The Fish and the Ring

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Fish and the Ring is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales.

[edit] Synopsis

A baron who was a magician learned that his son was fated to marry a girl just born to a poor peasant. He went to that peasant and, when he lamented that he could not feed six, offer to take the littlest one. He threw her into the river, and she floated to a fisherman's house, and the fisherman raised her. She was beautiful, and one day when the baron was hunting, they saw her and a companion asked who she would marry. To cast her horoscope, he asked when she was born, and she told her story. He sent her to his brother, with a letter telling his brother to kill her. She fell among robbers, who altered the letter to say she should be married to his son, and his brother obeyed it.

The baron came and learned this, and took his daughter-in-law for a walk along the cliff. She begged for her life, and he did not push her in, but he threw a golden ring into the sea and told her that she should never show him or his son her face again without the ring. She went off and got work in a kitchen. The baron came to dinner at that house, and she was preparing fish. She found the ring in it. The guests were so taken with the fish that they wanted to meet the cook, and she went with the ring. The baron realized that he could not fight fate, and announced she was his son's true bride and took her back with him to his home, where she lived happily with her husband.