people think we dwarves have special powers like the witches. We work underground in tunnels and mines. We know the ways of earth and rock and how to dig and not to dig so as not to bring everything down on our heads. We are wise but we are not witches.
There are seven of us in our group, each with special talents. Don, the team leader is the wisest so he chooses where we dig. Sid is our canary in the mine except instead of dying like a canary would he gets sleepy when a dangerous gas is present so we can get our before it kills us. If there is a poisonous fungus around a pool in the tunnel Shorty starts sneezing so we know to stay away from it. Hal is the cut up, always cheerful and keeps our spirits up. We hardly know Bill is around; always quiet but he can out work us all. Mort never says a word but he listens and can read a shaft so he can let us know if there is a danger of cave-ins or rock slides. I’m called Dismal because I am the realistic one and see things as they are instead of the way we would like them to be.
As for the witches, they came in three shades. The white witches claimed to be good. They mostly came from the nunnery — sisters or their students. They used herbs and special prayers and didn’t go in for curses or spells. They were healers mainly but if someone needed a bit of good luck a sister would recommend putting a posy on the doorstep and chanting some prayer the sister gave the person. Then there was always the teenaged girl who came sobbing and pleading for help. She would immediately be diagnosed as a brokenhearted soul whose boyfriend had rejected her. The witch provided a great deal of sympathy along with firmness. The girl had to recognize that she might never have this boy’s affections but if he was just sampling an assortment of the local females then certain aromatic herbs along with a delicious meal using the recipe the witch provided might yet win the heart of the young man.
We had the gray witches who probably didn’t deserve a witch title. They claimed to have magical powers but no one saw them practicing any witchcraft. They tended to get together in covens in which gossip and backbiting took precedence over casting spells and curses but probably did more harm than curses and spells.
The black witches were evil ones that used necromancy and other supernatural practices usually intending to cause pain, suffering or worse. They had mastered the incantations and mixtures of nasty stuff like eye of newt, toe of toad and so forth to call up the spirits. It wasn’t just spells and potions either. They could make what was called ‘devil’s shoes’ that could take them long distances in a blink of an eye. It was said that the Queen once went to a dance late into the night at one end of the kingdom and was seen the next day at a festival clear at the other side, a four day trip on a fast horse. The initiates had ceremonies in which spirits would possess them and they would take the appearance, mannerisms and voice of a pagan goddess or a famous dead person. Or a hag could give a person some food with a potion in it and tum that person into a slave who would clean house and do the laundry for her. The Wakened Sleep they called it, only with Snow White it was deep sleep.
Yes, Snow White was a young beauty with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. And how she could cock! She said her stepmother the Queen made her work in the kitchen of the castle where she learned to cook and clean and sew and do laundry and all sorts of other household chores. Then she reached her teenage years and her beauty was so obvious that it couldn’t be hidden in the kitchen. Already Prince Karl from a neighboring kingdom was secretly courting her by pretending to be a delivery man and slipping into the castle to spend time with her. The servants warned her that the Queen was so jealous of her beauty that she was planning to kill her. Finally she ran into the woods and hid but she knew she couldn’t stay there. She had heard that we dwarves weren’t afraid of the Queen and she had no power over us so she came to us. We told her that if she would cook, make beds, wash, sew, and knit, and keep everything clean and orderly she could stay as long as she liked.
Ordinary people would be afraid to hide her but we weren’t ordinary. I don’t mean to say that we’re special, just that we’re not taken in by all the superstitions. We don’t believe in spells and curses and all the tall tales and magic show tricks that people use to get power over other people. Of course we know that there are powders that can kill people and make them lose their senses and we warned Snow White that she should never eat anything from a stranger but she was naive and not used to living out in the world so she got into trouble, not just once but several times and that last time there was nothing we could do.
Far as I was concerned a curse came upon us dwarves the day she appeared. When l say that Snow White’s coming to us was a curse I’m not being superstitious, just that found I her difficult and I know I’m not the only one. I admit she had a pleasant personality; she always had a smile and she sang or bummed all the time. She also had a way with animals. In the evening she sat out in front of the house where all rabbits and squirrels, birds, even deer would come.
They would nuzzle her and eat out of her hand. I think they even talked with her but she said it was the nature spirits who translated for her and the animals. Like I believed that! Once a bear walked out of the woods and approached her. I ran for my pick but the bear just lay beside her and she scratched its car.
So why am I complaining when we always had delicious meals, the house was clean and orderly, our clothes were clean and mended? “Wash your hands before you eat,” she told us. “Cook always told me, ‘Wash your hands before you handle food, cooking or eating?” So before we sat down to eat we had to wash out hands. And it didn’t stop there. “A bath every Saturday night,” she said. “Unhealthy,” I said. “So much soap and water is bad for the skin.”
“Pick up your clothes and put them in the laundry basket,” she said. Why wash clothes if you’re going to get them dirty again. As much as she washed clothes, it’s a wonder they didn’t fall apart. She was that way about everything. “A place for everything and everything in its place.” I got so sick of hearing that.
At that time we worked a tin mine close to home. When we left in the morning we told Snow White not to let anyone in and don’t eat anything from a stranger. We’d go merrily off to work thinking of the fresh baked bread and chunks of cheese in our lunch boxes and the casserole or stew waiting for us when we got home.
Everything went well for a while, until one day we came home and found Snow White passed out on the floor. She would have died soon if we hadn’t been able to bring her around. She told us a peddler came by. She didn’t let her in but talked to her in the yard. She told us, “The woman said she had a scarf that would go perfectly with my hair and complexion. She put it on me and that’s the last I remember,” she said.
We had no doubt that it was the Queen in disguise and the scarf contained a deadly potion. We burned it in the woods.
