This story comes to us from the Venetian region of Italy.
This story is about true love on a breathless ride through a fantastic world. It’s also a tale about parents and children learning to understand each other - with the help of plenty of underwater magic!
TRANSCRIPT
Once, on the coast of the beautiful Adriatic Sea, there lived a fisherman. He loved his wife and his four children, but he struggled to catch enough fish to feed them.
One day, though, he drew up his nets to find a crab. But not just any crab. This crab was so enormous that, as they say, you would need more than one pair of eyes just to see it.
“What luck!” he cried. “Now I can buy food for my children!"
He shouldered the crab, and carried it to the king's palace.
“Your Highness,” he said to the king, “I've come to ask you if you would be so kind as to buy this crab from me.”
The king replied, "But what would I do with a giant crab? Can't you sell it to someone else?"
Now, the king's daughter was sitting beside him, all attention. For this princess would spend hours by the huge fishpond in the palace garden, studying the movements and activities of the fish.
“Papa,” said the princess, “I would very much like you to buy this crab for me.”
“Wait a minute,” said the King. “Since when are you interested in marine life?”
“Please, Papa,” his daughter said. “We'll put it in the fishpond with the mullets and the goldfish and the pilchards and the mackerel and the -”
“Of course, my child,” her father said, “of course,” and ordered that the fisherman put the great crab into the palace fishpond. He gave the fisherman a pouch of gold coins, and for months afterwards, the fisherman’s children ate beef-liver and onions every day.
II
The princess, meanwhile, spent every day by the fishpond. As she became thoroughly familiar with the crab and his ways, she noticed that every day at noon, for exactly three hours, he simply vanished.
Late one morning, she was watching carefully for the crab to vanish, when she heard a cry from beyond the castle walls, and ran to her balcony.
There was a poor tramp down below, asking for coins. Her kind heart went out to him, and she threw down a purse of money, but the noonday sun was in his eyes, and the purse flew past him, landing in a waterlogged ditch.
The tramp dived into the ditch after the purse, but the water was much deeper than he had expected. Still, he needed that purse! So he swam down, and down, and still he did not reach the bottom.
You see, this ditch led to an underground canal, built to feed water into the king’s fishpond. The tramp, however, took another turn, and emerged somewhere else entirely - a beautiful pool, in the middle of a large underground hall, decorated with gorgeous tapestries, and in the middle, a table bearing crystal glasses and silver plates.
Thinking quickly, the tramp hid behind the tapestries. Just as he did so, at the stroke of noon, the surface of the pool broke once more. The tramp watched with amazement as a giant crab emerged from the pool, with a woman sitting on its back.
The woman tapped the crab with her wand, and the crab shell opened, to reveal a handsome youth. Of course, the tramp said to himself: this woman is a fairy. He shivered in fear, then; in the Adriatic region, fairies were, and are, very powerful and dangerous.
The young man stretched, wincing, and went straight to sit at the table. The fairy tapped her wand again, and before the tramp’s eyes, the silver dishes filled with fine food, and the crystal glasses with good wine.
The youth ate and drank steadily, but the tramp noticed he avoided the daintier dishes, and ate beef-liver and onions like a hungry working man. Once he was finished, he trudged back into the crab shell. The fairy tapped her wand, closing the shell, and leaped on the crab’s back. They sank into the pool, and vanished once more.
The tramp ran out from behind the tapestries, dove into the water, and swam. He thought he was escaping back outside, but found himself, instead, swimming up through fish and seaweed.
Sitting next to her fishpond, the king's daughter saw a head bob out of the water.
“Excuse me,” she said, and then looked closer. “Wait - I’m sorry, but did I throw a purse of money to you about an hour ago?”
"Princess," said the tramp, “you’re not going to believe this.”
III
But he told her the whole story anyway.
And the next day, the two of them swam down through the fishpond to where the canal led to the underground hall, and hid behind the tapestries. Exactly at midday, the crab emerged again, the fairy in tow. She tapped her wand, and the crab shell opened.
Now, the princess had been fascinated by the crab; but what happened now was something else again. The tramp saw her eyes widen, and her breathing quicken. If I’m not mistaken, the tramp said to himself, this young lady’s just fallen in love at first sight.
Then, to his horror, he saw the princess steal out from behind the tapestries! The tramp almost shouted, but instead bit his lip as he watched the princess climb inside the empty crab shell!
When the young man got back inside the shell, he had already taken hold of the crab’s claws - which were like oars - when he noticed there was a young woman hiding inside.
“I should tell you,” he whispered. “You’re risking both our lives right now.”
