# Brother and Sister

_Retold by Talerie (talerie.com) from Kinder- und Hausmärchen, after Brothers Grimm_ · 14 min read · ages 8+

A witch stepmother curses the forest springs, so a brother who drinks becomes a fawn, and the king who hunts him marries his sister. After the witch kills the young queen, the king keeps watch by the cradle and the queen’s life is given back; the witch burns in the fire and the fawn takes back his human shape.

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Once upon a time a little brother took his little sister by the hand and said, “Since our mother died, we haven’t had one happy hour. Our stepmother beats us every day, and when we come near her, she kicks us away. The hard crusts left over from the table are all we get to eat, and the little dog under the table is better off than we are: now and then she throws him a good bite. God have pity on us! If only our mother knew! Come, let’s go out into the wide world together.”

They walked all day over meadows, fields, and stony ground, and when it rained, the sister said, “God and our hearts are weeping together.” In the evening they came to a great forest, and they were so worn out with sorrow, hunger, and the long road that they sat down inside a hollow tree and fell asleep.

When they woke the next morning, the sun was already high in the sky and shining hot into the tree. The brother said, “Little sister, I’m thirsty. If I knew where there was a spring, I’d go and have a drink. I think I can hear one splashing.” He got up and took his sister by the hand, and they set off to look for it.

But the wicked stepmother was a witch. She had seen the two children leave, and she had crept after them in secret, the way witches creep, and laid a curse on every spring in the forest.

Before long they found a little spring that sparkled as it leaped over the stones, and the brother was about to drink from it. But the sister heard it speaking as it rushed along:

Who drinks of me will be a tiger;  
who drinks of me will be a tiger.

“Please, little brother, don’t drink,” cried the sister, “or you’ll turn into a wild beast and tear me to pieces.”

The brother didn’t drink, though he was terribly thirsty. “I’ll wait for the next spring,” he said.

When they came to the second spring, the sister heard this one speaking too:

Who drinks of me will be a wolf;  
who drinks of me will be a wolf.

“Little brother, please don’t drink,” cried the sister, “or you’ll turn into a wolf and eat me up.”

Again the brother didn’t drink. “I’ll wait until we come to the next spring,” he said, “but then I have to drink, whatever you say. I’m just too thirsty.”

When they came to the third spring, the sister heard it say as it rushed along:

Who drinks of me will be a roebuck;  
who drinks of me will be a roebuck.

“Oh, little brother, please don’t drink,” she said, “or you’ll turn into a deer and run away from me.”

But the brother had already knelt down by the spring, bent over, and drunk from the water, and as soon as the first drops touched his lips, there he lay, a young fawn.

Then the sister wept over her poor bewitched brother, and the fawn wept too and sat sadly beside her. At last she said, “Hush, dear little brother. I will never leave you, never.”

She untied her golden garter and fastened it around the fawn’s neck, and she pulled up rushes and plaited a soft rope from them. She tied the little creature to it and led him on, deeper and deeper into the forest. When they had walked a long, long way, they came at last to a little house. The sister looked inside, and because it was empty, she thought, “We can stay here and make it our home.”

She gathered leaves and moss to make the fawn a soft bed. Every morning she went out and collected roots, berries, and nuts for herself, and she brought back tender grass for the fawn. He ate it from her hand, and he was happy and frisked about in front of her. In the evening, when the sister was tired and had said her prayers, she laid her head on the fawn’s back. That was her pillow, and she fell softly asleep on it. If only her brother had kept his human shape, it would have been a wonderful life.

For some time they lived like this, all alone in the wilderness. Then one day the king of the land held a great hunt in the forest. Horns rang out, hounds barked, and the huntsmen shouted merrily through the trees. The fawn heard it all and longed with all his heart to be out there with them.

“Oh,” he said to his sister, “let me go out to the hunt. I can’t bear it any longer.” And he begged and begged until she gave in.

“But you must come back to me in the evening,” she told him. “I’ll keep my little door locked against those wild huntsmen. So I’ll know it’s you, knock and say, ‘My little sister, let me in.’ If you don’t say that, I won’t open the door.”

