Reading Notes, Part A: Gold-Tree & Silver-Tree

(Golden tree.  Pixabay.)

• Silver-Tree is Gold-Tree's mother
• Silver-Tree goes to a well and asks a trout if she is the most beautiful
• He denies and says it is her daughter, Gold-Tree, that is more beautiful
• Silver-Tree wants her heart and liver to be the most beautiful
• She vowed that she would be ill if she couldn't have the heart and liver
• Her husband came home to her being ill 
• She told him of the heart and liver, but the husband doesn't give her that because a nice Prince from another village wants to marry Gold-Tree
• The husband/father lets them marry and takes a goat's heart and liver to feed Silver-Tree instead
• After a year, Silver-Tree asks the trout again but Gold-Tree is still alive
• She board's the king's long-ship to see her yet Gold-Tree knows she wants her to die so she hides
• Silver-Tree convinces her to stick her finger out of the key-hole and instead of giving her a kiss on the finger, she pricks her w/a poisoned needle
• The Prince went to hunt all the while and came back to Gold-Tree dead
• Because she is so beautiful he keeps her locked in that room & never throws away the key
• He remarries and one day forgets to take the key w/him so his 2nd-wife goes into that room only to find Gold-Tree
• She finds the needle stuck to Gold-tree's finger and pulls it out - later surprising the Prince, that she is alive, when he comes home
• He wants to stay married to both & does so
• It's been a year and Silver-tree goes to the well to ask again but finds that Gold-tree is still alive
• She goes to visit again but w/a glass of potion - she tries to give it to Gold-tree but the 2nd-wife hits the cup, when Silver-tree proves to drink with them, letting her drink some
• Silver-tree dies and they live on, leaving her be.

This story is similar take to Snow White - much darker take involving death in the end.

My take will be more modern.  Gold-Tree will be an only daughter that grew up alone and her father remarries when she is off to college.  She gains a vicious step-mother that knows of her beauty (because she is still the most beautiful and of pride to her father).  The mother is jealous of how much he spoils his daughter.  

I may keep an eerie death in this story as well.  Different from my usual.  I will stick with a first person narrative, though not sure about who - the mother? the daughter? the father even? 

The daughter goes off to college, meets someone and wants to get married.  The father is willing to give anything but the mother being so jealous she wants to stop the marriage, to ruin the daughter's life.  

She wants nothing but unhappiness and a hard life for the daughter.

Though I even thought to add a twist to the story of the guy being torn between two women (that would add effect but be too long?)

Maybe the mistress can be a woman that the mother hires to get in the way of their relationship! But the girl finds out of how cruel she is (the mother doesn't pay the girl, just uses her) and decides to help plan their revenge on the mother.

Who's death could be at the end? - Mother.  Daughter.  Father (like Snow White).  Prince.  Maybe more than two deaths in the end or middle and end?

Bibliography:  Celtic Fairy Tales: Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree by Joseph Jacobs.