Once upon a time there was a little brother and sister who loved each other dearly. But their real mother was dead and they had a stepmother who was not good to them and secretly did them all harm. It happened, that the two of them were playing with other children in a meadow in front of the house, and on the meadow there was a pond that went to one side of the house. The children ran around there, fought and played counting games:
"Eneke, Beneke, let me liewen,
the ock min birds want to giewen.
Birds should say mie Strauss,
I want to give Strau to the Kösken,
Kösen shall mie Melk giewen,
I want to milk the baker,
baker let me bake a chicken,
I want to cook for the little cat,
Katken shall catch my muse,
I want to hang Müse in a room
and want to snap at you."
They stood in a circle, and whoever was hit with the word "Schnien" had to run away, and the others ran after him and caught him. As they jumped along so happily, the stepmother saw them from the window and was annoyed. But because she understood witchcraft, she cursed both of them, the little brother into a fish and the little sister into a lamb. Then the little fish swam back and forth in the pond and was sad, the lamb walked back and forth in the meadow and was sad and didn't eat and didn't touch a blade of grass. A long time passed, and strangers came to the castle. The false stepmother thought, "Now the opportunity is good," called the cook and said to him, "Go and fetch the lamb from the meadow and slaughter it, we have nothing else for the guests." So the cook went and fetched the lamb and led her into the kitchen and tied her little feet; it all suffered patiently. When he had pulled out his knife and was sharpening it on the threshold to stab it, he saw a little fish swimming back and forth in the water in front of the Gossenstein and looking up at him. But that was the little brother, because when the little fish saw the cook taking the lamb away, it swam along in the pond to the house. Then the little lamb called down
"Oh little brother in the deep lake,
how my heart hurts so much!
the cook who sharpens the knife,
want to pierce my heart."
The little fish answered
"Oh little sister on high,
how my heart hurts so much
in this deep sea!”
When the cook heard that the little lamb could speak and wrote down such sad words to the little fish, he was frightened and thought it must not be a natural little lamb, but was cursed by the evil woman in the house. Then he said, "Be quiet, I don't want to kill you." He took another animal and prepared it for the guests, and brought the little lamb to a good farmer's wife, to whom he told everything he had seen and heard. The farmer's wife had just been the sister's wet nurse, so she guessed who it would be and went with him to a wise woman. Then the wise woman said a blessing over the little lamb and little fish, from which they got their human form again, and after that she led them both into a large forest to a small house, where they lived lonely but contented and happy.