The Lambkin and the Little Fish (Grimm)
Division into chapters is editorial.
The childrens game and the stepmothers curse
A little brother and sister lived together, bound by deep love for each other.
There were once a little brother and a little sister, who loved each other with all their hearts. Their own mother was, however, dead, and they had a stepmother
who was unkind to them and secretly sought to harm them. The children played with others in a meadow before their house, near a pond. They ran about playing a counting game with a rhyme about birds, straw, and snow. The stepmother watched from her window and grew angry.
Life as enchanted creatures; arrival of visitors
Using her knowledge of witchcraft, she cast a spell on both children.
And as she understood arts of witchcraft she bewitched them both, and changed the little brother into a fish, and the little sister into a lamb.
The transformation brought great sorrow to both children in their new forms.
Then the fish swam here and there about the pond and was very sad, and the lambkin walked up and down the meadow, and was miserable, and could not eat
or touch a single blade of grass. A long time passed in this sorrowful state. Eventually, strangers arrived as visitors to the castle. The false stepmother saw this as a perfect opportunity and summoned the cook, instructing him to fetch the lamb from the meadow and kill it for their guests, claiming they had nothing else to serve.
The cooks discovery and the childrens rescue
The cook went to fetch the lamb and brought it to the kitchen, tying its feet. The lamb bore this treatment patiently. As the cook drew out his knife and began sharpening it on the doorstep, he noticed a little fish swimming back and forth in the water before the kitchen sink, looking up at him. This was the brother, who had followed when he saw the cook take the lamb away. The lamb cried down to the fish in the pond:
Ah, brother, in the pond so deep,
How sad is my poor heart!
Even now the cook he whets his knife
To take away my tender life.
The little fish answered with equal sorrow:
Ah, little sister, up on high
How sad is my poor heart
While in this pond I lie.
The cook was terrified when he heard the lamb speak such sad words to the fish below.
When the cook heard that the lambkin could speak and said such sad words to the fish down below, he was terrified and thought this could be no common lamb
but must be bewitched by the wicked woman in the house. He told the lamb to be at ease, that he would not kill it. Instead, he prepared another sheep for the guests and took the lambkin to a good peasant woman, telling her everything he had seen and heard.
Restoration to human form and happy ending
The peasant woman turned out to be the very person who had been foster-mother to the little sister.
The peasant was, however, the very woman who had been foster-mother to the little sister, and she suspected at once who the lamb was
She immediately took the lamb to a wise woman who possessed magical powers.
Then the wise woman pronounced a blessing over the lambkin and the little fish, by means of which they regained their human forms
The magical blessing successfully broke the stepmother's curse, transforming both children back into their original human forms. The wise woman's intervention had freed them from their enchanted state. With their humanity restored, the wise woman provided them with a safe refuge.
after this she took them both into a little hut in a great forest, where they lived alone, but were contented and happy.