Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree

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Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree is a Scottish fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in his Celtic Fairy Tales.[1] It is Aarne-Thompson type 709, Snow White. Others of this type include Bella Venezia, Nourie Hadig, and Myrsina.[2]

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A king had a wife, Silver-Tree, and a daughter, Gold-Tree. One day they walked by a pond, and Silver-Tree asked a trout if she was the most beautiful queen in the world, and the trout said that Gold-Tree was more beautiful. Silver-Tree took to her bed and declared she would never be well unless she ate Gold-Tree's heart and liver. A king's son had asked to marry Gold-Tree, so her father agreed and sent them off; then he gave his wife the heart and liver of a he-goat, and she got up from her bed.

Silver-Tree went back to the trout, which told her Gold-Tree was still more beautiful, and living abroad with a prince. Silver-Tree begged a ship of her husband to visit her daughter. The prince was away hunting, and Gold-Tree was terrified at the sight of the ship. The servants locked her away in a room so she could tell her mother she could not come out. Silver-Tree persuaded her to put her little finger through the keyhole, so she could kiss it, and when Gold-Tree did, Silver-Tree stuck a poisoned thorn into it.

When the prince returned, he was grief-stricken, and could not bury Gold-Tree, she was so beautiful. He kept her body in a room. One day, he remarried. He would not let his new wife into the room, but one day, he forgot the key, and the new wife went in. She tried to wake Gold-Tree, and found the thorn in her finger. Pulling it out, she revived Gold-Tree. Then she offered to go away, because she was second, but the prince would not hear of it.

Silver-Tree went back to the trout, which told her what had happened. Silver-Tree took the ship again. The prince was hunting again, but the second wife said that the two of them must meet her. Silver-Tree offered a poisoned drink. The second wife said that it was the custom that the person who offered the drink drank of it first. Silver-Tree put the drink to her mouth, and the second wife struck her arm so that some went in. She fell down dead.

The prince, Gold-Tree, and the second wife lived happily thereafter.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales, "Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree"
  2. ^ Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
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