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At first glance the owl, raven, and dove by Snow White's grave may seem as ornamental—and even more incidental to the story—as Flower the skunk to Bambi or the English sheep dog to Disney's Little Mermaid. But in fact their presence carries deep theological meaning. By them, the Grimms symbolically address the great question that confronted Paul in Athens, and confronts us today: How do the religions of the world fit together? Should we simply reject other beliefs and (with Karl Marx) "abolish all eternal truths?" Should we welcome all beliefs to an undifferentiated and indifferent parliament of sectarian fowls?
The Grimm birds bring three spiritual civilizations to the grave of Snow White: Greek (owl), German (raven), and Hebrew (dove), the traditions on which the brothers drew for their stories. The cultures of the world, this scene implies, are beautiful, and can lead (like the white duck that carried Hansel and Gretel home) toward truth.
Yet in the end, salvation itself comes from another source: "A king's son happened to come into the forest and went to the dwarves' house to spend the night." The Prince, Lord of the seven churches, brings Snow White to life. (Wilhelm also marked the Johannian phrase, "en auto zoe en … phos ton anthropon": "in him was life, and the life was the light of men.") Confessing his love, the Prince took Snow White to his "father's palace" as wife. The evil stepmother put on "red hot slippers" and danced till she dropped dead.
The Brothers Grimm thus hint at what Paul Tillich called a "universalism" that "did not mix" but subjected other beliefs to "an ultimate criterion." That criterion is Christ, the King's Son (who appears in various guises in many of their most popular tales). Not only Jewish Scripture and Greco-Roman philosophy and poetry but also German folk tales could serve as "tutors to Christ," in Justin's famous formulation. And the stories do not fail to note the fate of wicked stepmothers, because Christian tradition is a free, therefore perilous, universalism: the cross stretches in all directions, yet still crucifies.
Adults who keep a foot in Never-Neverland continue to enjoy the simple narrative flow of these childhood stories. We may also sense their psychological depths. But before Murphy's detective work, few I think recognized the spiritual bedrock over which the stories flowed. Yet this quietly redemptive Grimm subtext set in motion a chain of events, like dwarfish dominos, or an avalanche released by the tread of leprechauns across powder snow, that ultimately toppled the castle of one of the most wicked philosophical "stepmothers" of our day.
Domino one. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton explained how fairy tales brought him to Christian faith. "The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now," he confessed in a chapter called "Ethics of Elfland," "are the things called fairy tales." Chesterton tipped his hat to "the fine collection of Andrew Lang," senior romantic at the Illustrated London News.2 But his examples were mainly drawn from the Brothers Grimm: "That giants should be killed because they are gigantic." "The terrible allegory of Sleeping Beauty … how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death, and how death also may perhaps be softened to sleep." Beyond specific lessons, the air of Fairy awoke in Chesterton a childlike wonder at the elementary phenomena of nature. "These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water."
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