View source for Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree

{{short description|Scottish fairy tale}}
'''Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree''' is a Scottish [[fairy tale]] collected by [[Joseph Jacobs]] in his ''Celtic Fairy Tales''.<ref>Joseph Jacobs, ''Celtic Fairy Tales'', "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs/celtic/goldtree.html Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161019010736/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs/celtic/goldtree.html |date=2016-10-19 }}"</ref>  It is [[Aarne-Thompson]] type 709, [[Snow White]].  Others of this type include ''[[Bella Venezia]]'', ''[[Nourie Hadig]]'', ''[[La petite Toute-Belle]]'' and  ''[[Myrsina]]''.<ref>Heidi Anne Heiner, "[http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sevendwarfs/other.html Tales Similar to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130522171132/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sevendwarfs/other.html |date=2013-05-22 }}"</ref>

==Plot==
A king had a wife, Silver-Tree, and a daughter, Gold-Tree.  One day they walked by a pond, and Silver-Tree asked a [[trout]] if she were the most beautiful queen in the world, whereupon the trout said that Gold-Tree was more beautiful.  Silver-Tree took to her bed and declared she would never be well unless she ate Gold-Tree's heart and liver.  A king's son had asked to marry Gold-Tree, so her father agreed and sent them off; then he gave his wife the heart and liver of a he-goat, at which she got up from her bed.

Silver-Tree went back to the trout, which told her Gold-Tree was still more beautiful, and living abroad with a prince.  Silver-Tree begged a ship of her husband to visit her daughter.  The prince was away hunting; Gold-Tree was terrified at the sight of the ship.  The servants locked her away in a room so she could tell her mother she could not come out.  Silver-Tree persuaded her to put her little finger through the keyhole, so she could kiss it, and when Gold-Tree did, Silver-Tree stuck a poisoned thorn into it.

When the prince returned, he was grief-stricken, and could not persuade himself to bury Gold-Tree, because she was so beautiful.  He kept her body in a room.  Having married for a second time, he would not let his new wife into the room.  One day, he forgot the key, and the new wife went in.  She tried to wake Gold-Tree, and found the thorn in her finger.  Pulling it out, she revived Gold-Tree.  Because of the wakened one's identity, the second wife offered to leave, but their husband refused to allow it.

Silver-Tree went back to the trout, who told her what had happened.  Silver-Tree took the ship again.  The prince was hunting again, but the second wife said that the two of them must meet her.  Silver-Tree offered a poisoned drink.  The second wife said that it was the custom that the person who offered the drink drank of it first.  Silver-Tree put the drink to her mouth, and the second wife struck her arm so that some went into her throat.  She fell down dead.

The prince, Gold-Tree, and the second wife lived happily thereafter.

== Analysis ==
=== Tale type ===
The tale is classified in the international [[Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index]] as type ATU 709, "Snow White".<ref>[[D. L. Ashliman|Ashliman, D. L.]] ''A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System''. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. p. 144. {{ISBN|0-313-25961-5}}.</ref>

=== Motifs ===
[[Folklorist]] [[Joseph Jacobs]] commented on variants and motifs of the tale in the ''Notes'' of his ''Celtic Fairy Tales''.<ref>Jacobs, Joseph. ''Celtic Fairy Tales''. London: David Nutt. 1892. p. 252.</ref> He suggested the migration of the tale from abroad. He also remarked that publisher and Celtic folklorist [[Alfred Nutt]] called Jacobs's attention to the Breton ''[[Lai (poetic form)|lai]]'' of ''[[Eliduc]]''.<ref>Jacobs, Joseph. ''Celtic Fairy Tales''. London: David Nutt. 1892. p. 252 (footnote nr. 1).</ref>

According to Alan Bruford, Donald A. MacDonald and Christine Shojaei Kawan, the speaking trout in a pool replaces the mirror in Gaelic, Scottish and Irish variants of the tale type ATU 709, as part of the Irish-Scottish oikotype of ATU 709.<ref>Bruford, Alan; MacDonald, Donald A. ''Scottish traditional tales''. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2003 [1994]. p. 449.</ref><ref>Kawan, Christine Shojaei. "Schneewittchen (AaTh/ATU 709)" [Snow White (ATU 709)]. In: ''[[Enzyklopädie des Märchens]]'' Band 12: Schinden, Schinder – Sublimierung. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Daniel Drascek; Helge Gerndt; Ines Köhler-Zülch; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 [2007]. p. 133. {{ISBN|978-3-11-019936-9}}.</ref>

==See also==
{{wikisource}}
{{commonscat}}
* [[Calumniated Wife]]
* [[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs]]
* [[Udea and her Seven Brothers]]
* [[Salmon of Knowledge]]
{{Portal |Children's literature}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Snow White}}

[[Category:Female characters in fairy tales]]
[[Category:Fictional princesses]]
[[Category:Fictional queens]]
[[Category:Scottish fairy tales]]
[[Category:Fairy tales about talking animals]]
[[Category:Anthropomorphic fish]]
[[Category:Scottish folklore]]
[[Category:Snow White]]
[[Category:ATU 700-749]]
[[Category:Joseph Jacobs]]
[[Category:Fairy tales about princes]]
[[Category:Fairy tales about princesses]]