So the fawn bounded out, and how good it felt, how merry he was in the open air! The king and his huntsmen saw the beautiful animal and chased after him, but they couldn’t catch him. Each time they were sure they had him, he leaped over the bushes and was gone.

When it grew dark, he ran to the little house, knocked, and said, “My little sister, let me in.” The little door was opened for him, and he sprang inside and rested all night on his soft bed.

The next morning the hunt began again. When the fawn heard the hunting horn and the huntsmen’s “Ho, ho!” he couldn’t keep still. “My little sister, open the door,” he said. “I have to go out.”

The sister opened the door for him and said, “But you must be back by evening and say your words.”

When the king and his huntsmen saw the fawn with the golden collar again, they all went after him, but he was too quick and nimble for them. The chase went on all day. Toward evening, though, the huntsmen had him surrounded at last, and one of them wounded him slightly in the foot, so that he limped and could only run slowly.

Then the huntsman who had wounded the fawn crept after him all the way to the little house and heard him call, “My little sister, let me in.” He watched the door open for the fawn and close again at once behind him. The huntsman took careful note of it all, then went to the king and told him what he had seen and heard.

“Tomorrow we will hunt once more,” said the king.

The sister was dreadfully frightened when she saw that her fawn was hurt. She washed off the blood, laid healing herbs on the wound, and said, “Go and lie down on your bed, dear little brother, so you’ll get well again.” The wound was so slight, though, that by morning the fawn could no longer feel it. And when he heard the noise of the hunt outside again, he said, “I can’t bear it. I have to be out there. They won’t catch me so easily.”

His sister wept and said, “Now they’ll kill you, and I’ll be left here alone in the forest, abandoned by the whole world. I won’t let you out.”

“Then I’ll die of grief right here,” answered the fawn. “When I hear the hunting horn, I feel as if I’ll jump right out of my skin!”

She could hold out no longer. With a heavy heart she unlocked the door, and the fawn bounded off into the forest, healthy and full of joy.

When the king caught sight of him, he said to his huntsmen, “Now chase him all day long, until nightfall, but see that no one does him any harm.” As soon as the sun had set, the king said to the huntsman, “Come now and show me the little house in the forest.” When they reached the little door, the king knocked and called, “My little sister, let me in.”

The door opened, the king stepped inside, and there stood a girl more beautiful than any he had ever seen. She was frightened when she saw that it was not her fawn coming in, but a man with a golden crown on his head. The king looked at her kindly, held out his hand, and said, “Will you come with me to my castle and be my dear wife?”

“Oh yes, Your Majesty,” she answered, “but the fawn must come too. I won’t leave him.”

“He shall stay with you as long as you live,” said the king, “and he shall want for nothing.”

Just then the fawn came bounding in. The sister tied him to the rope of rushes again, took the end in her own hand, and walked out of the little house in the forest with him.

The king lifted the beautiful girl onto his horse and took her to his castle, where the wedding was celebrated with great splendor. Now she was the queen, and for a long time they lived happily together. The fawn was looked after and cherished, and he frisked about in the castle garden.

Now the wicked stepmother, the one who had driven the children out into the world, had been sure that wild beasts in the forest had torn the sister to pieces and that the huntsmen had shot the brother dead while he was a fawn. When she heard how happy they were and how well things were going for them, envy and spite stirred in her heart and gave her no peace. She thought of nothing but how she might still bring the two of them to ruin.

Her own daughter, who was as ugly as night and had only one eye, nagged at her and said, “That luck should have been mine. I’m the one who should have become queen.”

“Just be quiet,” said the old woman, soothing her. “When the time comes, I’ll be ready.”

The time came. The queen gave birth to a beautiful baby boy while the king happened to be out hunting. The old witch took on the shape of the chambermaid, went into the room where the queen lay, and said to her, “Come, Your Majesty, your bath is ready. It will do you good and give you fresh strength. Quickly, before it gets cold.”

