Beschrijving
A very cold night comes in May. Hearing of a much colder night long ago, a man sets out to find about it. In his travels he comes to (a) an otter lying in a deep hole on top of a rock: he has been so long lying there that the rock has been worn merely by his body; the otter had not experienced the cold night of long ago, but had heard of it, and sends the man to (b) an old eagle or hawk which is perched on an anvil and has worn the anvil almost through by the touch of its beak after eating; so on to the third, a salmon (c) which has only one eye: the salmon had been alive on the cold night long ago and had lost its eye then; it has leaped out of the water after a fly, and so suddenly did it freeze that when the salmon fell back to the water, the water was frozen hard; the salmon lay on the ice, and a bird had picked out its eye; the blood from the eye finally melted the ice, and the salmon got back to the pool. [B841, B124.1, X1620]. Cf. Type 244**.
Subgenre
sprookje