Fairy Tale Friday: The Little Mermaid

Most of us are familiar with the Disney-ized version of The Little Mermaid in which Ariel and Eric get married and sail off to live happily ever after. Not so fast. In the original version of the story, that’s not exactly how it goes.

In the original, the Little Mermaid was the youngest of five sisters, daughters of the Sea King. They all have beautiful singing voices—which they use to attract sailors onto the rocks. The boats crash, the sailors drown, and the mermaids get all the loot.

One time, the Little Mermaid sees a  handsome prince in one of the boats—and falls head over heels in love. But a big storm comes up and wrecks the boat. The Little Mermaid saves the prince from drowning, bringing him back to land; but she’s too afraid to let him see her when she wakes up. So she hides in the sea and watches to see if he’ll live. Before long, another beautiful young girl comes by from a nearby village, and that’s who he sees when he opens his eyes. He falls instantly in love, but the girl is in some kind of religious order and has to go back.

The Little Mermaid is miserable when she goes back home to her father’s palace. She talks to her grandmother about the humans, and the grandmother explains that, while mermaids become sea foam when they die, humans get an immortal soul—and get to live among the stars after death. She tells the Little Mermaid that she can have a soul only if a man “were to love you so much that you were more to him than his father or mother; and the priest place his right hand in yours, and he promised to be true to you here and hereafter.”

That can never happen, the grandmother goes on to say—because the Little Mermaid has an ugly fish’s tail. No prince could ever love a woman without legs.

Desperate, the Little Mermaid goes to the Sea Witch and begs her to give her legs instead of a tail. The Sea Witch agrees, but in payment she demands the mermaid’s beautiful voice. Unlike in the movie, she cuts off her tongue to complete the spell.

Once the Mermaid is topside, she has legs and feet—no clothes, though—and every step she takes feels like knives driving into her feet. She bears it “as lightly as a soap bubble” to get the chance to win her prince. He gives her a page’s outfit, lets her sleep on a cushion at the foot of his bed, and calls her “my dumb child.” Nice.

It turns out the religious girl who turned up on the beach that time was a princess—and he winds up marrying her. The Little Mermaid knows she is doomed to die (remember, she can only have a human soul if she gets a human man to love her). But her sisters come up to her, having sacrificed their hair to the Sea Witch. They give her a knife, and tell her that if she kills the prince, she’ll be turned back into a mermaid and live.

Of course she doesn’t do that—deciding to die instead. Instead of turning into sea foam, she finds herself transformed into a fairy or a “daughter of the air”—depending on the version you read. Her immortal fate? To flit around the world, driving out pestilence and bringing good breezes to humans—and in another 300 years, maybe, if she’s good, she can earn a soul.

The moral of the story? Quit mooning over that human guy and settle.  Find yourself a nice merman you can introduce to your mer-dad and all your mer-sisters. True, he might not be everything you ever wanted. But he'll be nice to you, won't call you "my little dumb friend," and won't make you sleep at the foot of his bed. And it’s better than losing your tongue and becoming air.