The Universe of Discourse

Snow White in German

Tonight I was thinking of

Mirror, mirror, on the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?

I remembered that the original was in German and wondered whether it had always rhymed. It turns out that it had:

Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand,
Wer ist die Schönste im ganzen Land?

The English is a pretty literal translation.

When the wunderbare Spiegel gives the Queen the bad news, it says:

Frau Königin, Ihr seid die Schönste hier,
Aber Schneewittchen ist tausendmal schöner als Ihr.

(“Queen, you are the fairest one here, but Little Snow White is a thousand times as fair as you.”)

When the dwarfs see Snow White in one of their beds, they cry

Ei, du mein Gott!

which is German for “zOMG”.

Later the Queen returns to the mirror, expecting a better answer, but she gets this:

Frau Königin, Ihr seid die Schönste hier,
Aber Schneewittchen über den Bergen
Bei den sieben Zwergen
Ist noch tausendmal schöner als Ihr.

(“Queen, you are the fairest here, but Little Snow White up on the mountain with the seven dwarfs is still a thousand times as fair as you.”)

I like the way this poem here interpolates the earlier version, turning the A-A rhyme into A-B-B-A. The English version I have has “in the glen / little men” in place of “über den Bergen / sieben Zwergen”. The original is much better, but I am not sure English has any good rhymes for “dwarfs”. Except “wharfs”, but putting the dwarfs by the wharfs is much worse than putting them in the glen.

[ Thanks to Gaal Yahas for correcting my translation of noch and to Mario Lang for correcting my German grammar. ]

[ Addendum 20200115: Was the mirror magical? ]

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