The Fisherman and His Wife

The Fisherman and His Wife is a fairy tale from collection of tales and stories written by German brothers, academics, linguists, and cultural researchers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm.


The story goes about poor fisherman who lived with his wife Ilsebil in a shack near the sea. One day fisherman caught a golden flounder which says it was an enchanted prince. He decided to release the fish. But when the fisherman’s wife heard the story she demanded her husband to go back and ask for a nice house for her…


Theme of this story was used in The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish in a poem written by  by Aleksandr Pushkin in 1835. Virginia Woolf's character Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse read a version of the story to her son, James. The novel The Flounder written by Günter Grass in 1977 is loosely based on the fairy tale as is Emanuele Luzzati's version, Punch and the Magic Fish.