Of tales concerned primarily with the experiences of faithful sisters, the best known are undoubtedly Little Brother and Little Sister (Type 450) [126] and The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers (Type 451). The latter story forms the basis of three of the tales in the Grimm collection. [127] In spite of the minor variations of treatment thus indicated, the tale-type is well defined in all its major incidents. A number of brothers (sometimes seven, sometimes twelve) have a younger sister. The boys are compelled to flee from home. In some versions the parents have promised to kill the sons if a daughter is born to them; the brothers discover this and when the mother lets them know by a sign that a girl has been born, they leave home. Sometimes the reason for the flight from home is the fear the boys have for their father or stepmother. The next stage of the story is the transformation of the brothers into ravens. This occurs sometimes because of a wish of the father or stepmother and sometimes because their younger sister has plucked twelve (seven) flowers from an enchanted garden. The sister knows of the transformation and undertakes to find them. She asks her direction of the sun, moon, and stars, and finds the brothers on a glass mountain. [128] In some versions she succeeds in disenchanting them there, but in others she is compelled to remain speechless for a certain number of years and to make shirts. In these latter versions the speechless girl is seen by a king, who marries her. On the birth of her children, they are stolen, and she is accused of killing them. [129] The conclusion [p. 111] of the story is perhaps its most characteristic part: as she is about to be executed, her period of silence elapses; the raven brothers fly down and are disenchanted and all is cleared up. Sometimes the disenchantment of the brothers takes place when she throws over the head of each of them the shirt she has been making for him.

The story has a long literary history. It was used as early as 1190 in the Dolopathos of Johannes de Alta Silva and it became connected with the legend of the Swan Knight. [130] It appears in Basile's Pentamerone, and this may indicate the presence of an oral Italian version in the early seventeenth century. However that may be, the tale is included in folktale collections from all parts of Europe, in considerably more than two hundred versions in all. Except for one Armenian variant and a borrowing from the French by the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia, the tale has not been reported outside of Europe. [131]