''The Snow-child'' is a widespread European folktale,
[ D. L. Ashliman, ]
The Snow Child: folktales of type 1362
' found in many medieval tellings.
It is
Aarne–Thompson type 1362.
Synopsis
A merchant returns home after an absence of two years to find his wife with a newborn son. She explains one snowy day she swallowed a snowflake while thinking about her husband which caused her to conceive. Pretending to believe, he raises the boy with her until he takes the boy on a trip and sells him into
slavery
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
. On his return, he explains to his wife that the boy melted in the heat.
[Nicolas Balachov, (1984).]
Le developpement des structures narratives du fabliau a la nouvelle
. in Gabriel Bianciotto, Michel Salvat. ''Épopée animale, fable, fabliau''. Publication Univ Rouen Havre. pp. 30-32.. .
Variants
The tale first appears in the 11th-century
Cambridge Songs
The Cambridge Songs (''Carmina Cantabrigiensia'') are a collection of Goliardic medieval Latin poems found on ten leaves (ff. 432–41) of the ''Codex Cantabrigiensis'' (''C'', MS Gg. 5.35), now in Cambridge University Library.
History and ...
.
It also appears in Medieval
fabliau
A ''fabliau'' (; plural ''fabliaux'') is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs and clerics in France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitud ...
x,
and was used in school exercises of rhetoric.
[Jan M. Ziolkowski ''Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales: The Medieval Latin Past of Wonderful Lies'' p 42 ] A Medieval play about the
Virgin Mary
Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...
has characters disbelieving her story of her pregnancy citing the tale.
It contrasts to Aarne-Thompson type 703*,
Snow Maiden, where a child really has a magical snow-related origin.
[ D. L. Ashliman, ]
The Snow Maiden: foltales of type 703*
'
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snow-child
Folklore
Fabliaux
European folklore
ATU 1350-1439