The Lambkin and the Little Fish facts for kids

The Lambkin and the Little Fish is a classic German fairy tale. It was collected by the famous Brothers Grimm, who gathered many well-known stories. This tale is number 141 in their collection.

This story is part of a group of tales known as Aarne-Thompson type 450. This type of story often features a brother and sister. Another well-known tale of this type is Brother and Sister. These types help people study how different fairy tales share similar plots around the world.

What Happens in the Story?

This fairy tale tells the story of a brother and a sister. They had a stepmother who was not kind to them at all.

One day, the children were playing a counting game in a meadow. They were near a small pool of water. Suddenly, their stepmother used magic. She turned the boy into a fish and the girl into a lamb.

Later, some guests came to visit the stepmother. She then told her cook to prepare the lamb for dinner. The lamb and the fish were very sad. They talked to each other about their sad fate.

The kind cook felt sorry for them. Instead of cooking the lamb, the cook served a different animal. The cook then gave the lamb to a good peasant woman. This woman had actually been the girl's nurse when she was a baby.

The peasant woman suspected that the lamb was really the girl. She took the lamb to a wise woman. This wise woman performed a special blessing over both the lamb and the fish. This blessing turned them back into their human forms. The wise woman also gave them a small hut in the woods. The brother and sister lived happily there.