There was once a fisherman who lived with his wife in a miserable
little hovel close to the sea. He went to fish every day, and he
fished and fished, and at last one day, when he was sitting looking
deep down into the shining water, he felt something on his line. When
he hauled it up there was a great flounder on the end of the line. The
flounder said to him: "Look here, fisherman, don't you kill me; I am
no common flounder, I am an enchanted prince! What good will it do you
to kill me? I sha'n't be good to eat; put me back into the water, and
leave me to swim about."
"Well," said the fisherman, "you need not make so many words about it.
I am quite ready to put back a flounder that can talk." And so saying,
he put back the flounder into the shining water, and it sank down to
the bottom, leaving a streak of blood behind it.
Then the fisherman got up and went back to his wife in the hovel.
"Husband," she said, "hast thou caught nothing to-day?"
"No," said the man; "all I caught was one flounder, and he said he was
an enchanted prince, so I let him go swim again."
"Didst thou not wish for anything then?" asked the good wife.
"No," said the man; "what was there to wish for?"
"Alas!" said his wife; "isn't it bad enough always to live in this
wretched hovel? Thou mightest at least have wished for a nice clean
cottage. Go back and call him; tell him I want a pretty cottage; he
will surely give us that!"
"Alas," said the man, "what am I to go back there for?"
"Well," said the woman, "it was thou who caught him and let him go
again; for certain he will do that for thee. Be off now!"
The man was still not very willing to go, but he did not want to vex
his wife, and at last he went back to the sea.
He found the sea no longer bright and shining, but dull and green. He
stood by it and said:
"Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Prythee, hearken unto me:
My wife, Ilsebil, will have her own way
Whatever I wish, whatever I say."