The Fisherman and His Wife

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The Fisherman and His Wife
Grimm's Fairy Tales

"The Fisherman and His Wife" (Low German: Von dem Fischer un syner Fru) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 (KHM 19). The tale is of Aarne–Thompson type 555, about dissatisfaction and greed.[1] It may be classified as an anti-fairy tale.[2]

Origin

The tale was published by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812 as tale no. 19. Their source was the German painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), from whom the Grimms obtained a manuscript of the tale in 1809. Johann Gustav Büsching published another version of Runge's manuscript a few months earlier in 1812 in Volkssagen, Märchen und Legenden, with some discrepancies with Grimm's version.[1]

Synopsis

Illustration by Anne Anderson

There is a poor fisherman who lives with his wife in a hovel by the sea. One day the fisherman catches a fish who claims to be able to grant wishes and begs to be set free. The fisherman kindly releases it. When his wife hears the story, she says he ought to have had the fish grant him a wish. She insists that he go back and ask the flounder to grant her wish for a nice house.

The fisherman reluctantly returns to the shore but is uneasy when he finds that the sea seems to become turbid, as it was so clear before. He makes up a rhyme to summon the flounder, and it grants the wife's wish. The fisherman is pleased with his new wealth, but the wife is not and demands more, and demands that her husband go back and wish that he be made a king. Reluctantly, he does and gets his wish. But again and again, his wife sends him back to ask for more and more. The fisherman knows this is wrong but there is no reasoning with his wife. He says they should not annoy the flounder, and be content with what they have been given, but his wife is not content. Each time, the flounder grants the wishes with the words: "just go home again, she has it already" or similar, but each time the sea grows rougher and rougher.

Eventually, the wife wishes to command the sun, moon, and heavens, and she sends her husband to the flounder with the wish "I want to become equal to God". The flounder just tells the fisherman to go home, stating that "she is sitting in her old hovel again". And with that, the sea becomes calm once more, and the fisherman and his wife are once more living in nothing but their old, dirty hovel.

Variants

The "Fisherman and His Wife" is similar to other AT-555 tales such as the German "Hanns Dudeldee", the Russian "The Old Man, His Wife, and the Fish", the Japanese "The Stonecutter", and the Indian "The Bullock's Balls".[1]

French author

Edouard Laboulaye published a literary reworking of an Estonian tale titled The Fairy Crawfish. In this tale, poor fisherman Loppi finds a magical crawfish that can grant all his wishes. Loppi is satisfied with very little, but his nagging wife Masica is always asking more and more things from the crawfish.[3]

The

elf named Kidhus who had a reputation for thievery among the local human population. When he stole a golden ball used by a fisherman's wife as a spindle whorl, her husband demanded that Kidhus give him an object of equal value as compensation (which he granted). The couple became greedy and asked for more and more items until they asked Kidhus for a ladder so high that it would reach all the way to Heaven. Kidhus granted their request but when the fisherman and his wife climbed the ladder they lost their balance and fell to their deaths.[4]

Cultural legacy