The old woman’s daughter was close at hand too. Together they carried the weak queen into the bath-house and laid her in the tub; then they locked the door and ran away. In the bath-house they had built up a fire as fierce as the fires of hell, so that the lovely young queen soon suffocated.

When that was done, the old woman took her daughter, put a nightcap on her head, and laid her in the bed in the queen’s place. She also gave her the queen’s shape and face, but she could not give her the eye she was missing. So that the king would not notice, the daughter had to lie on the side where she had no eye.

That evening, when the king came home and heard that a son had been born to him, he was overjoyed, and he was about to go to his dear wife’s bedside to see how she was.

But the old woman quickly cried, “For heaven’s sake, Your Majesty, keep the curtains closed! The queen can’t bear the light yet. She needs her rest.”

So the king went away, not knowing that a false queen lay in the bed.

At midnight, when everyone else was asleep, the nurse was still sitting up beside the cradle in the nursery. She saw the door open and the true queen come in. The queen lifted the child out of the cradle, took him in her arms, and fed him. Then she plumped up his little pillow, laid him back down, and tucked his little quilt around him. She did not forget the fawn either: she went to the corner where he lay and stroked his back. Then, without a word, she went out through the door again.

The next morning the nurse asked the guards whether anyone had come into the castle during the night.

“No,” they answered, “we haven’t seen anyone.”

Night after night the queen came in this way and never said a word. The nurse saw her every time, but she didn’t dare tell anyone about it.

After some time had passed, the queen began to speak in the night. She said,

How fares my child, how fares my roe?  
Twice shall I come, then never more.

The nurse did not answer her, but as soon as the queen had vanished, she went to the king and told him everything.

“Oh, God, what can this be?” said the king. “Tomorrow night I will keep watch by the child myself.”

In the evening he went into the nursery, and at midnight the queen appeared again and said,

How fares my child, how fares my roe?  
Once will I come, then never more.

She tended the child as she always did, and then she vanished. The king didn’t dare speak to her, but he kept watch again the following night. Once more she said,

How fares my child, how fares my roe?  
This time I come, then never more.

Then the king could hold back no longer. He sprang toward her and said, “You must be my dear wife!”

“Yes,” she answered, “I am your dear wife.” At that very instant, by the grace of God, her life was given back to her, and she stood before him rosy and well.

Then she told the king the wicked thing the witch and her daughter had done to her. The king had them both brought to judgment, and sentence was passed on them. The daughter was led into the forest, where the wild beasts tore her to pieces. The witch was put into the fire and burned miserably. The moment she was nothing but ashes, the fawn changed and took back his human shape.

And the sister and the brother lived happily together for the rest of their lives.

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## About this tale

The Brothers Grimm took down Brother and Sister for their collection Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, and printed it as no. 11 in the first edition (Berlin, 1812). The Grimms wrote that they had it from two tellings from the Main region; Bolte and Polívka trace both to Marie, in the Wild household in Kassel.

For the second edition of 1819 the Grimms rewrote the tale, drawing mostly on the second telling: three cursed springs, a little house in the forest, a fawn who joins the king’s hunt. Both our retellings follow the 7th edition of 1857, the shorter one under Gentler and the fuller one under Original.

> How fares my child, how fares my roe?
> Twice shall I come, then never more.
>
> Brothers Grimm, 1857: was macht mein Kind? was macht mein Reh? / Nun komm ich noch zweimal und dann nimmermehr.

