The Fish and the Ring

Long ago in Yorkshire, there lived a proud baron with a magic book that could tell the future. One day, he looked in the book to see whom his little son would marry. The book said, “Your son will marry a poor girl, just born in a little cottage by the river.” “My son will never marry a poor girl!” said the baron, stamping his foot.

So the baron rode to the little cottage, where a poor man with five children had just had a new baby daughter. “You have so many children,” he said. “Let me take this one and look after her.” The poor man agreed, but the baron did not keep his word. He put the baby in a cozy basket and set it on the river, so it would float far, far away.

The basket floated gently down the river, until it stopped beside a fisherman’s house. The fisherman and his wife found the baby girl, and they were overjoyed. They loved her as their very own, and she grew up to be a kind and lovely young woman.

Years later, the baron passed by and heard how the girl had been found in a basket. “Take this letter to my brother in Scarborough,” he told her, “and he will give you work.” But the letter said, “Keep this girl far away from my son, forever and ever.”

On the way, the girl stopped to rest at an inn, and she fell asleep. Some travelers there opened the letter and read it, and they felt sorry for her. So they wrote a new letter that said, “Marry this girl to my son at once.” When the baron’s brother read it, he called for the baron’s son, who was staying with him, and the two young people were married that very day.

When the baron heard the news, he was very angry. He took the girl down to the cliffs by the sea, and he pulled a gold ring from his finger. He threw the ring far out into the waves. “Do not come near me or my son again until you can show me that ring,” he said.

So the girl went to work as a cook in a great castle. One day, as she was getting a big fish ready for dinner, something shiny fell out onto the table. It was the baron’s gold ring!

That night, the baron came to dinner at the castle, and he tasted the fish. “Who cooked this delicious fish?” he asked, and the girl came in wearing the ring on her finger. The baron saw the ring, and he knew he could not fight what was meant to be. He said he was sorry, and he welcomed her into his family at last. And the girl and the baron’s son lived happily ever after.