The next trick was a bouquet of wild flowers left on the door step with a note. The note to Snow White supposedly came from servants at the castle saying the Queen gave up trying to kill her and she was safe now. While she read the note she smelled the bouquet and immediately passed out. We came home from work and found her lying at the door step. A deer stood over her licking her face. It didn’t wake her but it seemed to prevent her from going into a deep sleep. We gave her a drink of reviving potion a good witch had given us In case we had an accident at the mine. When she was able to talk she told us about the note and bouquet which we burned in the forest.
A few days later we had a message from workers at a mine several days away saying that they had a knacker that was banging on the walls of the mine and causing chaos. They wanted us to come as soon as we could. When superstitious miners hear noises in the mine they think they are caused by a little creature that tricks them by hiding or breaking their tools and even causing the walls to collapse. Usually the noises are caused by the supports in the mine giving way. The miners in their panic lose or misuse their tools so they break. They call us dwarves because they think we have power over the knacker and can get rid of it. We try to convince them that knackers don’t exist but they don’t believe us so after we do our part we tell them the knacker is gone, they pay us and everyone is happy.
We hated to leave Snow White knowing that the Queen would try again to kill her but if we didn’t go we were afraid the mine would collapse and kill the miners. Again we told Snow White to trust no one and we would be back as soon as we could.
We realized that she was in great danger when, after traveling a day and a half, the miners told us they were not having a problem, that someone must be playing a trick on us. We knew who that someone was.
We arrived back home to find Snow White in a deep sleep. She was lying inside on the kitchen floor so her animal friends couldn’t help her. Beside her was a basket of fruit with a note supposedly from a farmer’s wife thanking us for being good neighbors. At the bottom another note to us told us that only true love could wake Snow White. In her hand she had half an apple with a bite out of it. The other half of the apple with a bite out of it was in the basket. It was an old trick. The Queen pretended to be no stranger but a neighbor who knew us well. She offered Snow White an apple. When she refused the Queen cut the apple in half and took a bite to prove it was safe. Then Snow White took a bite out of the poisoned half and fell into a deep sleep. Nothing we tried would wake her so we pondered about what to do. We decided we would put her in a glass box so we could see her when she awakened.
Of course the other dwarves thought their love for her would wake her but several days passed, then weeks but still she dozed on. Shorty said it was my fault. I never liked her he said and I wanted to drive her away. They all believed if I would leave the house she would have only love around her. I went and lived in a tent in the woods and waited. Hal said if she would just wake up she could cook one of her delicious meals. Don said he had a hole in the knees of his work pants and if she hadn’t been so careless she could mend them. Bill said that the box is like a piece of furniture that has to be dusted but has no useful purpose. He suggested that we could put a blanket over it and set things on it. All of us rejoiced that we didn’t have to take Saturday night baths.
“You said I was the one who didn’t love her,” I told them, “but each of you has something you didn’t like about her. To wake her will take someone who knows all her ways and still loves her. That’s true love.”
Not long after that Prince Karl who had courted Snow White came to the door.
We arrived back home to find Snow White in a deep sleep. She was lying inside on the kitchen floor so her animal friends couldn’t help her. Beside her was a basket of fruit with a note supposedly from a farmer’s wife thanking us for being good neighbors. At the bottom another note to us told us that only true love could wake Snow White. In her hand she had half an apple with a bite out of it. The other half of the apple with a bite out of it was in the basket. It was an old trick. The Queen pretended to be no stranger but a neighbor who knew us well. She offered Snow White an apple. When she refused the Queen cut the apple in half and took a bite to prove it was safe. Then Snow White took a bite out of the poisoned half and fell into a deep sleep. Nothing we tried would wake her so we pondered about what to do. We decided we would put her in a glass box so we could see her when she awakened.
Of course the other dwarves thought their love for her would wake her but several days passed, then weeks but still she dozed on. Shorty said it was my fault. I never liked her he said and I wanted to drive her away. They all believed if I would leave the house she would have only love around her. I went and lived in a tent in the woods and waited. Hal said if she would just wake up she could cook one of her delicious meals. Don said he had a hole in the knees of his work pants and if she hadn’t been so careless she could mend them. Bill said that the box is like a piece of furniture that has to be dusted but has no useful purpose. He suggested that we could put a blanket over it and set things on it. All of us rejoiced that we didn’t have to take Saturday night baths.
“You said I was the one who didn’t love her,” I told them, “but each of you has something you didn’t like about her. To wake her will take someone who knows all her ways and still loves her. That’s true love.”
Not long after that Prince Karl who had courted Snow White came to the door.
‘Tm looking for Snow White,” he said. “At the castle they said she was dead so I stopped looking. Then I heard of a sleeping girl at in the home of the dwarves. If you have her, may I see her?”
We took him to the glass box and he broke into tears when he saw her.
“At the castle she was wearing the dress of a lowly servant,” he said. “The other servants told me she was strong willed; they said she could drive them crazy with her insistence on orderliness and cleanliness. Even I, when I came to see her, had to take off my muddy boots and Wash my hands when before I ate.”
We all nodded and agreed she could be a pest.
“But whatever her faults, I love her and I’m so sad to see her lying there.”
At that point Snow White stirred and her eyes opened. The Prince quickly opened the lid and lifted her out, kissing her as he did. All very mushy but we had tears in our eyes.
The prince married Snow White and made her his queen. I would like to say they lived happily ever after but having lived around her for some time I have my doubts that all went smoothly.
As for the old Queen, some say Snow White invited her to a party and the old lady never left alive.
Others think Queen had made enemies of the other witches so one of them may have done her in. Myself, I like to think she tried to summon the nature spirits and make them do her evil work but those were the ones that were friendly with Snow White and they made sure that the Queen could never hurt her again.