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Overview
Fair Brow spends his entire trading capital to pay a dead stranger’s debts so that the body can be buried. Later, after rescuing and marrying a kidnapped woman, he loses her when sailors recognize her paintings and carry her back to the Sultan. An old fisherman takes the impoverished husband into his boat and agrees that they will fish and live together. A storm carries them to Turkey, where both are enslaved and placed in the Sultan’s garden. The old man makes numerous musical instruments, which Fair Brow plays and sings to; his wife hears him from her tower and arranges their reunion and escape.
The departing party initially leaves the fisherman behind. Fair Brow insists on returning despite the risk, and they retrieve him from a cave. Near home, the old man demands their accounts be divided, claiming even half of the wife. Fair Brow offers three quarters of the wealth instead of dividing her. The benefactor then identifies himself as the soul of the man whose burial Fair Brow made possible. He attributes the good fortune to that charitable act and to the wife’s Christian conversion and baptism, blesses his helper and disappears. The latter explanation is the historical tale’s religious framing, not a neutral judgment about the woman’s earlier religion. The ghost’s human appearance is revealed retrospectively; the text does not describe a transparent body or a graveyard apparition.
Origins & earliest records
Crane, Italian Popular Tales (1885), XXXV: Fair Brow, pp. 131–135; Istrian version in Antonio Ive, Nozze Ive-Lorenzetto, III, p. 19, 1877.
Records & interpretation
The complete selected tale reveals the fisherman as the buried debtor’s soul only at the final account-settling scene. Earlier assistance, apparent human captivity and religious explanation remain part of the same specific narrated witness.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Italian Popular Tales, XXXV: Fair Brow, pp. 131–135
Complete English tale; Crane identifies Ive’s 1877 collection, III, p. 19, without claiming independent collation here.
Family, evolution & connections
The debtor whose burial Fair Brow funded
At the end, the old fisherman identifies himself as the soul of the debtor whose debts Fair Brow paid so that he could be buried. His repeated address “my son” is not biological fatherhood: Fair Brow’s living father is a separate character who later joins the household.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textCrane 1885: Fair BrowResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.