The Snow-child is a widespread European folktale,[1] found in many medieval tellings.
It is Aarne–Thompson type 1362.[1]
A merchant returns home after an absence of two years to find his wife with a newborn son. She explains one snowy day she swallowed a snowflake while thinking about her husband which caused her to conceive. Pretending to believe, he raises the boy with her until he takes the boy on a trip and sells him into slavery. On his return, he explains to his wife that the boy melted in the heat.[2]
The tale first appears in the 11th-century Cambridge Songs.[3] It also appears in Medieval fabliaux,[2] and was used in school exercises of rhetoric.[4] A Medieval play about the Virgin Mary has characters disbelieving her story of her pregnancy citing the tale.[4]
It contrasts to Aarne-Thompson type 703*, Snow Maiden, where a child really has a magical snow-related origin.[5]