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

One night, when the moon was full in the sky and the sheep were safely gathered in, the huntsman took a flute from his pocket and played a sad and beautiful little tune. When he put the flute down, he saw that the shepherdess was weeping.

‘Why are you crying?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the moon was full just like this when I played that same tune on a flute, and the head of my darling rose out of the water…’

He looked at her, and it was as if a veil had fallen from his eyes, for he recognized his dear wife. And when she looked at his face in the moonlight, she knew him as well. They fell into each other’s arms and kissed and hugged and kissed again, and no one need ask whether they were happy; indeed, they lived in bliss for the rest of their lives.

Tale type:ATU 316, ‘The Nix of the Mill-Pond’

Source:a story by Moritz Haupt, published in Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum ( Magazine of German Antiquity ), vol. 2 (1842)

Nixies, selkies, mermaids, rusalki , whatever they’re called they’re trouble. This one is no exception to the rule, but she’s beaten in the end: the faithful wife outloves her. The depiction of the mutual discovery of husband and wife at the end is very touching, and the pattern of lunar imagery set up earlier requires that the discovery be made at the full moon, which thus makes artistic as well as ocular sense. On any other night they wouldn’t have been able to see each other so clearly.

I’d like to know the tune that was played on the flute. ‘Song to the Moon’, from his opera Rusalka of 1901, would do very well.

Which ‘puts all Heaven in a Rage’ (William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’, 1803)

‘The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it’ — Tuscan proverb quoted by Italo Calvino in his introduction to Italian Folktales (London: Penguin Books, 1982).