The Fisher-Girl and the Crab is an Indian fairy tale collected by Verrier Elwin in Folk-Tales of Mahakoshal;[1] it comes from the Kurukh, a people living in Chitrakoot, Bastar State.[2]
A childless Kurukh couple found a gourd by their rice field and started to eat it, but it begged them to cut it open gently. Inside the gourd was a crab, whom the couple decided to adopt. The woman tied a basket to her belly, pretended to be pregnant, and then claimed to have given birth to the crab.
In time, the couple married him off, but his wife did not like being married to a crab. She sneaked off while her in-laws were asleep, but the crab sneaked ahead of her. He asked a banyan tree whose it was; it said it was his, and he ordered it to fall down. He then traded his crab shape for a human shape from within the tree. The girl unknowingly met him at a dance and gifted him her ornaments. He arrived before her in his crab shape again and returned her ornaments, but she was frightened.
She attempted to sneak out again but stayed behind to watch the crab. After he had put on his human shape, she asked the banyan tree whose it was; it said it was hers; she ordered it to fall down and burn the crab shape. When her husband could not find her at the dance, he came back, and she jumped out, caught him, and took him home.
Folklorists Stith Thompson and Warren Roberts established an index for South Asian folktales based on the international Aarne-Thompson Index. In their joint work, titled Types of Indic Oral Tales, they classified the tale as type 441, "Hans My Hedgehog", a miscellaneous type that, while still belonging to the cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom and dealing with the marriage between a human maiden and an enchanted animal, lacks the quest for the vanished or missing husband.[3]
Elwin noted that the crab is considered monogamous and an example of domestic fidelity.[2]
The tale contains the motif B647.1.1., "Marriage to person in crab form".[4]
Professor Stuart Blackburn locates variants with the crab husband among tribal groups from India (namely, the Gondi, the Kuruk, and Santal), as well as from Burma (Shan), andnorthern Laos (Mien).[5]
Elwin collected a tale from the Muria people from Markabera with the title The Crab-Prince. In this tale, a Muria couple live alone and plant rice near the bank of a river, when a crab called Kakramal Kuar comes out of the river to eat their rice. The woman asks her husband to prepare a jitka trap for the crab. The Muria man catches the crab and is poised to kill it with an axe, when the crab asks the man to take it home, to which he agrees. Eight days later, the local Rajá is summoning all the young people, men and women, to work in harvesting the fields. The crab decides to join them despite the Muria woman's objections. However, the crab is expelled by other workers and finds another spot in the Raja's daughter's fields, where he takes off the shell and becomes a "beautiful twelve-year-old boy". Meanwhile, Raja's daughter brings some gruel to feed the harvesters and learns of the crab working on her fields. She goes there and sees the boy, who quickly hides back into his crustacean shell. The princess places his food between his claws and joins the others. Later that same day, the crab joins the remaining workers for a meal with pork and liquor. Sometime later, the princess sulks and asks her father for her to be married as soon as possible. The Rajah summons princes from all locations for a suitor selection, but the princess chooses none. When the crab comes to the assemblage, the princess places a garland on him and marries him. One night, the crab boy takes off the shell and goes to the stables to mount on his father-in-law's horses and ride them to exhaustion. The horses' condition begins to arouse suspicions in the monarch, who decides to investigate: he spies on his son-in-law coming out of his shell and riding the horses. The Raja then tells his daughter to burn the crab shell the next time he takes it off. The princess does it and the boy remains human for good, although at first, he does not want to be seen without his shell.[6]
Author Shovona Devi published a Bengali tale titled The Crab Prince. In this tale, a poor widow earns her living by begging for alms. One day, she reaches an empty hut in the forest where a vermilion-coloured crab lives. The crab treats the widow as his mother and promises to bring her food. The next day, the crab goes to the food shops and crams the food in his ear to bring to the widow. Next time, he brings her money for her to build a better house for her. The third time, the widow cries that if the crab was human, he could bring her a daughter-in-law. The crab promises to marry none other than the prince's daughter and decides to go to the castle. On the journey, he is joined by a cat, a tiger, bamboo, and a river, which each enters the crab's ear. The crab goes to the prince's palace and demands to be married to his daughter. The prince thinks it is an affront and tries to kill the crab many times, but each time, his friends (the cat, the tiger, the bamboo, and the river) stop the prince's attack. The prince surrenders and allows his daughter to marry the crab. Sometime later, the prince visits his daughter in the widow's new house and learns that his son-in-law becomes human by night and remains a crab by day. The prince then advises his daughter to get rid of the crab shell. The next time the now-human crab is asleep, the princess pounds his shell to dust and he stays human permanently.[7]