“But I want to free you from this spell!" whispered the king's daughter.
“That’s not happening.” the young man, said.
”Why not, though?”
“Because," said the young man, “I can’t ask you to die for me.”
"Yes," said the princess, “yes, you can.”
A moment went by in silence. Then the young man put a finger to his lips, and worked the crab’s oars.
As he carried the fairy on her crab-craft through the underground waterways to the open sea, he and the princess stayed quiet, and the fairy never suspect that she rode on a crab which contained a king’s daughter.
On the way back from the fairy’s house to the fishpond, though, they had a chance to talk. The young man was a prince, and had indeed been enchanted.
“But you know how to break the spell?” said the princess.
“Do you sing?” asked the prince.
“I can learn,” the princess said.
“Well,” said the prince, “music enthrals the fairy, but so few people play music by the seashore nowadays. What we need is for her to entreat you “play on, play on!” Because when she does, this is what you must do…”
IV
The tramp had swum back by himself to the fishpond, but the princess was not there.
He sat, shivering, thinking how much trouble he would be in if she was lost.
But not long after, the princess swam up through the fishpond, thanked him, and gave him a handsome reward. Then she went to her father and told him she wanted to study music and singing.
“Wait a minute,” said the king, “are you interested in music now?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Not fish anymore?”
“No, Papa, not fish anymore.”
Thank God, said the king, to himself, and sent for the finest teachers to give his daughter music lessons.
Plenty of people have studied hard, but the princess studied harder. It was only a few months later that she came to her father and said “Papa, I’m going to play my violin.”
“Alright,” said the king, and braced himself.
“No, not here,” said the princess, “I’m going to play on a rock by the sea."
Well, thought the king, that might be for the best. He called for eight maids and explained that they should accompany his daughter to the beach.
He also had them all followed by a few armed soldiers, just to be safe.
Seated on a rock, surrounded by maids in white, the king's daughter played her violin. Her father would have been proud; she played very well indeed. And, soon, a strange and beautiful woman emerged from the waves.
“How beautifully you play!” she said. “It delights me so much to hear you! Play on, play on!”
“I would love to,” said the princess, “but first, make me a present.”
“Anything,” the fairy said.
“I love flowers most of all,” said the princess, “and that rose in your hair is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”
“I tell you what,” said the fairy. “If you can fetch it, from where I throw it, it will be yours.”
"I will fetch it," the princess assured the fairy and started to play and sing.
When the song was over, the fairy clapped again. "Please,” said the princess, “give me the rose, as you promised.”
“Here you are,” said the fairy, and threw it out to seal so far that it could not be seen from the shore.
The princess dove into the sea, and swam, ignoring the screams of the maids on the shore, toward the flower floating on the waves.
But the princess swam on and on, her dress dragging at her, and her breath running out. Just as she was beginning to doubt she would ever reach it, a wave swept the rose right into her hand.
She was so grateful, she almost wept. But in the next moment, she looked for the shore, but couldn’t see it.
She cried out in despair, as another wave took her breath away, and she felt herself sink beneath the salt water…
V
...and then, she took a breath. She was floating on the surface of the ocean. No, wait - she was being carried along.
You’ve done it, she heard, like a whisper beneath the waves. You’ve saved my life, and I will return for you. But please, say nothing of this to anyone. Do you promise?
“Yes,” said the princess, with what little breath she had. The sun was bright in her eyes, but she could tell that she was being carried back to the shore. She closed her eyes again. Just for a little while, she told herself.
“PRINCESS!”
She woke with a start and shivered. She was lying on the beach, her clothes soaking and freezing, and the maids and soldiers surrounded her, their faces sick with worry.
“Let’s just go home,” she told them. And once they’d carried her back, she simply told her father what a wonderful time she’d had.
”I don’t understand,” said the king. “Are you interested in swimming now?”
“I think still music, Papa,” the princess told him. “But thank you for asking.”
The very next afternoon, a thunder of drums brought a crowd to the front of the palace. For a prince had arrived, with a grand retinue.
The prince, with great politeness, requested the hand of the king’s daughter.
The king was somewhat taken aback, for he had been in the dark about everything. When the prince had told the court of his imprisonment and liberation, the king turned to his daughter, whose eyes brimmed with happy tears.
“So let me get this right - now you’re interested in marriage?”
“Yes, Papa,” said his daughter, patiently. “Specifically to this handsome prince here, whom I saved from an evil fairy.”
“Well,” said the king, “of all your interests, my daughter, this new one makes me the happiest."
“You encouraged me in all my interests Papa,” whispered the princess. “And it’s through them that I’ve found my happiness!”
Story ends
