Monday, September 25, 2017

Grimm Reviews – “The Lambkin and the Little Fish”




“The Lambkin and the Little Fish”

There were a brother and sister who loved each other dearly.  Their mother was dead, and they had a step-mother who did not like them.  One day, as the two were playing with other kids around a pond that came up to the house, the step-mother – who knew about witchcraft – bewitched them turning the brother into a fish and the sister into a lamb.

Time passed, and then one day visitors showed up at the house.  The step-mother told the cook to kill the lamb for their guests.  The cook got the lamb, but then he saw a fish swimming in the pond.  He heard the two talk of how sad they were, so he killed another sheep and fed it to the guests and took the lamb and fish to a “good peasant woman.”

This peasant woman was the foster-mother of the girl, and took them to a wise woman who blessed the lamb and fish so they returned to their human form.  The wise woman then took them to live alone – but happy – in a hut in the forest.

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What did the other kids do when their playmates turned into a fish and a lamb?

What did their father do?  Did he never ask what happened to his kids?

Why a fish and a lamb?

If you can turn unwanted kids into fish and lambs, why wait to … destroy the evidence?

Wait, the girl had a foster-mother?  A foster-mother who didn’t take the kids back once they were human again? 

Wait, this evil step-mother turns these kids into a fish and lamb and thinks she’s had the lamb killed, and she gets away with it?

What was the point of this story?

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