The Three Children of Fortune

"The Three Children of Fortune"
Albert Weisgerber

The Tale:

An old father wishing to provide for his three sons but lacking the money to do so gives each of them an object of small worth. The eldest son receives a rooster, the second a scythe and the youngest a cat (but no, it does not wear boots). He then tells the three men that it is up to them to make their fortune with these and to “seek out for a land where what you have is as yet unknown, and your fortune is made.”

After the death of the father, the sons do as they are told. Each have no luck making their fortune on the mainland, since rooster, scythes and cats are hardly rare. But each after a while of searching finds an island where the people have never seen a rooster/scythe/cat before. On the first island, the people do not even know how to tell the time, and the brother does a wonderful job in pointing out how wonderfully accurate roosters are and how useful they are, for they know the time even at night when the sun is down, and crow accordingly. After testing the rooster for a whole night, the islanders immediately agree to buy it. The brother returns home with a donkey laden with all the gold it can carry.

The second brother also manages to find an island where he can impress the locals with how quickly his scythe can mow a field of corn. The locals buy the scythe with the payment of a horse laden with all the gold it can carry.

The youngest brother seems to have the most difficult job. Not only are cats not rare, there are too many of them on the mainland, and kittens are being drowned because of their numbers. At last he too finds an island where no one had heard of cats and there was a serious mice infestation problem. The islanders were plagued by these mice and could hardly get a moments rest thanks to them. The king himself begs the brother to sell him the cat after he sees how well she deals with the mice. The brother returns home with a mule laden with gold and jewels, and was thus the most successful of his brothers.

But the tale does not end here as we might suppose. The cat, after devouring many mice, becomes thirsty and starts to mew. The islanders are scared of this sound and think the cat means them harm. They ask her politely to leave, but she continues to mew for water, and they take that as a “no”. So they decide to get rid of her, because “we would far more willingly put up with the mice (since we are used to that evil), than get rid of them at risk of our lives”. Guns fire at the palace from all sides and the cat runs away. The islanders continue to fire at the palace until it burns to the ground in a dramatic and pretty unexpected ending.

Discussion points:

*This is a tale about success. It proves three times that with the right brains and skills, in the right situation, you can turn even the simplest things into a load of gold. It doesn't matter what you start with. If you try hard enough, if you look far enough, if you are smart enough, you can be successful. It's a hopeful message if nothing else. Of course, there is also quite a lot of luck involved, as hinted in the tale's name. The brothers might have wandered their whole life and not found the specific island where their gift was unknown.

*Stereotypically in fairy tales, when there are three bothers, the youngest is always more worthy than the first two. They fail but he succeeds. Here it is different. All brothers succeed, albeit at a different level. The comparison here is not between the brothers themselves, but between the different situations they take advantage of. The first islanders had managed fine enough without time. Knowing the time was a luxury they were glad to have but didn't need. Thus their payment is smallest. On the second island, the islanders were struggling to harvest without the scythe. They managed to survive without it, but desperately needed it. On the third island, the mice were plaguing them greatly. Life was made harder by the mice,and the cat seemed to be a gift from heaven which could rid them of their biggest nuisance that disrupted their lives. Because of this, they were willing to give the third brother the largest some of money, and the king himself granted it to him.

*The ending is the strange part of the tale. It could have easily ended with the third brother's return. The lesson of how to reach success was taught. Now comes a different lesson, a more serious one which ends with a burning palace (I really was not expecting that). If the tale seems to show the good side of new and special things, by basically saying that an object's novelty is what makes it valuable, now it comes with a warning that counteracts that. New things aren't always as special as they seem and can be more trouble than they are worth. On one hand, the cat's uniqueness in the islanders' eyes is what made the brother his fortune. On the other, this uniqueness meant that the islanders were unfamiliar with the cat, and so they didn't understand that the mew sound it makes is not fatal or dangerous. They didn't understand the cat, and that caused them to fear it and to try to destroy it, in the end destroying themselves.

What did you find interesting in the tale?

(Original version for anyone who is interested: The Three Children of Fortune. Also, I apologize for the lack of images this post.  I am short on time, and I can't seem to find any images for this tale.)