Snow White and the Band of Thieves

In the comments on my post on the history of mirrors, Nectar Vam mentioned a version of Snow White in which the heroine's helpers are the personified 12 Months of the year. That in itself is a fascinating concept, but it also got me wondering about how often Snow White is helped by creatures other than Dwarfs.

I turned once again to Surlalune's fabulous collection of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales from Around the World! It's not an exhaustive group of Snow White tales (as if such a thing could exist), but with 40 variants from around the world it still reveals some interesting trends.

Some stories didn't quite have a group of characters that functioned like the dwarfs we're familiar with, but almost all did. And dwarfs were actually not that prevalent in the stories! The clear winners were thieves and robbers, in 9 stories. Next most popular was just a regular band of men, in 6 tales. When the helpers were males they were often brothers. In 4 versions, they were the heroine's own brothers (in fact you could probably call these versions of "The Twelve Brothers.")

Dwarfs weren't really that popular in folklore versions of Snow White, showing up only twice besides the Grimms' (they were featured in Joseph Jacob's story but that's basically a condensed version of the Grimms). Other characters that featured as helpers in two versions each: Giants, Fairies, and an Ogre husband and wife.

Other helper groups that appeared once were a wounded woman, a spirit of a dead woman living inside a magic castle, an old man, the Goddess Nycteris, and one group of dragons (although Heidi Anne Heiner notes that the dragons could also be translated as "heroic men").

Also, the number "7" wasn't present in every version either. No matter what form the helpers came in, they could be helping alone, in pairs, or other significant numbers-groups of 3, 7, 12, 24, and 40 were common.

What does this reveal about Snow White's friends? First of all, that help can come from the most unlikely places. Thieves and robbers are not a group you would most expect to treat a beautiful young girl as a sister (one group of robbers was also initially cannibals). Even if it was a group of young men, the fact that they're living by themselves, secluded in the woods, probably meant that they were cast out from normal society on some level. It's usual for us to hear of groups of young adults rooming together, but this is a newer concept-most young adults would historically get married as soon as possible to start their own families, and those that weren't married would probably still live with family and help raise relatives (this was at least true for young unmarried women, I'm not sure about unmarried men).

Some of Snow White's helpers-giants and ogres-would obviously be assumed to be very dangerous. I like that they weren't all males, either, although males prevailed (and sometimes there was an added helper role-an old man or woman might point Snow White to the house where the helpers lived, etc.)

And, although I just skimmed the tales, it really struck me once again how creepy the Prince is for being obsessed with a young girl's corpse. It really serves to highlight the contrast between how he and the group of helpers treat her. In the Portuguese "The Vain Queen," the man who takes in the beautiful Princess would like to marry her but gives her the power of choice-he asks if she would like to remain with him as his wife, or as his daughter, and she chooses the latter. This tale makes me wonder if the story just serves to highlight Snow White's growing older and desiring to marry, because at the end she is asked if she would like to marry the Prince who fell in love with her and she agrees.

That story was one of the healthiest examples of love and marriage, but some were so extreme I feel like the marriage at the end wasn't necessarily assumed to be a happy ending. The Italian tale "The Crystal Casket" really highlights the creepy factor when the Prince's mother asks him, after he brings home an unconscious girl, "But what is it? A doll? A dead woman?" and he replies, "Mother, don't trouble yourself about what it is, it is my wife." The heroine, Ermellina, was referred to as a "doll" or an "it" for the rest of the text. (Cue "Psycho" theme...)

Not every Prince is quite that level of horrifying. In fact, in some versions, like the tale I referenced at the beginning, Myrsina, the Prince gets the chest that contains the body without knowing what is inside it, and only discovers later that it contains a beautiful woman. (That tale isn't available in full online, but the summary can be read on Wikipedia). In that story it was a ring that proved the Princess' ultimate downfall, not an apple (I noticed a ring was a very prevalent symbol but I didn't count the number of appearances, maybe in a future post?).

Illustrations by John Hassall

Numbers and the Twelve Dancing Princesses

Anne Anderson

On the Surlalune Annotate Twelve Dancing Princesses page, you can read the Grimms' notes from the versions they heard and used to create their own version. These tales are definitely different than the one we're familiar with-for example, either three sisters who wear out their shoes verses twelve, or one princess who wears out twelve pairs of shoes. Clearly numbers are a significant thing in folklore, but even from the above example you can see numbers seem to be especially prominent in this story's versions, particularly 3 and 12-sometimes you'll see 11 or 13, but these numbers are really meant to be one more or one less than the complete 12. Click through to read the older versions and see more instances of 3s and 12s.