### The first edition of 1812 against the text of 1857

|  | 1812 | 1857 (our source) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The springs | one, which the witch makes rise | three: tiger, wolf, roe |
| The brother | hears nothing and drinks at once | waits twice, drinks at the third |
| Forest home | a cave, for many years | an empty little house |
| The king finds her | gets lost while out hunting | a huntsman follows the wounded fawn |
| At the door | no password | a password the fawn must say |
| False queen | the witch’s own daughter | the witch’s one-eyed daughter, blind side down |
| Back to life | when the king touches her | after his words, by God’s grace |

### What our retelling does

Nothing of the 1857 plot is left out of our text. The stepmother is a witch who curses every spring in the forest; the sister hears the first two speak of a tiger and a wolf, and her brother drinks from the third and becomes a fawn. She ties her golden garter round his neck, leads him on a rope of rushes to an empty little house, and lets him join the king’s hunt as long as he comes back in the evening, knocks and says “My little sister, let me in.” A huntsman overhears it and tells the king, who comes to the door himself, says the same words, and asks the sister to be his wife. The three verses the true queen speaks at night are in Margaret Hunt’s English wording. The Gentler version tells the same story in fewer words.

One passage is worth knowing before reading aloud. Soon after her son is born, the young queen dies in an overheated bath-house; she comes back at night to feed the baby and stroke the fawn, and when the king at last speaks to her, she lives again. In both versions the witch is burned at the end, and only then does the fawn become a boy again.

### Related tales and one mix-up

Folklorists count the tale as ATU 450. Bolte and Polívka place it among the stories of a substituted bride: an innocent woman is removed by her stepmother and replaced by an ugly stepsister, and at night she returns, as a duck or in her own shape, to nurse her child. They name three of the Grimms’ own tales as relatives: The Three Little Men in the Forest (no. 13), The White Bride and the Black Bride (no. 135) and Little Lamb and Little Fish (no. 141), where the brother is turned into a lamb. They also list Italian, Greek, Russian, Czech, Polish and Turkish versions, among others.

It can be confused with Hansel and Gretel, which also has a brother and a sister, a stepmother, a forest and a witch. In Brother and Sister, though, the stepmother is herself the witch, there is no house to nibble at, and the story goes on to the sister’s marriage and her child.

Sources (claims checked against them on 2026-10-30):
- 1812: Brüderchen und Schwesterchen, Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, 1st ed., Berlin 1812, vol. 1, no. 11, pp. 33–38 (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCderchen_und_Schwesterchen_(1812))
- 1819: Brüderchen und Schwesterchen, Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, 2nd ed., Berlin 1819, vol. 1, no. 11, pp. 57–66 (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Br%C3%BCderchen_und_Schwesterchen_(1819))
- 1857: Brüderchen und Schwesterchen, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 7th ed., Göttingen 1857, vol. 1, no. 11, pp. 57–64 [our source] (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Brüderchen_und_Schwesterchen_(1857))
- Little Brother and Little Sister, Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, trans. Margaret Hunt, Project Gutenberg #5314, no. 11 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5314)
- 1856: Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, Band 3: Anmerkungen, 3rd ed., Göttingen 1856, vol. 3, no. 11, pp. 20–21 (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Kinder-_und_Haus-M%C3%A4rchen_Band_3_(1856)/Anmerkungen)
- 1913: Johannes Bolte, Jiří Polívka: Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, Leipzig 1913, vol. 1, no. 11, pp. 79–96 (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Anmerkungen_zu_den_Kinder-_und_Hausm%C3%A4rchen_der_Br%C3%BCder_Grimm_I/Br%C3%BCderchen_und_Schwesterchen)
- Wikidata Q513544, ATU 450 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q513544)

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- Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/brother-and-sister-original
- Also known as: Little Brother and Little Sister
- Version: longer, more faithful retelling; the gentler retelling: https://talerie.com/en/tales/brother-and-sister.md
- Also in: [German](https://talerie.com/de/maerchen/bruederchen-und-schwesterchen-original.md), [Spanish](https://talerie.com/es/cuentos/hermanito-y-hermanita-original.md), [Polish](https://talerie.com/pl/bajki/braciszek-i-siostrzyczka-original.md)
- Author's country: Germany (https://talerie.com/en/tales/country/germany)
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q513544
- Tale type: ATU 450 (per Wikidata)
- Source: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 7. Auflage (1857) (https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Brüderchen_und_Schwesterchen_(1857))
- Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 7. Auflage (1857) — original: author died 1859/1863 (+70 passed)
- License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)