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