I've talked before about my childhood memories of Hans Christian Andersen and The Little Mermaid: On the very day I had been reading the story, I heard a radio item about the statue in Copenhagen. As a small child, I found that coincidence so extraordinarily unlikely -- so absolutely incredible -- that I couldn't even find the words to tell my parents about it.


Songkhla, Thailand, 2013. Which is also the source of the mermaid photo at the top of the post quoted above



Much later, in my twenties, I went with two friends to Andersen's childhood home in Odense. I'm pretty sure we went inside (although that holiday was famous for encounters with places that turned out to be closed, so my memory might be incorrect there).


And here he is in Bratislava earlier this year...

Anyway, Audible recently produced an adaptation of The Little Mermaid. And what better time to listen, I decided, than during our recent ferry trip across the Irish Sea, as we glided in stately fashion over who knows how many suitable sites for Sea Kings' palaces?

Audible's version, which came out just this year, was creatively adapted by Dina Gregory, and nicely performed by Leigh-Anne Pinnock.

I enjoyed it. The music was atmospheric. The sound-effects were well judged.

And I found the reworking of the story really interesting. As the narrator of the story points out, fairy tales evolve; they change, change some more, change back. And the changes reflect not the era that is being recounted but the era that is doing the telling.

The original story, written in 1836, is quite dark. The Little Mermaid falls in love with a handsome human prince. To access his world, she has to make numerous sacrifices. And at the end of the day, he chooses someone else... The Little Mermaid has therefore gambled and lost, although she doesn't end up reduced to "foam of the sea", as predicted, but rather becomes a "daughter of the air", one of the floating creatures who seek to attain immortality by doing good.

There have been, though, versions that give the story a happy ending... Gregory was therefore very keen to return to the bleakness of the original story, while bringing it up to date in various ways. Her goal is to tell a story that reflects the messiness of life, but offers children a chance to explore and deal with that messiness through the controlled world of fairy tale.


The naga in Songkhla. Some scholars have identified fascinating connections between nagas and mermaids

In order to confront the listener, while at the same time cushioning the blow, as it were, Gregory makes the narrator into a kind of spiritual guide. So, our story-teller is clearly familiar with her listeners' world of Bluetooth, phone videos, earbuds, rollercoasters, and snowglobes, and she is very aware of the social-media-induced temptation for people to spend more time in someone else's reality than in their own (a situation mirrored by the Little Mermaid's obsession with human life on earth -- to the extent that she gives up her own uniquely beautiful voice in order to experience it).

Our narrator, however, is also a handholder. And maybe she's just a tad too nannyish...

"What I am about to tell you might not sound very nice..." (This prefaces her description of the way the Little Mermaid's sisters attempt to lure sailors into the watery depths.) She goes on: "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you this. They didn't know any better, these sea-born sisters."

There are lots more warnings and morals:

"It may sound harsh, but..."
"I don't want to scare you, but..."
"Grim it is, I should warn you..."
"You may find this next bit upsetting..."

But the narrator's heart is in the right place. She desperately wants her listeners to "learn from the mermaid's rash decision" (to trade her fishtail, her tongue, her family life, and potentially her actual life, in exchange for feet that will always be painful, no voice with which to speak, no certainty of happiness, and no way back that doesn't involve some further witch's horror). "I bet I know," she says, "what some of you are thinking. Don't do it; don't risk all this for someone who doesn't even know you exist."


Mermaid in Cangas, Galicia, Spain, 2020

True to the original, when the Little Mermaid is displaced in the prince's affections by the woman he thought had rescued him from drowning (of course the one who really did that was our now-mute heroine), this is not just a disappointment but a virtual death sentence. Into the breach come the sisters: Here's the witch's knife, bought with our sacrifice; kill the prince, and you'll be able to return to us; otherwise, you'll die yourself...

Kill, in other words, or allow yourself to melt away... The Little Mermaid chooses to vanish.

Both the original and the adaptation depict her transformation into a daughter of the air.

Andersen's version, however, concludes with one such daughter delivering a moralistic bit of emotional blackmail: "Unseen we can enter the houses of men, where there are children, and for every day on which we find a good child, who is the joy of his parents and deserves their love, our time of probation is shortened. The child does not know, when we fly through the room, that we smile with joy at his good conduct, for we can count one year less of our three hundred years. But when we see a naughty or a wicked child, we shed tears of sorrow, and for every tear a day is added to our time of trial!"

Gregory's version is also didactic, but in a much more empowering way. If you carry on sharing your story, we're told, you will never die. And stories are important because they awaken mortals to truths they otherwise might not see.

We then learn (sorry, spoiler...) that the narrator was herself the Little Mermaid (now a daughter of the air). And this is where she rams home her own moral lessons: "Would I do it again? No, I'm much wiser now... When I sacrificed my voice, I gave up too much, but do I regret it? No, because my journey brought me here. My voice is now reclaimed. I get to encourage you to reach for the unknown, to warn you, 'Don't sacrifice too much!', to say, 'You are NOT invisible!'... Take courage from my tale of transformation, for we are all like stories, not fixed but changing, not finite but whispering through time, and for as long as our stories endure, we get to live on, and sing on."

Which is perhaps a little corny -- but spot on for all that.

I think this version, like the original, lets the prince off way too lightly... I mean, for goodness' sake, get to the bottom of who it was that saved your life... Can that be so hard? And what are you playing at, taking this newly arrived mute young woman to your heart ("my foundling..."), and dressing her up as your page, and taking her gadding around with you, and telling her you love her -- and then rejecting her? What kind of twisted thing is that?

So, without a doubt, he's insufficiently called to account. But otherwise, this is a thoughtful and intelligent adaptation that offers a whole lot more than the soppy, happy-ever-after versions.


Mermaid in Kanowit, Sarawak, Malaysia, 2022