From Heidi Anne Heiner's annotations:
"Three days and nights: The number and/or pattern of three often appears in fairy tales to provide rhythm and suspense. The pattern adds drama and suspense while making the story easy to remember and follow. The third event often signals a change and/or ending for the listener/reader. A third time also disallows coincidence such as two repetitive events would suggest.

The reasons and theories behind three's popularity are numerous and diverse. The number has been considered powerful across history in different cultures and religions, but not all of them. Christians have the Trinity, the Chinese have the Great Triad (man, heaven, earth), and the Buddhists have the Triple Jewel (Buddha, Dharma, Sanga). The Greeks had the Three Fates. Pythagoras considered three to be the perfect number because it represented everything: the beginning, middle, and end. Some cultures have different powerful numbers, often favoring seven, four and twelve. "

Elenore Abbott

I think I'd have to rank Twelve Dancing Princesses as my second favorite fairy tale, the first being Beauty and the Beast. The secret kingdom and the dancing are definitely elements I love, but I think a more subtle factor may be the ambiguity. Normally, good and evil are very black and white in fairy tales, which I don't necessarily dislike, it's an element of the genre. But the nature of the curse is unclear-if no one were beheaded because of it, would it even be a curse? To quote from Heidi Anne Heiner again: "The callousness displayed by the princesses is often troubling to many critics and readers. Are the princesses really that cruel or are they under an enchantment? The answer is left for your own interpretation"

History of the Arabian Nights

In my library there are several books on the brothers Grimm but none exclusively on the history of the Arabian Nights. The following information is taken from the chapter "The Splendor of the Arabian Nights" from Jack Zipes' When Dreams Come True: Classic Fairy Tales and their Tradition.

The Arabian Nights is more unique than just another culture's collection of folktales because of its framework story: that of Scheherezade heroically saving her own life and that of countless other women by telling stories to Shahryar, the king who was so incensed by the adultery of his first wife that he took to marrying and killing a different woman each night. This framework story was modeled after a Persian book called Hazar Afsaneh, or "A Thousand Tales", translated into Arabic in the ninth century.

The individual tales themselves differ from collection to collection. The tales as we know them today are mainly taken from Persian tenth century tales with some Indian elements, tenth century tales recorded in Baghdad, and Egyptian stories written down between the tenth and twelfth centuries. But, similar to other collections of fairy tales around the world, these were probably circulated orally for hundreds of years before being written down, and afterwards have become an important influence in Western stories. The Arabian Nights were translated into French by Antoine Galland between 1704 and 1717, whose literary talents made the tales popular and eventually were translated into multiple languages, with the most famous English translation by Richard Burton (who plagarized a lot from an earlier English translation by John Payne).

Due to the Scheherezade story, the tales have clear purposes-firstly, for Scheherezade to educate and recivilize Shahryar and show him that he can regain his trust in women. Secondly, Scheherezade's sister Dunazade is also an audience member, so the tales are Scheherezade's passing down of advice to her younger sister and enabling her to navigate through society. The readers themselves are the third audience, who become educated alongside Shahryar and Dunazade into values of the time and culture-justice, the importance of creativity and wit, and most of all, empowering the oppressed.

The power of story itself cannot be ignored either-through the ultimate happy ending that Scheherezade's determination brings about, as well as four other major tales that employ the same motif of people telling stories to save innocent lives. As an obvious lover of stories myself, that's the most intriguing part of the Arabian Nights to me.

I found this passage fascinating, as it's something I had wondered about myself: "Given the patriarchal nature of Arabic culture, it would seem strange that Scheherezade assumed the key role in the Nights. Yet, a woman exercised more power in Moslem culture during the Middle Ages in Baghdad and Cairo than is commonly known," including ultimate power over children and slaves, including children's educations, marriage, profession, and sexual initiation.

Interestingly, the title was originally One Thousand Nights, and no one knows how it became The Thousand and One Nights. Zipes speculates that it had something to do with the fact that odd numbers were considered lucky in Arabic culture. I personally find the perfectly even "one thousand" to be a little too practical, while "the thousand and one" adds a touch of whimsy and almost a hint of the eternal, as if no matter what the number, there's always one more to be heard the next night...(there are not literally one thousand tales in the collection. There are 42 "core" tales in Galland's translation, but apparantly the complete collection of Payne's collection included nine volumes).

Illustrations by Virginia Frances Sterret

The Princesses of the Blue Mountain and the Rule of Threes

Things tend to happen in threes in fairy tales, and the Norwegian tale "The Three Princesses of the Blue Mountain" is a perfect illustration.

