A wealthy and pious couple pray every day for God to grant them a child. One winter, under the juniper tree in the courtyard, the wife peels an apple. She cuts her finger and drops of blood fall onto the snow. This leads her to wish for a child to be as white as snow and as red as blood. Six months later, the wife becomes gravely ill from eating juniper berries and asks her husband to bury her beneath the juniper tree if she dies. A month later, she gives birth to a baby boy as white as snow and as red as blood.