The Eel That Survived Its Own Execution

Early darkness had already settled over the Eider when Adriaan Focke reached Grönsfurt. It was the autumn of 1666. All day the west wind had pressed against water and bank; now it drove the tide upriver. Adriaan had come from Friedrichstadt and was bound for the market at Rendsburg in his Eider boat. At thirty, the eel merchant knew the current well. That evening, even knowledge left him with little more than his boat and the one sail still standing.

The mainsail had torn. Its cloth beat loose while the mast strained under every gust. Adriaan hauled the foresail close and kept the bow against the water for as long as he could. The small sail could not carry him safely, but it kept the boat under control. Then a wave lifted the hull at the ford and set it hard upon the bottom. It lay there at an angle, held fast in wind and water.

Voices came from the bank. People from Fockbek brought a rope through the wet dusk. One waded far enough to catch it; the others pulled together. They brought Adriaan ashore, then whatever belongings could be reached. Little could be done for the boat while the current ran so strongly. They led the stranger into the village, gave him warmth and food, and heard where he had come from. In return, they told him that another grave matter required their attention the next morning. A sentence was to be carried out at the Fockbeker See.

By daylight they explained the case. The people of Fockbek had put salt herrings into their lake the year before, hoping to find herrings there later. Instead, they had found only an eel. The herrings were gone and the eel was well fed. The village therefore judged the herring thief guilty and condemned it to death by drowning.

Adriaan listened in silence. As an eel merchant he understood eels, and his Dutch background had also taught him something of salt herrings. He might have corrected the error before they set off. Yet these were the people who had drawn him from the river only the evening before. He would not lecture his hosts in front of their own court. He walked with them from the village to the lake.

They gathered along the bank. The eel lay in a vessel of water and twisted vigorously whenever anyone moved it. The sentence was repeated. At a deep place by the shore, the vessel was tipped into the lake. The eel struck the water, vanished for a moment and rose again just below the surface. A few movements took it into deeper water. Soon there was only a brief wake among the small waves.

No one spoke. Some watched the place where the creature had disappeared. Others looked towards Adriaan, for he knew more about eels than any of them. He understood that they were waiting to see whether the stranger would make them an object of ridicule.

Adriaan looked down at his own clothes, still damp from his rescue, and thought of his boat lying aground on the Eider. He laughed first at his own condition. Then he pointed towards the water and said, “De Aal swemmt wieder.” (The eel swims on.) A salt herring, he explained, did not become a living herring when placed in a lake. The eel, however, had been alive and had remained so despite the sentence. If anyone had gained something that morning, the victory should be allowed to the eel.

The strain slowly left the gathering. One person from Fockbek began to laugh, then another. At last Adriaan laughed with them all. No one had to pretend that the execution had ended otherwise. Its failed solemnity became a story fit to be told again. The words remained in the village: “De Aal swemmt wieder.” Their fuller sense was this: the eel swims on; what was meant to be drowned lives.

That evening Adriaan returned to the lake. He examined the shallows and found a place where an eel might take cover. There he set a woven trap. The next morning he drew it in with care. Inside lay the eel that had escaped the day before. Adriaan carried it back to the village and declared that the sentence must now be turned into trade.

The people helped to free his boat at Grönsfurt. The torn mainsail stayed furled, and the foresail had to serve again on the way to Rendsburg. Adriaan placed the eel safely with his wares and travelled upstream. At the market, he offered more than a fish. He told of the salt herrings, the court beside the lake and the execution from which its victim had swum away.

The story drew buyers. An ordinary eel would have brought the ordinary price. For the eel that had survived its own execution, Adriaan received ten times as much. He used the money to buy proper barrels of herring and a new sail, and carried both back to Fockbek. The villagers now had herrings intended for the table, while their guest had replaced the cloth under which he had come to grief.

The merchants of Rendsburg also kept the story, but they told it as proof of Fockbek’s foolishness. Their mockery reached Adriaan too. With a new sail he could have continued on his way and left the village behind. Instead he stayed. He married in Fockbek, bore the laughter beside his new neighbours and built an eel trade that supplied Rendsburg and Kiel.

The following spring, the village assembly of farmers met. By then Adriaan’s Dutch name had long been shortened to Aad in Fockbek. The foresail had brought him to Grönsfurt. The assembly therefore gave him the honorary name Aad Fock, “because he came with nothing but the foresail and stayed with everything”.

The name was to be handed on. Whoever accepted it would also accept what Adriaan had shown: begin the work in adversity, make room for shared laughter in a mishap, and remain with people when leaving would be easier. The eel had needed neither seal nor document. It had simply swum on.