once upon a time, long ago, there lived a very poor couple. The husband was a hard-working fisherman. Each evening he would send in the river his traps
made of bamboo and reeds and then, the next morning, he would collect the fish caught in them . His wife was a very pretty woman but careless and untidy.
Their small hut on the river bank was never clean and as she was too lazy to mend their clothes both of them walked around in latter.
Every morning, the couple would go out together to collect the fish caught during the night. The husband would put them in a big basket his wife carried
on her back while he gathered in the traps. The basket had a hole in it which the lazy woman never bothered to repair so that as she followed her husband along the river's
edge many fish fell out. This meant that although the market and so could not earn much money to buy vegetables, rice and clothes.
Another couplr lived on the riverside the husband was a trander who bought and sold cloth and household good up and down the river. One day the merchant's
wife saw that about half the fisherman's who worked so hard and and whose fish wrere lost because of his wife's carelessness. with only a littereffort both
both of them could be much better off she thought, so she said to the woman why don't you take some reeds and grass and mend basket? it wouldn't take you long.
When her husband heard her speak like this he was very angry why do you interfere? he said what they do is none of your business then he saw that although
the fisherman's wife was very untidy she was very, very pretty. If you care so much for that poor man, he told his wife you can go and live with him and I'll
take his wife to live with me. And the more he locked at the fisherman's wife the prettier she seemed. shall we exchange wives, fisherman? he asked.
the poor fisherman didn't know what you say. It doesn't seem right. I have so litter how could I keep a woman who is used to having everything she wants?
she's so concerned about you she must like you replied the merchant I am happy to exchange her for your wife And so the fisherman agreed and the merchant's
wife went to live with him and the fisherman's wife became the mistress of the trading boat.ds
Straight away the merchant's wife mended the fish basket and the next day for the first time in his life, the had a big surplus of fish to shell at the market
Every day from then on the couple had plenty of fish to sell and soon they were able to leave the hut by river and river in a good house
the woman looked to the future too she didn't want husband to remain a fisherman all his life she hoped he would find an easier job that brought in more
money. because his previous wife hadn't fed him well, he wasn't very fit, so she prepare good food for him and encouraged him to do exercises every morning and go
for a run before breakfast to build up his body .At same time she showed him how to be thrifty When you run don't wast your time she told him if you see
any small piece of wood lying around pick them up and bring them back to me so that we don't have to buy wood to cook with
soon the fisherman became strong and could run far into the forest each morning one day he brought back a piece of sandalwood among the other sticks.
because she sent her had lived so long with the merchant the woman knew this perfumed wood was very valuable and much in demand for making ornament fan and boxes she
sent her husband back into the forest to look for sandalwood tress and very soon they stopped earning their living from fishing Instead, the husband cut down sandalwood that
his wife sold to merchants she was so careful in the house and managed the selling so pleasantly and they could hire people to work for them they became very rich And because they worked
well together they were also very happy.
In the meantime, the pretty , lazy woman who had to live with the merchant cared for nothing but herself. she don't clean the boat or help with the business. She didn't cook or make clothers.
she just bouhgt whatever she wanted and ate and slept her life away when she had a baby she didn't even bother to wash its nappies but simply threw
the dirty ones away and cut new ones frome the supply of cloth her husband had on the boat she was so careless and helped so litter that the business
went banly and the husband had to sell his boat. because he was the only one who worked and his new wife didn't look after the money he earned they became
poorer and ended up as beggars.
One day as they were begging along the sreet, they stooped at the home of the exfishman and his wife the wife recognized her former husband who was now dressed in rage. why are you so poor?
she asked my second wife was no help to me he replied ashamed and so i lost my business the woman could not neglect the man who used to be her husband and gave him a good sum of money before sending him and his family
on their way then the careful clever wife and her hard-working husband lived happily ever after.
this story was first told to me by my grandmother when i was six or seven years old Afterward i heard it many time from my mother and I in turn told it to my younger sister. i never go tired of hearing it or telling
it although it was never told just for amusement. it was meant to each girl how to behave, to show them what their responsibilities in life would be and how they should carry them out.
The moral of the story is very clear- woman must be thrifthty and tidy and know how to look after what thier husband earn. the story tells us that women are impotant for no matter how hard husband work if their wives don't know how to help
them they will never succeed Husband earn the money but wives must manage it.
IN the own family these values where put into practice over two generation. My grandmother was a goldsmith for the royal palace. He died very young, when my father was just ten. My grandmother kept his businnes going and even managed to send my father to a French schlool. That was a great achievement for such an education was expensive. Grandfather worked right up to the time her sons could earn their own livings. She built the house we lived in, in a business district a mile from the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. It was a wooden house on stilts with the living quarters upstairs and a little shop underneath. She used to carry on a goldsmith's business from there during her working years but when I was ca child it was a pawnshop run by my father's older sister, another enterprising woman.
My family was very big. Apart from my grandmother and parents, there were ten children- I was the second eldest. My father was a teacher and the only one working to support the thirteen of us so we didn't have much money to spare. We had to be thrifty, to share and to look after everything in the house, because anything broken could not be easily replaced.
Once, when I was playing chasey with my little sister, i was running and jumping wildly and split the seam of my long skirt. It was then that my grandmother sat me down and told me for the first time the story of the two wives. You were a very careless little girl, she said. you must watch out or you will end up like the lazy wife of the fisherman. I heard the story many times after that. if I didn't hold a plate properly and it seemed I might drop it, my mother or grandmother would never scold me. They'd just say very gently that I was careless, then sit me down and remind me of the story. and I in turn would tell it to my little sister if she left her play dough scattered over the floor or did something else lazy or untidy.
I still remember this story very often. If I make clothes for myself and finish them off carelessly or buy things that aren't really necessary I think, 'If mother or grandmother were here, they'd remind me that i've been extravagant.' I can stop myself buying things by remembering the story. I say to my self, 'You're spending too much, just like that fisherman's first wife. If you spind all you earn, where will you go when help you out but here we have no one. There is just the bank and you can only get from there what you've put in. You have to be independent in Australia.So you see the story of the merchant's wife and the fishermanl's wife still teaches me so much. I Thank my grandmother and my mother for telling it to me.
