Array The Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm - A New English Version

Finally the sun rose, and when she saw the light she sat up in bed at once.

‘I’ve got it!’ she said. ‘Husband, wake up. Come on! Wake up!’

She dug him in the ribs till he groaned and opened his eyes.

‘What is it? What do you want?’

‘Go back to the flounder at once. I want to be God!’

That made him sit up. ‘What?’

‘I want to be God. I want to cause the sun and the moon to rise. I can’t bear it when I see them rising and I haven’t had anything to do with it. But if I were God, I could make it all happen. I could make them go backwards if I wanted. So go and tell the flounder I want to be God.’

He rubbed his eyes and looked at her, but she looked so crazy that he was scared, and got out of bed quickly.

‘Now!’ she screamed. ‘Go!’

‘Oh, please, wife,’ begged the poor man, falling to his knees, ‘think again, my love, think again. The flounder made you emperor and he made you pope, but he can’t make you God. That’s really impossible.’

She flew out of bed and hit him, her hair sticking out wildly from her head, her eyes rolling. She tore off her nightdress and screamed and stamped, shouting, ‘I can’t bear it to wait so long! You’re driving me insane! Go and do as I tell you right now!’

The fisherman tugged on his trousers, hopping out of the bedroom, and ran to the seashore. There was such a storm raging that he could hardly stand up against it. Rain lashed his face, trees were being torn up from the ground, houses were tumbled in every direction as great boulders came flying through the air, torn off the cliffs. The thunder crashed and the lightning flared, and the waves on the sea were as high as churches and castles and mountains, with sheets of foam flying from their crests.

‘What does she want?’

‘Well, you see, she wants to be God.’

‘Go home. She’s back in the pisspot.’

And so she was, and there they are to this day.

Tale type:ATU 555, ‘The Fisherman and His Wife’

Source:a story written by Philipp Otto Runge

Similar stories:Alexander Afanasyev: ‘The Goldfish’ ( Russian Fairy Tales ); Italo Calvino: ‘The Dragon with Seven Heads’ ( Italian Folktales ); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: ‘The Golden Children’ ( Children’s and Household Tales )

A popular and widespread tale. The Calvino story, ‘The Dragon with Seven Heads’, shows how a very different story can be unfolded from a very similar beginning.

This version is full of energy and inventive detail. Like ‘The Juniper Tree’, it comes from the pen of the Romantic painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), and was written in Plattdeutsch, or Low German, the dialect of his native Pomerania:

Dar wöör maal eens en Fischer un syne Fru, de waanden tosamen in’n Pißputt, dicht an der See…

It came to the Grimms with the help of Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, writers who shared their growing interest in folk tales. On the evidence of these two stories, Runge was at least as gifted with the pen as with the brush. The climax builds with brilliant speed and effect, the gathering storm functioning as a celestial comment on the wife’s growing obsession.

Most translators have rendered Pißputt as ‘pigsty’ or some other such term. I couldn’t find anything better than ‘pisspot’.

One sunny morning a little tailor was sitting cross-legged on his table, as usual, next to the window on the top floor overlooking the street. He was in high spirits, sewing away with all his might, when along the street came an old woman selling jam.

‘Fine jam for sale! Buy my sweet jam!’

The little tailor liked the sound of that, so he called down: ‘Bring it up here, love! Let’s have a look!’

The old woman lugged her basket all the way up three flights of stairs. When she got there the tailor made her unpack every single jar, and examined each one closely, weighing it in his hand, holding it up to the light, sniffing the jam, and so forth. Finally he said, ‘This looks like a good ’un, this jar of strawberry. Weigh me out three ounces of that, my good woman, and if it comes to a quarter of a pound, so much the better.’

‘Don’t you want the whole pot?’

‘Good Lord, no. I can only afford a small amount.’

She weighed it out, grumbling, and went her way.

‘Well, God bless this jam, and may it give health and strength to all who eat it!’ said the tailor, and fetched a loaf of bread and a knife. He cut himself a hearty slice and spread it with jam.

‘That’ll taste good,’ he said, ‘but I’ll finish this jacket before I tuck in.’

He sprang on to the table again and took up the needle, sewing faster and faster. Meanwhile the sweet scent of the jam rose in the air, and floated round the room, and drifted out of the window. A squadron of flies who had been feasting on the corpse of a dog in the street outside caught the scent, and rose at once and flew up to look for it. They came in through the window and settled on the bread.

‘Hey! Who invited you?’ said the little tailor, and flapped his hand to drive them away. But they didn’t understand a word, and besides they were already busy with the jam, and they took no notice.

Finally the tailor lost his temper. ‘All right, you’ve asked for it now!’ he said, and he snatched up a piece of cloth and set about them furiously. When he drew breath and stood back, there were no fewer than seven of them lying dead with their legs in the air.

‘Well, what a hero I am!’ he said. ‘I’d better let the town know about this right away.’

He seized his scissors and quickly cut out a sash of crimson silk, and sewed on it in big letters of gold: ‘SEVEN WITH ONE BLOW!’

He put it on and looked in the mirror.

‘The town?’ he thought. ‘The whole world must know about this!’

And his heart skipped for joy like a lamb’s tail wagging. Before he set off to show the world, he looked around for something to take with him, but he could find only a bowl of cream cheese. He scooped that up and put it in his pocket, and ran downstairs and off through the streets. Outside the town gate he found a bird caught in a bush, and he put that in his pocket too. Then off he marched to see the world.

He was light and agile, so he didn’t tire easily. He followed the road all the way to the top of a mountain, and there he found a giant sitting on a rock taking his ease and admiring the view.

The little tailor marched up to him and said, ‘Good morning, friend! Are you out to see the world? That’s what I’m up to. How about joining forces and going along together?’

The giant looked at the little fellow with deep scorn. ‘You, you pipsqueak! You, you runt! Join forces with an insect like you?’

‘Oh, is that what you think?’ said the tailor, and unbuttoned his coat to show his sash. ‘This’ll show you the kind of man I am.’

The giant carefully spelt it out letter by letter: ‘SEVEN WITH ONE BLOW!’ And then his eyes opened wide.

‘Respect!’ he said. But he felt he still ought to test this fellow, so he went on: ‘You may have killed seven men with one blow, but that’s no great feat, if they were all little mice like you. Let’s see how strong you are. Can you do this?’

And he picked up a stone and squeezed it until his hand was trembling and his face was bright red and the veins were standing out on his head. He squeezed the stone so hard that he even managed to squeeze a few drops of water out of it.