A fisherman catches a golden fish. When the fish announces that he is a prince under an evil spell, the fisherman throws him back into the sea. On his return to his hovel, his wife tells him that he should have asked the magical creature to grant him a wish, and so the fisherman returns to the sea to call out to the fish and ask that the lives of the impoverished couple should be transformed - but the better life that ensues is not quite enough for them.
This story of over-reaching greed and ambition is known well in many countries including Germany and Russia, but not so much in the English speaking world. It's told with the Brothers Grimm's usual insight into human frailty.
Read by Natasha. Duration 19.30
Proofread by Claire Deakin.
There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a pigsty, close by the seaside. The fisherman used to go out all day long a-fishing; and one day, as he sat on the shore with his rod, looking at the sparkling waves and watching his line, all of a sudden his float was dragged away deep into the water. When he reeled in his line, he pulled out a golden fish. But the fish said, "Pray let me live! I am not a real fish. I am an enchanted prince. Put me in the water again, and let me go!"
"Oh, ho!" Said the man. "You need not go on much more about the matter. I will have nothing to do with a fish that can talk, so swim away, sir, as soon as you please!" Then he put him back into the water, and the fish darted straight down to the bottom, and left a long streak of blood behind him on the wave.
When the fisherman went home to his wife in the pigsty, he told her how he had caught a golden fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted prince, and how, on hearing it speak, he had let it go again. "Did not you ask it for anything?" Said the wife. "We live very wretchedly here, in this nasty dirty pigsty. Do go back and tell the fish we want a snug little cottage."
The fisherman did not much like the business - however, he went to the seashore, and when he got back there the water looked all yellow and green. He stood at the water’s edge, and said,
"O man of the sea!
Hearken to me!
My wife Ilsabill
Will have her own will,
And hath sent me to beg a gift of thee!"
Then the fish came swimming to him and said, "Well, what is her will? What does your wife want?"
"Ah!" Said the fisherman. "She says that when I caught you, I ought to have asked you for something before I let you go. She does not like living any longer in the pigsty, and wants a snug little cottage."
"Go home then," said the fish, "she is in the cottage already!" So the man went home, and saw his wife standing at the door of a nice trim little cottage.
"Come in, come in!" Said she. "Is not this much better than the filthy pigsty we had?" There was a parlour, a bedroom, and a kitchen; and behind the cottage there was a little garden, planted with all sorts of flowers and fruits. There was a courtyard behind, full of ducks and chickens. "Ah!" Said the fisherman, "How happily we shall live now!"
"We will try to do so, at least," said his wife.