Read the fairy tale Lu loves
The Little Mermaid
A mermaid who longs for the world above the waves, and a love so strong she is willing to trade her voice — and much more — for the chance to feel it.
Far out in the deep sea, where the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, there lived a Sea King and his six daughters. The youngest was the loveliest of them all, with skin as clear as a rose petal and eyes as blue as the deepest lake — but like all mermaids, she had no legs, only a fish’s tail, gleaming below the waist.
She loved to hear her grandmother’s stories about the world above the waves — of ships, of forests, of towns where humans lived. Each of the King’s daughters was allowed to rise to the surface once she turned fifteen, and the little mermaid counted the years until it would be her turn.
The world above the waves
When her fifteenth birthday finally came, she rose from the water and saw, for the first time, a ship lit with lanterns, full of music and laughter — and on its deck, a young Prince, celebrating his birthday. She watched him, entranced, until a storm broke the sky open and wrecked the ship entirely. She swam through the wreckage and pulled the Prince, unconscious, to shore, staying with him on the sand until he woke — though by then, she had already hidden herself among the rocks, and he never saw her face.
A voice for a pair of legs
The little mermaid could not stop thinking of him. She swam to the Sea Witch, deep in a cold and lonely part of the ocean, and asked for legs so she might walk on land and find him again. The Witch agreed — but the price was her voice, cut from her tongue, and a warning: if the Prince did not come to love her and marry her, she would never return to the sea, and would instead turn to sea foam at the first light after his wedding to someone else.
The little mermaid accepted anyway. She drank the potion, and where her tail had been, two human legs appeared — though every step she took felt like walking on knives, a pain she bore without ever making a sound.
Without a voice
The Prince found her on the shore and took her in, charmed by her grace even without her voice. He grew fond of her — as a companion, a quiet presence he loved to have near him — but his heart belonged, he believed, to the girl he thought had saved him from the shipwreck: a princess from a neighboring kingdom, who he soon determined to marry.
On the night before the wedding, the little mermaid’s sisters rose from the sea, their long hair cut short and traded to the Sea Witch for one last chance to save her: a knife, and a way back. If she used it on the Prince before sunrise, her tail would return, and she would live out her days among her family beneath the waves.
She stood over him as he slept beside his new bride, the knife trembling in her hand — and could not do it. She loved him too much to take his happiness, even to save her own life. She let the knife fall into the sea, and as the first light of morning touched the water, she felt herself dissolving into foam.
But the story does not end there in sorrow alone: instead of vanishing entirely, she rose into the air as a spirit of the wind, told that through centuries of quiet good deeds, she might yet earn an eternal soul of her own — a gentler ending than her sacrifice alone would suggest, and one Andersen added by his own hand, wanting kindness, in the end, to be rewarded.
South Jutland Lullaby
Play this softly while you read The Little Mermaid aloud — a traditional handplayed lullaby from South Jutland, Denmark.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world — each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.