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Overview
Snow-white-fire-red lives in an elevated house reached by climbing her very long tresses. She calls the formidable ogress mother, and the narration likewise calls her the ogress’s daughter. A prince finds her because an earlier curse prevented his marriage until he sought her out. She conceals him from the ogress, gets her mother drunk and elicits the means of escape. Before leaving, she enchants the furniture to answer the mother’s calls, buying the fugitives time.
The daughter carries seven magical balls of yarn. Successive throws raise a mountain, a field of blades, a river and other obstacles; the mother struggles through them before dying after uttering a final curse. The prince forgets his companion when his mother kisses him. Left alone, Snow-white-fire-red supports herself through skilled enchanted work in an old woman’s household. She dresses that woman’s two doves in cloth obtained from the palace and instructs them to enact the lovers’ history. Their dialogue restores the prince’s memory, and the couple marry. Neither the doves nor the heroine are said to transform into one another.
Origins & earliest records
Crane, Italian Popular Tales (1885), XV: Snow-white-fire-red, pp. 72–76; selected source: Pitrè, no. 13, Bianca-comu-nivi-russa-comu-focu.
Records & interpretation
Crane’s selected English narrative supplies the actions and stated outcome. His prefatory qualification allows altered tenses and omitted repetitions; the cited Italian version has not been independently collated here.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Italian Popular Tales, XV: Snow-white-fire-red, pp. 72–76
Complete selected tale and its attached comparative note; adjacent versions remain separate.
Family, evolution & connections
Snow-white-fire-red and her ogress mother — Crane XV
The complete XV narrative, pp.72–76; surrounding comparative summaries are separate.
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The narrator explicitly calls the tower ogress’s captive her daughter. The opening pitcher-gathering ogress is not explicitly equated with this mother. The prince’s sister address does not supply shared parents; he later marries the heroine. No father or descendants are stated.
Pursuing Ogress of Snow-white-fire-red
The narrator repeatedly calls the tower ogress’s captive her daughter, beyond the spoken mother address. The pitcher-gathering ogress in the opening is not explicitly identified as this mother.
Unnamed prince of Snow-white-fire-red
The prince calls the heroine sister when meeting and recovering her, but the narrator presents them as lovers and ends with their marriage. The address does not establish shared parents.
Fair Angiola in Her Dog-faced Enchantment
Both selected tales use hair to enter a tower, answering household objects, a flight assisted by yarn balls and a guardian’s curse. XV explicitly calls the heroine the ogress’s daughter; V supplies a coerced child-transfer bargain. The parallel is not proof of direct borrowing.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textCrane 1885, XV: Snow-white-fire-redResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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