The Three Sons of Fortune

Summary

The Three Sons of Fortune does sound an awfully lot like a rock band from the eighties, but it’s not, well, not that I know of. This tale is about three sons. No one ever has more or less than three sons in these stories. If you have boys, you just better go ahead and have three, because, apparently, that is the number of boys to have.

Once upon a time there was a man who had three sons and he wanted to leave each of them a little something when he died. He didn’t have a lot of money, but did have three things to give his sons. He gave the oldest a rooster(the text reads “cock” so if you want to read the original text and use that word instead, the story can take on some interesting meanings). The father gave the middle son a scythe. Lastly, he gave the youngest son a cat. His advice to the sons were that they would be rich with these three items, they would just have to travel to a place where no one had heard of these items.

The first son went out into the world. He searched all over for a place that had never heard of a rooster. He couldn’t find anywhere. He looked and looked, but everywhere he turned there were roosters. He was about ready to give up when he came to an island. Nobody there knew what a rooster was. They had no way to mark the passage of time on their island. They were amazed at the rooster’s “ruby-red crown and the spurs it wore like a knight,” that is text directly from the story. Just imagine how that would sound if you were using the other word. They were so amazed that this bird crowed when it was morning and in the evening. They asked the oldest brother how much money he wanted. He told them he wanted enough gold to laden a donkey. They paid him and he left.

When he went home, the younger brothers were amazed at how much money he had made. The middle brother set out to make his wealth with the scythe. It was hard-going though. Everywhere he went, people knew what scythes were. Finally, he came to an island that had never heard of a scythe. They used cannons to harvest their corn. They would shoot the cannon into the field and hope that it knocked down corn stalks. Sometimes, the cannon ball flew over all the corn stalks. Sometimes, the cannon ball hit ears of corn and destroyed them.

The middle brother waltzed right in like he owned the place and mowed down a bunch of corn in like ten hours flat like a boss with his grim-reaper scythe. Everyone was amazed at this invention that allowed him to mow so much so fast. They asked him how much money he wanted and he told them as much gold as a horse could carry. They paid up and he left.

The youngest brother had seen what good fortune had befallen the two older brothers and likewise wanted to make his fortune with his cat. He traveled and traveled. Everyone knew what a cat was. People had so many cats that they often drowned newborn kittens…JERKS! He traveled some more until he came to an island just infested with rats. They had never heard of a cat. The rats were everywhere. They carried the plague. Everyone was complaining. They really couldn’t do anything about the rats.

Well, the youngest brother let his cat get to work. The cat ran around annihilating mice like it was the terminator. The people of the island were amazed and offered the youngest brother lots of money, enough gold to laden a mule.

The youngest brother went home and left the islanders to themselves. The cat ate so many mice that it decided to take a rest. It also wanted some milk. The cat cried, “Mew, mew, mew,” and the islanders had never heard such a thing. They were scared. They decided to send a herald to the cat to ask it to leave. The herald gave this message to the cat, but the cat only mewed, again. The herald heard the cat to say, “Most certainly not! Most certainly not!” He took this back to the king.

The councilors soon decided that they would rather be plagued by rats than have this animal around. They decided to use force against the cat, who was in the castle. They used a cannon to shoot the castle. The cat hopped out of the window, quite safely, while the islanders continued to shoot the castle until nothing remained.

The End

Observations

This dad probably gave terrible Christmas presents. Here Timmy, here’s your present. What is it? A left shoe. Where’s the other one? Stop being so ungrateful, at least you got a shoe. Don’t whine to me how you don’t have two shoes. There are people who don’t have any shoes. They live on islands, where everyone is an idiot and they don’t get shoes. Would you like that? No dad.

The statement that this tale makes about people who dwell on islands is just a bit offensive. I have lived on an island before. It is true that life is a little different on an island. You can only go so far before you get to the ocean. Sometimes you have to make do with certain items because some items cannot be imported to the island. There are weird genetic mutations going on because it’s an island, well, with the animal life anyway. With all this said, people who live on islands are not stupid. This story makes them out to be stupid.

Corn comes form a grass that comes from the Americas, how did the second island get corn? It was an import, I can tell you that much. Corn wasn’t really known to Europe at all before the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Corn came into Europe then from the Americas. It wasn’t exactly the same corn we have today, but then again, no one had the same corn we have today because Monsanto wasn’t around then. Today’s corn will open itself up out of the can and creep to your bedroom at night and take all your stuff. It’s bad stuff.

I mention all this jazz about killer corn to point out something, these islanders were not stupid and they did trade with other countries.

I already mentioned this story could be a little naughty if you use the original wording and have your mind in the gutter.

Who is scared of a cat? Cats are awesome. It’s the sound of death, everybody run! Would it be ironic if I called all these islanders a bunch of…? Well, I won’t type it, but you know what I mean.

Themes

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That’s our essential story here. The father was right. If you have something that is common in one place and take it to another place where there isn’t any of that thing, you are going to make bank. Tulips? It totally happened with tulips. All these tulip growers began to grow these variations of tulips and people went crazy over them. They got rich, rich, rich, before the tulip market plummeted, then they were poor, poor, poor.

When chocolate first went to Europe, people went ape-crazy over it. They had it with every meal. They were like, “Chocolate for breakfast, yeah!!!” They didn’t prepare it in quite the same manner as we do today, but they were still eating chocolate like crazy.

A cat is harmless, well, mostly harmless, just like Earth. These islanders didn’t know what a cat was though, so they were scared. It happens. People can be scared of things they aren’t sure about. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe there is a little anecdote about the locals tying up a bicycle because they thought it was some kind of weird metal animal that would harm them. They didn’t know any better. How are they supposed to know that a bicycle isn’t going to kill them? They don’t know.

We have situations in life like this all the time. We run into these situations less and less these days because we are so connected. In the past it was actually kind of humorous to look back on these situations and laugh after you knew better.

Overall

I think this story is light-hearted and humorous. I liked how everyone was scared of the cat. For your pleasure, I’m posting a view of Sylvester the talking cat.

a cat, a rooster, a scythe, bad corn, cannon, cats, corn, grimm’s fairy tales, harvesting corn, people scared of cats, the three sons of fortune, the three sons of fortune grimms fairy tales, three sons
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
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