The fish and the ring

There was once a very rich and clever baron who lived in the North Riding. He was extremely well versed in those things which delve into the mysteries of life and the fortunes of men. He was famous for casting horoscopes and whenever there was a ball held at his castle, the guests delighted to see him perform. He studied a great deal and was not often wrong.

"What is in the stars is your fate," He would say. "You may as well meet it head on, for no one can change fate." He made this announcement each time partly to impress the gathering but also because he really did believe it.

One day, his young son put down his playthings and went to his father.

"What shall I be when I grow up?" he asked. The baron was very please and proud that his son should ask. He swept up the little boy and carried him to an armchair. Then he sat down and placed his son on his knee. A great book lay upon the table by the chair, and the baron opened it near the middle. He pointed out various signs and symbols and went on to tell the boy some of the things which would come to pass over the years. Suddenly, the baron put the boy down from his knee and told him to play outside. A shadow passed over his face and he looked again at the open page.

Among the scribblings in the fortune teller the baron had read that one day his son would marry a poor ragged girl who had just been born just a few days earlier in a dirty house near the great Minster in the city of York. The baron pulled his wits about him and ordered a horse to be saddled and brought to the door. As soon as it was ready, he mounted it and rode off to York at the full gallop. A while later, he pulled up the lathered horse in front of the western bar. There on the front step of an old house was a man singing to a crying infant. The man looked very sad.

"What's the matter, my good man?" asked the baron. The man doffed his woollen cap and, lowering his eyes, said, "If it please you sir, my wife and I have five children already, and now this little lass has come along. I couldn't feed the others without going hungry myself, and now I don't know what I'll do." He wept softly and held the new baby closer. The baron was pleased when he heard these words. He raised an eyebrow and smiled at the poor man.

"I may be able to help," he said. "There is a goodly couple at my estate who are themselves childless and I have long been on the lookout for a child they could adopt. If you were to give me this girl, I'm sure they would be very happy to have her and give her a much better life than you could." The poor man was delighted at the prospect and, after speaking with his wife, they kissed the little lass goodbye and handed her over to the baron.

The baron turned his horse and rode off again away from the city. When he was well out of sight, he checked to make sure no one was watching him, then he flung the poor little girl into the river Ouse.

"That's an end to that," he said without feeling, and he trotted off back to his own castle. Now, as luck would have it, the baby was well swaddled and the air trapped in her shawl was enough to keep her afloat for some time. Long enough for her to be spotted by a fisherman who sat on the riverbank mending his nets. He saw the bundle floating slowly past in the current and managed to hook one end of it with a bilge pole that stood by his front door. When he got the baby ashore he was very angry.

"What kind of monster would do such a thing to a helpless child!" he said aloud. Then he hurried indoors to his wife and she dried off the lass and wrapped her warmly in a blanket. From that day, they raised her as their own daughter.

Now it happened many years later that the baron was out hunting deer in the woods near the Ouse. He stopped at the fisherman's hut to beg a drink of water, which the girl -- grown up and very beautiful -- fetched out to him. The rest of the men in the hunting party teased the girls and embarrassed her by saying how pretty she was, but the baron of course did not know who she was. One of the men stepped forward.

"Let's have her horoscope then! Let's see who shall be lucky enough to marry this pretty young thing!" The baron said that he had no doubt she would end up with a fisherman, but nevertheless he asked her on which day she had been born.

"I don't know sir," she replied. "I was picked out of the river one day by my father some fifteen years ago." At once the baron knew who she was and his face went ghostly white. He made up a horoscope to tell the other men, then he went to the hut. A few minutes later he returned and said:

"Here girl. Take this letter to my brother in Scarborough and it will make your fortune." Then he mounted his horse and the party rode off. The girl was very excited to know that her fortune was to be made simply by delivering the letter and she told her parents about it and a little time later set off to walk to Scarborough.

Now it was quite late in the day and the girl found she had been to eager to set off as the sun began to set before she was half way there. She was scared to continue in the dark so she stopped at an inn and sought a room for the night. Just as she was falling asleep, there was a great commotion downstairs and the girl heard a pistol shot. Then a loud, coarse voice called out for everyone to be downstairs in the next two minutes. They were being robbed! Highwaymen had forced their way into the inn and were stealing everything they could lay their hands on. They searched the girl but found nothing except the letter, which the leader opened without delay. To his surprise, this is what he read:

Brother: Take this girl and put her to death at once.

Well, the robber thought this a great shame, and so he altered the letter to read:

Brother: Take this girl and marry her to my son at once.

So, of course, when the girl finally arrived in Scarborough the baron's brother has the two young people married without delay, and very happy they both were! As soon as the baron found out, however, he made his way to the town and took the girl for a walk along the cliffs. His intention was to push her over, but she guessed it and begged him not to kill her.

"I don't know what I have done to make you hate me so, sir, but if you spare my life I will do anything you ask." So the baron told her that she must go away and never try to see his son again, which she promised. Then to bind her oath, he took a gold ring from his finger and cast it as far as he could off the cliff into the cold sea.

"You may return when you have recovered that ring!" he said. The he turned his back and walked to his brother's castle without a backwards glance. The young girl was in tears, for by this time she had fallen deeply in love with the baron's son. She walked slowly away from the cliff, and from Scarborough.

After a while she found a job in the kitchen of another castle near Hartlepool. There she became a wonderful cook, and everyone who ate her food said it was the best they had ever tasted. A year and a day after she last saw them, she heard the baron and his son were to visit the castle where she worked, and she decided to make them the best meal she had ever created. She took up a sharp knife and ran it through the enormous cod that lay on the scullery table and, as she cleaned it out she was both surprised and delighted to find the very ring that the baron had thrown from the cliff! She hid it in her pocket and proceeded to cook the best fish dish any had ever eaten. It was the custom then to call out the cook whenever the dish was exceptionally good. And the fish had been so wonderful that the guests were on their feet and applauding. But when the baron and his company saw the girl, they were speechless. The baron glared and was about to remind her of her promise, when she stepped up to the table and dropped the ring right before him.

"I believe this belongs to you, sir," she said. The baron then realized that what he had said all those years was true: he could not change fate. He stood up and took her hand.

"This is my son's true wife," he said. "And if she will consent to come home with us, I will try my best to make up for all my wrong doing." And he baron kept his word. The baron's son took his young wife back to the castle in the North Riding, and they lived a long and happy life together.