Snow White

When the dwarfs came home in the evening, they found Snow White lying cold and stiff upon the floor of their room. They raised her up, unlaced her dress, and bathed her face; but all was of no use, she never moved or breathed —she was dead. Now Snow White looked as beautiful as if she were still alive. The dwarfs said, "We cannot put her under the ground;" so they made a glass coffin and placed her inside, so that they could always see her, and they wrote upon the coffin in golden letters— "A King's Daughter." Then they carried the coffin to the top of the mountain, and they took turns in watching beside it.

By-and-by an owl came to mourn for her, then a raven, and last of all a dove. Snow White lay there as if asleep, and the colour never left her cheeks or her lips.

This Image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1923 are copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923, in this case 1885, are now in the public domain.

This file is also in the public domain in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) in this case Caroline Paterson (1856-1911), and that most commonly runs for a period of 50 to 70 years from December 31 of that year.

TEXT and IMAGE CREDIT: Three fairy princesses: Snow-white, the sleeping beauty, Cinderella. The old stories illustr. by C. Paterson, Author Three fairy princesses Illustrated by Caroline Paterson (1856-1911). Published: 1885. Original from: Oxford University. Digitized: Sep 11, 2007.