A King and a Queen longed for children. A beggar woman told them they would have THREE daughters, but must not be out under the open air until they were all FIFTEEN years old. Prohibition=violation-they were let outside just before the youngest one's fifteenth birthday and were carried away by a snowdrift.

The King sets up a reward-half the kingdom and a princess of choice to anyone who could free the Princesses. Many tried and failed. Finally a Captain and a Lieutenant set on their way, followed by a Soldier who had dreamt the way to find the Princesses. His mother told him not to go yet-only if he dreamt the same dream THREE times would he know it was true. However, he did, and set off to find the Princesses.

He met up with the Captain and Lieutenant, making their company THREE. The Soldier had gotten meat from the King before his journey and used it THREE times-twice to distract hungry animals, and once to feed themselves.

While staying at a house, each hero was tricked by an old man who beat them with his crutches, except the Soldier, making it the THIRD time, who tricked the old man into telling him the rest of the way to the Blue Mountain. There were trials of fire and water-the Captain couldn't make it past the water, the Lieutenant couldn't make it past the fire, but the Soldier, the THIRD, made it past both and into pitch darkness-THREE trials. Once out of there, he found the first Princess, spinning copper yarn.

They concoct a plan to save her from the THREE headed monster. He takes a drink from a flask, weilds the Troll's sword, and cuts them off. On to the second Princess, spinning silver, and the same trick to cut off the SIX headed monster, but only after taking two sets of THREE draughts of drink. The THIRD Princess spins gold. THREE sets of THREE drinks enabled him to cut off the NINE headed monster, though each time it got more difficult.

Above illustrations by Kay Nielsen

The Soldier leads the Princesses back to the well he had come down, but the trecherous Captain and Lieutenant cut off the rope when they think they are hauling up the soldier. Left alone, the soldier searches and finds a whistle, which summons a flock of birds and a large eagle, who will transport him out once she has eaten TWELVE oxen.

Meanwhile the Princesses are dismayed at the thought of marrying the Captain and Lieutenant and say they will only marry when they can have a set of gold checkers just like the one in the mountains. The Soldier calls on the eagle to get it for him, and he and the Princesses reveal the truth. He marries the youngest-the THIRD-Princess.

So not only do these stories contain threes and multiples, but there's a sense of building up to the third as the climax. Many other well-known stories have this pattern too.

-Cinderella attends the ball THREE nights in a row (ignore the cheesy saying and just look at the pretty picture.)

-The two stepsisters plus Cinderella make THREE sisters

Illustration by Henry J. Ford, from Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book

-The maiden in Rumpelstiltskin has THREE nights on which she must spin gold.

-The Grimm's version even repeats that the bobbin goes "whirr, whirr, whirr! THREE times around"

-On the THIRD night, the baby is bargained-the climax

-The maiden has THREE nights to guess Rumpelstiltskin's true name

Illustration by Katherine Cameron

-There are TWELVE dancing Princesses, a multiple of three

-Each night they pass through THREE forests that get grander and grander-silver, gold, and diamonds

-They danced till THREE in the morning

-This happened THREE nights in a row-on the THIRD night the soldier takes a cup with him as well as the twigs

Willy Planck

The Goose Girl

-The Princess' mother gives her a handkercheif with THREE drops of blood on it

-The Princess goes out to tend the geese THREE times before she is revealed

Long ago, people thought that as they had children, each time the children improved-like each was the "newest model," so to speak-and that helps to explain all the emphasis on the youngest siblings in fairy tales. The patterns of threes may have made them, easier to remember, although it makes reading them tiresome. Some versions spell out all the details three times and some just say "And the same thing happened again." It's very similar to the phrase we still use, "Third time's the charm." Yet in modern retellings of tales, we want a faster pace so we cut out the repetitions. Anyone reading the Grimm Snow White for the first time is schocked at her stupidity, accepting gifts from the Queen three times in a row, when they are obviously meant to be deadly. But this isn't a commentary on Snow White so much as following the traditional story-telling pattern.

From Surlalune's annotations to Goose Girl: "The reasons and theories behind three's popularity are numerous and diverse. The number has been considered powerful across history in different cultures and religions, but not all of them. Christians have the Trinity, the Chinese have the Great Triad (man, heaven, earth), and the Buddhists have the Triple Jewel (Buddha, Dharma, Sanga). The Greeks had the Three Fates. Pythagoras considered three to be the perfect number because it represented everything: the beginning, middle, and end. Some cultures have different powerful numbers, often favoring seven, four and twelve."

Also:"The number and/or pattern of three often appears in fairy tales to provide rhythm and suspense. The pattern adds drama and suspense while making the story easy to remember and follow. The third event often signals a change and/or ending for the listener/reader. A third time also disallows coincidence such as two repetitive events would suggest."