The Snow-child

The Snow-child is a widespread European folktale, 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. On his return, he explains to his wife that the boy melted in the heat.

Variants

The tale first appears in the 11th-century Cambridge Songs. It also appears in Medieval fabliaux, and was used in school exercises of rhetoric. A Medieval play about the Virgin Mary 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.

References

1. The Snow Child
2. The Bloody Chamber
3. Eowyn Ivey
4. Snow White
5. Snegurochka
6. Brittany Snow
7. Coriolanus Snow
8. The Snow Queen
9. Yuki-onna
10. Mason Reese
11. Aurora Snow
12. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
13. Burning Your Boats
14. Nobody's Child (Hank Snow song)
15. Snow Kid
16. The Hunters in the Snow
17. Lord Snow
18. Mile 22
19. John Snow
20. Constance Hopkins