A mermaid's story

Agnete asks Hans for directions to the mermaid.

Hans: You want to go where?
Agnete: There is a statue in the town. I have heard it is famous.
Hans: There are many statues in the town.
Agnete: But this one is special. It is of a merperson.
Hans: The little mermaid? It is, shall we say, unprepossessing.
Agnete: I know, but its story is tragic. Oh so, tragic. She cuts out her tongue, pain in her legs is like knives when she dances, the prince does not marry her.
Hans: What kind of a man could inflict such pain, even on a fictional merperson? Are you sure you still want to go?
Agnete: But the ending is happy. She doesn’t kill the prince, becomes a spirit who does good deeds and goes to heaven.
Hans: It doesn’t sound a likely ending.

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Voiceover

Of course, this is not the original Hans Christian Andersen. But through these costumed guides the past replays itself, and with each replay, the past is a little differently interpreted. Can oral history be entirely relied upon? How deeply in the myth is the real event buried?
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