The Mirror of Amaryllis: A Snow White Tale

In my spare time, I’ve been browsing old folklore articles again. The other day, I came across a rather interesting and… different version of Snow White. It starts like this: Once upon a time there was an exceedingly beautiful woman who worked as a postmistress. She had a magic mirror she called the Mirror of Amaryllis. Every morning as she got dressed, she asked the mirror this question: “Mirror of Amaryllis, is there anyone on earth more beautiful than I?” The mirror would answer her: “No.” Yes, you read that right: the wicked queen/evil stepbiological mother character is a postmistress! Why a postmistress, you ask? I wondered, too. This version comes from Mexico, circa 1914. So my first theory was that since early twentieth century Mexico had no royalty or nobility, perhaps the storyteller didn’t want to use a queen. And given the patriarchal society of the time, perhaps a postmistress was the highest female authority figure that the storyteller could think of. Sounds plausible,…