RUMPELSTILTSKIN

Once upon a time, in a distant kingdom, there was a hardworking but very poor miller who, as it happened, had a very clever and beautiful daughter. Now, one day the king came by, and to make himself seem important, the foolish miller said, “Sir, my daughter can spin straw into gold!”

The king doubted that. “Hmm,” he said, “then bring your daughter to the castle in the morning, and I shall see for myself.”

The next morning, as the sun rose bright, the miller’s daughter was led into a room in the castle. Shocks of straw were stacked about, and in the midst of it all was a spinning wheel. The king said, “Your father told me you can spin gold from straw. Good, then. Spin all of this straw into gold by the day’s end. If you fail, you will meet a terrible fate!” He slammed the door shut and locked it with a key. “I will be back in the morning to see for myself.”

The miller’s daughter burst into tears, for she was alone and scared and knew nothing of spinning straw into gold! But as she sat weeping, the locked door creaked open and a strange little man appeared.

“Good morning, Mistress Miller, why do you weep so?”

“Oh,” she said. “I am commanded to spin this pile of straw into gold, but I don’t know how, and I fear what will happen if I don’t.”

The strange little man asked, “What will you give me if I spin it for you, mistress?”

 

“My . . . my . . . necklace!” she said.

The odd little fellow snatched the necklace away and began spinning the straw. Whirr, whirr, whirr, he spun the wheel and the straw so fast, the room was soon filled with gold.

As the sun rose the next morning, the king appeared as promised and was amazed to find all the straw had been spun into gold. Oh, he was pleased, but he was also greedy. “Bring more straw to the cell,” he ordered his servants. To the miller’s daughter, he said again, “Spin this into gold by the day’s end or you will meet a terrible fate.”

Once again, the maiden broke down in tears, but just as the day before, the odd little man appeared. “What will you give me this time to do your work?” he grumbled.

“My . . . my . . . my ring,” the maid said, and again he snatched it from her and commenced to spin the straw into shining gold until the chamber was full.

When the sun rose and the rooster crowed, the king strode into the dungeon and was once again delighted to see all the gold. Now, though, his lust for gold had grown. He commanded more straw to be brought to the cell, but he also thought, I should make this girl my wife. She is only a peasant, but she is lovely and has riches beyond imagining.

So he said to her, “Spin straw into gold one last time, and I will marry you and make you my own queen.” And with that, he slammed the door and once again locked it with a key.

Ah, but just as it had happened on the two days before, the strange little man appeared and asked what the maiden would give him if he spun gold one last time.“You have it all, sir. I have nothing left to give you.”

“Well, then,” he grumbled. “Promise me your firstborn child when you marry and become queen!”

What a terrible idea! But she couldn’t think of any other way to save herself, so she agreed. The odd little man once again made the spinning wheel spin, whirr, whirr, whirr, and, surely by some magic, turned the piles of straw into piles of gold. In the morning as the rooster crowed, the king appeared, and so delighted was he that, true to his word, he married the beautiful girl before the day was done.

When a year had passed and the new queen gave birth to a precious baby girl, any thought of the odd little man and her promise to him had disappeared from her mind. But the little man had not forgotten. One day, as suddenly as he had appeared to spin gold, he appeared in the queen’s chamber. “Now you must give me your firstborn child!”

The queen sobbed. Not her precious little baby girl. She offered the little man all the riches the kingdom had to offer instead. “No,” he replied. “Nothing is more precious to me than your child.”

Now the young mother began to weep so hard that even the odd little man began to feel sorry for her. “All right then, Queen. If in three days’ time you can guess my name, I will let you keep the child.”

All night the queen tried to remember names she had heard, from books or the Bible or people in the castle. She sent a messenger out into the countryside to learn names she’d never heard of. At the end of the first day, the odd little man was back, and the queen began to recite names. She began with Kasparac, Melchiro, and Salsimic, went on to Feifer and Fester and Fawley, and so on until her list was spent. To each he danced wildly, shouting wickedly, “No, no, no!”

On the second day, the queen ordered the messenger to travel farther, even into a neighboring kingdom. Once again, the odd little man appeared, and once again, the queen recited her list of names. “Is it Jethro? Perhaps Cabadrusis? Ah, surely it is Henry or Horton or Harrowhead?” and to these names and many more, the reply was always “No, no, no!”

 

Time was running out! The queen, sick with worry, sent her messenger right over the mountains to a kingdom to which she had never gone. He learned not a single new name! But he did happen upon a little man, near a peculiar mountainside cottage, jumping about a bonfire and singing:

“Today I brew, tomorrow I bake.
Soon I’ll fetch the queen’s namesake.

Oh, how easy it is to play my game,
for Rumpelstiltskin is my name!”

That had to be it! The messenger rushed back to the castle. The queen broke out in her own dance.

At the end of that third day, the little man appeared, cocky and sure of his prize. “What is my name, Highness?” he asked.

“Is your name Felix? Durwood? Donington, Chaucer, or Charington?” The little man shook his head wildly and delightedly. Then the queen leaned forward. “Well, then, is your name, perhaps . . . Rumpelstiltskin?”

The little man flew into a rage. “The devil told you! The devil told you!” he cried, all the while stomping so violently that he stomped right through the floor and fell into a hole below. And when he was in over his hat, he reached up and pulled the boards down upon himself. And he never bothered the queen or her precious baby again.