The Stepmother is the antagonist in the Scottish fairy tale The Milky White Doo.
Story[]
The Stepmother comes in when the father has lost his old wife through illness and he has a son and daughter so he needs financial support so he remarries. The Stepmother is an absolute bully when she is with the stepchildren, but is seemingly nice and pleasant with the father. The Stepmother hates the children and she will do anything to get all the father's money and possessions.
The Stepmother has evil plans up her sleeve and she mercilessly abuses the stepchildren whenever the father isn't home. She once asks the son to help her with the dinner but she suddenly kills the son when he goes to help and smashes him over the head with an axe. Then in a foul move she cuts up his body, and throws it into the soup for dinner. The sister sees what happens and tries to warn her father of the soup but the Stepmother is warning her not to talk and she says that the boy went out but hasn't come back. Soon, however her father learns the truth when he finds bits of his son in his dinner such as fingers and toes. Disgusted, the father stops eating and the sister takes her brother's bones and buries them in a sand pit marking it with white stones.
Soon, however, the ghost of the murdered son returns and appears out of his grave as a beautiful white bird. He flies around taking stock of events and then he approaches some farmers and sings them a song of his murder. The farmers love his singing so they ask him to sing again and they'll give him coins. He does and is rewarded with the money. Then he repeats his song about the Stepmother's murder of him to many other farmers and rich people in the land and soon they all clamour to give him as much money as he can hold.
Meanwhile several years have passed since the boy's murder and the Stepmother is thinking she's got away with it. She is still cruel to the daughter and pretends to be pleasant when the father's home. Once when they're eating dinner the father hears a noise outside, so he goes out, and is surprised when a heavy sack of coins falls down from the roof. The startled father picks it up and is delighted at the amount. Next the daughter goes out and she is rewarded by a huge sack of coins which she picks up in delight. The evil Stepmother shuffles out because she has got fat and lazy, and when she comes out the white bird on the roof throws down a stone at the Stepmother's head, killing her and ridding the father and his sister of her evil presence.
The father and daughter are able to get a better life without the Stepmother's infleunce thanks to the son's help and the father doesn't need to worry about the Stepmother again.