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will have the eldest.'--And they were married that very day, and the
soldier was chosen to be the king's heir.



THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE

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 on a sudden his float was
dragged away deep into the water: and in drawing it up he pulled out a
great 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 make so many words 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 great 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 came back there the water looked all yellow and
green. And 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 boon 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 had 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?' And there was a parlour, and a bedchamber, and a kitchen; and
behind the cottage there was a little garden, planted with all sorts
of flowers and fruits; and 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.

Everything went right for a week or two, and then Dame Ilsabill said,
'Husband, there is not near room enough for us in this cottage; the
courtyard and the garden are a great deal too small; I should like to
have a large stone castle to live in: go to the fish again and tell
him to give us a castle.' 'Wife,' said the fisherman, 'I don't like to
go to him again, for perhaps he will be angry; we ought to be easy
with this pretty cottage to live in.

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