My dear father ate me,
My little brother whom I love
Sits below, and I sing above
Stick, stock, stone dead.
The Rose Tree is an English Fairy Tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales.
A man had a daughter by his first wife and a son by his second. The stepmother hated her stepdaughter. One day, when the girl had had candles she was bringing from the store stolen by a dog three times, the stepmother tricked her into letting her chop her head off. Then she baked her into a pie and fed her body to her husband. Her son took the body and buried it under a rose tree. In spring, when it bloomed, a bird appeared and sang in it. So beautiful was the song that a shoemaker gave her red shoes, a watchmaker a golden watch, and three millers a millstone.
She flew to their home and rattled the stone on the roof. The boy ran out, and she dropped the shoes at his feet. She rattled it again, and the man ran out, and she dropped the watch at his feet. Then she rattled it again, and the stepmother ran out, and she dropped the millstone on her head, so she died.
Full text here
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This is a Gender Flip of a common folktale, where the stepmother kills her stepson, like The Brothers Grimm's "The Juniper Tree".
Tropes include
- Back from the Dead: As a bird.
- Due to the Dead: In both the good and evil versions
- Familial Cannibalism Surprise: The father getting fed his daughter in a pie.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: The stepmother's murdering the girl
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: The girl is kind-hearted and has hair like golden silk.
- It Was a Gift: The bird gets three gifts for her song.
- Laser-Guided Karma
- Off with His Head!: The stepmother murders her stepdaughter by decapitating her with an axe.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: She's a bird!
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: The girl is murdered for her beauty and lovely golden hair.
- Wicked Stepmother: The murderous stepmother.
