Big Fish

Shortly after this, Snow White and Rose Red went out to get a dish of fish. As they approached the stream they saw something which looked like an enormous grasshopper springing toward the water as if it were going to jump in. They ran forward and recognized the dwarf. "Where are you going to?" asked Rose Red, "You're surely not going to jump into the water?"

"I'm not such a fool," screamed the dwarf, "Don't you see that cursed fish is trying to drag me in?" The little man had been sitting on the bank fishing, when the wind had entangled his beard in the line. When a big fish bit, the feeble little creature had no strength to pull it out, and the fish dragged the dwarf toward him. The girls came up just at the right moment, held him firm, and did all they could to disentangle his beard from the line; but in vain. The beard and line were in a hopeless muddle. Nothing remained but to produce the scissors and cut the beard, by which a small part of it was sacrificed.

When the dwarf saw what they were about he yelled to them, "Do you call that manners, you toad-stools! To disfigure a fellow's face? It wasn't enough that you shortened my beard before, but you must now needs cut off the best bit of it. I can't appear like this before my own people!" Then he fetched a sack of pearls that lay among the rushes, and without saying another word he dragged it away and disappeared behind a stone.