A man with a daughter married a widow who also had a daughter. But the girl’s new stepmother hated her. She was very cruel.
One winter morning, the stepmother made the girl wear a thin dress and told her, “Go to the woods and fetch strawberries.” The girl shivered and pleaded, “It’s very cold in this dress. And there will be no strawberries in the snow!” But her stepmother drove her out.
Wandering through the woods the girl came upon a cottage and saw three little dwarfs calling out, “Come in; Why are you out in the cold!” They wanted to know why she was wandering around in a thin dress. She told them everything. She even shared her bread with them.
“Will you sweep the snow off the doorstep at the back?” asked the dwarfs. The girl went out to sweep the snow.
As soon as she went out, the three dwarfs whispered, “She’s kind and good. Each of us should give her a blessing!” One dwarf said she would become prettier every day; the second one said that a gold coin would drop whenever she spoke and the third one said that she would marry a prince. The girl came back happily, for she found lots of strawberries in the snow. Thanking the dwarfs, she returned home.
When her stepsister saw her, she became very jealous. She went off to look for the cottage in the woods. When she saw the cottage, she went in. But she wouldn’t share her food with the dwarfs and she refused to sweep the snow off the doorstep. The dwarfs were very angry and they whispered to one another that they would give her curses as gifts.
The first dwarf said that she would become uglier every day; the second one said that toads would jump out of her mouth when she spoke and the third one said that she would always be very lonely.
Her mother, when she saw her daughter had been cursed by the dwarfs, began to be even more cruel to her stepdaughter. One day, she told her to break the ice and wash her skeins of wool in the icy water.
That day, the prince rode past the house in his carriage and stopped to look at the beautiful girl who was washing in the icy cold water. He felt great pity and love for her and asked her to marry him. And so, they were married and lived happily thereafter.
