Is this the correct tale of the story of the tortoise and the hare, or am I mistaking it for another one?

That’s not the way I remember it at all.

@smudges the German version might have been written to be more violent.

^^ Oh ok, never thought of that!

@ragingloli I don’t remember it that way at all. Tortoise and the Hare was an Aesop Fable. As such, it had a moral. In this case it is either that slow and steady wins the race or overconfidence can hurt you in the end.

What is the moral in your version?

It’s been a while since I’ve thought about the tortoise & the hare. In the version that I grew up with, the rabbit was bullying the tortoise for being so slow & challenged the tortoise to a race. I don’t remember the stakes at the end of the race. The tortoise accepts the challenge & the race begins. The rabbit took off full speed thinking that there was NO way the tortoise could possibly keep up. About half way through the race the rabbit tires & lays down for a nap. The tortoise keeps on going even after seeing the rabbit napping. He steadily stays focused on his goal of the finish line. When the rabbit awakens, he realizes that the tortoise had passed him sleeping & crossed the finish line to win the race.

My Mother used the fable to remind me & my brother to NEVER give up. Just because we think we can’t win is NO reason to stop!!! Coaches used it to remind their players that you should pace yourself because going full blast straight out of the gate will only slow you down when you need it most!!! I remember hearing for most of my childhood that slow & steady wins the race.

I do remember an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where there were 10 tortoises were tricking Bugs because he had placed a $10 bet on his own abilities. No matter how fast he ran, there was a tortoise in front of him. He loses & pays the original tortoise the $10. The original tortoise just wanted to teach Bugs a lesson & he gave each participating tortoise their split of $1 each. NOBODY died & was only tricked into thinking they lost!!!

The moral clearly is that in an unfair competition, you do not play fair.

Anyway, turns out the version I know was a race between a hare and a hedgehog. But the other hedgehog was not a twin, but the hedgehog’s wife, which the hare could not tell the difference between. The hedgehog represented the peasantry, while the hare represented the landed gentry/aristocracy.
So the lesson was class unity for the common folk, and resistance against the upper classes.

@ragingloli I’ve also heard the version of the Tortoise and the Hare where the Tortoise just didn’t play, realizing how silly the race was. But that was an entirely different version of what I learned growing up.

The original version (Æsop’s Fable) has the tortoise winning by sheer determination, as he keeps plodding along while the hare spurts ahead, stops for awhile, and then resumes. OP’s version at first reminded me of the Warner Brothers/Looney Tunes 1941 version featuring Bugs Bunny vs. Cecil the Turtle