Oscar Wilde 
A House of Pomegranates 

A House of Pomegranates is a collection of fairy tales, written by Oscar Wilde, that was published in 1891 as a second collection for The Happy Prince and Other Tales. Wilde once said that this collection was ‘intended neither for the British child nor the British public.’ In ‘The Fisherman and his Soul’, a young Fisherman finds a Mermaid and wants nothing more than to marry her, but he cannot, for one cannot live underwater if one has a soul. He goes to his priest, but the priest tells him his soul is his most precious possession, and the soulless mermen are lost.