The Singing Bone is a German fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 collected by the Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

, tale number 28.

It is Aarne-Thompson type 780.

This tale is also found in ballad form, in The Twa Sisters

The Twa Sisters

"The Twa Sisters" is a murder ballad that recounts the tale of a girl drowned by her sister. It is first known to have appeared on a broadside in 1656 as "The Miller and the King's Daughter." At least 21 English variants exist under several names, including "Minnorie" or "Binnorie", "The Cruel...

, where the siblings are sisters instead of brothers.

Synopsis

A boar lay waste to a country, and two brothers set out to kill it. The younger met a little man who gave him a spear, and with it, he killed the boar. Carrying the body off, he met his brother, who had stayed to drink until he felt brave. The brother lured him in, gave him drink, and asked how he succeeded, and the innocent younger brother told him. They set out to deliver the body to the king, and the older killed the younger on a bridge, and buried his body under it. He took the boar himself to the king, and married the king's daughter.

One day a shepherd saw a bone under the bridge and made a mouthpiece for a horn, but then the horn began to sing on its own. The shepherd took this marvel to the king. On hearing the song the horn sang, the king had the younger brother's skeleton dug up. The older brother could not deny murdering him and was executed.