The Golden Fish

Then they went to bed, but Dame Ilsabill could not sleep all night for thinking what she should be next. At last, as she was dropping asleep, morning broke, and the sun rose. "Ha!" Thought she, as she woke up and looked at it through the window. "After all I cannot prevent the sun rising." At this thought she was very angry, and wakened her husband, and said, "Husband, go to the fish and tell him I must be lord of the sun and moon."

The fisherman was half asleep, but the thought frightened him so much that he started and fell out of bed. "Alas, wife! Cannot you be easy with being pope?"

"No," said she, "I am very uneasy as long as the sun and moon rise without my permission. Go to the fish at once!"

Then the man went shivering with fear, and as he was going down to the shore a dreadful storm arose, so that the trees and the very rocks shook. All the heavens became black with stormy clouds, and the lightning played, and the thunders rolled. You might have seen in the sea great black waves, swelling up like mountains with crowns of white foam upon their heads. The fisherman crept towards the sea, and cried out, as well as he could,

"O man of the sea!Hearken to me!My wife IlsabillWill have her own will,And hath sent me to beg a gift of thee!"

"What does she want now?" Said the fish. "Ah!" Said he. "She wants to be lord of the sun and moon."

"Go home," said the fish, "to your pigsty again."

And there they live to this very day.