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to keep off the wind, but there is the mouse who sometimes gnaws my body, opens a hole through me and hurts me. I cannot withstand the power of the mouse. Far better for you to make the mouse your son-in-law than me.” The mice were convinced by this reasoning and returned home, and after all, it is said, they married their daughter to one of their own kind.
Although the stories of the stonecutter and the ambitious mice, have evidently a common basis, there are, it will be seen, many important points of dissimilarity, and it is possible that these may be principally due to the Dutch author who may have had the German tale in his mind. This is a point which I am unable now to determine. I should be much obliged to any Japanese scholar who would supply other genuine Japanese varieties of the tale.
The German story in Grimm to which I have alluded is substantially as follows.
The fisherman and his wife.
‘A fisherman once lived contentedly with his wife in a little hut near a lake, and he went every day to throw his line into the water.
One day after angling for a long time without even a bite, the line suddenly sunk to the bottom, and when he pulled it up again there was a large flounder hanging to the end of it.
‘Oh! dear,’ exclaimed the fish, ‘good fisherman let me go, I pray you; I am not a real fish, but a prince in disguise. I shall be of no use to you, for I am not good to eat; put me back into the water, and let me swim away.’
‘Ah,’ said the man ‘you need not make such a disturbance. I would rather let a flounder who can speak swim away, than keep it.’
With these words, he placed the fish back again in the water and it sunk to the bottom leaving a long streak of blood behind it. Then the fisherman rose up and went home to his wife in the hut.
‘Husband,’ said the wife, ‘have you caught anything to-day?’
