The Selected Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: "Snow-white and Rose-red" by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

The little hare would eat a cabbage-leaf out of their hands, the roe grazed by their side, the stag leapt merrily by them, and the birds sat still upon the boughs, and sang whatever they knew.

No mishap overtook them; if they had stayed too late in the forest, and night came on, they laid themselves down near one another upon the moss, and slept until morning came, and their mother knew this and did not worry on their account.

Once when they had spent the night in the wood and the dawn had roused them, they saw a beautiful child in a shining white dress sitting near their bed.

And when they looked round they found that they had been sleeping quite close to a precipice, and would certainly have fallen into it in the darkness if they had gone only a few paces further.

Rose-red screamed and sprang back, the lamb bleated, the dove fluttered, and Snow-white hid herself behind her mother’s bed.

‘I must go into the forest and guard my treasures from the wicked dwarfs. In the winter, when the earth is frozen hard, they are obliged to stay below and cannot work their way through; but now, when the sun has thawed and warmed the earth, they break through it, and come out to pry and steal; and what once gets into their hands, and in their caves, does not easily see daylight again.’

The end of the beard was caught in a crevice of the tree, and the little fellow was jumping about like a dog tied to a rope, and did not know what to do.

The little bit of food that we people get is immediately burnt up with heavy logs; we do not swallow so much as you coarse, greedy folk.

Ugh! how odious you are!

Uncouth people, to cut off a piece of my fine beard.

The little man had been sitting there fishing, and unluckily the wind had tangled up his beard with the fishing-line; a moment later a big fish made a bite and the feeble creature had not strength to pull it out; the fish kept the upper hand and pulled the dwarf towards him.

Is that civil, you toadstool, to disfigure a man’s face?

The road led them across a heath upon which huge pieces of rock lay strewn about.

Come, take these two wicked girls, they are tender morsels for you, fat as young quails; for mercy’s sake eat them!

The bear took no heed of his words, but gave the wicked creature a single blow with his paw, and he did not move again.