Fairy tale · 声匠改编 · 3:39
The Little Mermaid
A mermaid trades her voice for legs, for a prince who never learns she saved him. Andersen's classic, retold gently for bedtime, with a hopeful ending.
Narrator
The Little Mermaid
Grandmother
The Eldest Sister
The Sea Witch
The Prince
A Daughter of the AirOther languages · 2 languages
About this story
The Little Mermaid is a fairy tale by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, first published in Copenhagen in 1837. This bedtime retelling keeps the grandmother's twelve oysters, the storm, the Sea Witch's bargain and Andersen's own ending, in which the mermaid becomes a daughter of the air. It is gentler in several places: the witch takes her voice in a seashell instead of cutting out her tongue, her steps prickle like pins and needles instead of knives, and there is no dagger scene with her sisters.
What it teaches
Real love wants the other person to be happy, even when it costs you something. The story is bittersweet, but this version ends on hope: kindness, the mermaid's and the listener's, brings her closer to home.
Suits
Ages 5–10
Tips for telling it
- This one is bittersweet. Pause after the wedding and ask how the little mermaid might be feeling.
- Stop at the moment she wants to say "It was me!" and can't, and ask what your child would do without a voice.
- Finish by listening together for a soft breeze at the window, and naming one kind thing to do tomorrow.
Questions people ask
- Does The Little Mermaid have a happy ending?
- Not a wedding-bells one. In Andersen's 1837 story the prince marries another princess, but instead of vanishing as sea foam the mermaid becomes a daughter of the air, who can earn an immortal soul through three hundred years of good deeds.
- Who wrote The Little Mermaid?
- Hans Christian Andersen, who published it in 1837. A bronze statue of the Little Mermaid has sat on a rock in Copenhagen harbour since 1913.
- Why did the Little Mermaid want to become human?
- She fell in love with the prince she saved from the storm, and she also longed for a soul. Her grandmother tells her that mermaids live three hundred years and then become foam, while humans have souls that live on forever.
More Fairy tales
All Fairy tales episodes →The Little Red Hen
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The Princess and the Pea
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