Rumpelstiltskin
A miller's boast, a straw-filled room, and the little man whose name was the only thing he never thought to hide
Page 1
Once upon a time there was a poor miller who had one daughter, and he was very proud of her. One day it happened that he came to speak with the king, and to make himself seem important he said, "I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold." The king, who loved gold more than almost anything, pricked up his ears at once. "That is an art which pleases me well," he said. "If your daughter is as skillful as you say, bring her to my castle tomorrow, and I will put her to the test." The miller, delighted at the stir he had caused, went straight home to tell his daughter the news — never once stopping to think that she could not spin straw into gold at all, and that he had just promised the king something no one in the world could do.
Page 2
The king led the miller's daughter into a small room entirely filled with straw, gave her a spinning wheel and a reel, and said, "Now set to work, and if by tomorrow morning you have not spun this straw into gold, you shall die." Then he locked the door and left her quite alone. The poor girl sat and sat, and the more she thought about it the more frightened she became, for she had no idea how straw could be spun into gold. At last she began to weep. Suddenly the door opened, and in stepped a strange little man. "Good evening, Mistress Miller's daughter," he said, "why are you crying so?" "I must spin this straw into gold," she sobbed, "and I do not know how." "What will you give me if I spin it for you?" asked the little man. "My necklace," said the girl. He took it, sat down at the wheel, and by morning all the straw was spun into shining gold.
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The king was delighted and astonished by the gold, but his greed only grew. The next night he had the miller's daughter shut into a much larger room, filled with even more straw, and gave her the same order: spin it all into gold by morning, or die. Once again she sat weeping, with no notion how to begin, until the door opened and in came the little man once more. "What will you give me this time, if I spin the straw for you?" he asked. She had nothing left to give but the ring from her finger, and she handed it to him gladly. He sat down at the wheel at once, and all through the night the wheel went whirring round, until by the time the first light touched the window, every piece of straw in that great room had been spun into gold, piled high and gleaming in the lantern light.
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On the third night the king took the miller's daughter to a room larger than the first two put together, with straw piled almost to the ceiling. "Spin all this into gold tonight," he said, "and I will make you my wife." He thought to himself, though she is only a miller's daughter, I shall never find a richer wife in the whole world. When he had gone and locked the door, the little man appeared a third time and asked what she would give him now. "I have nothing left to give," she said, for her necklace and ring were already gone. "Then promise me," said the little man, "that when you are queen, you will give me your first child." The miller's daughter did not know what else might happen, and in her trouble she promised it. So the little man spun the straw into gold once more, and in the morning everything in the room glittered from floor to ceiling.
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True to his word, when morning came the king found the great room filled with gold from floor to ceiling, and just as he had promised, he married the miller's daughter. She was indeed the most beautiful and the richest bride he could have found in the whole kingdom, and so, in a short time, she became queen. Trumpets sounded through the castle, the great hall was hung with banners, and long tables were set with food and wine for everyone to celebrate. For a while the miller's daughter thought no more of the little man or of the promise she had made him in her fear and trouble. She was happy in her new life as queen, and the memory of those three long nights of straw and gold seemed to belong to another, harder time now behind her.
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In time the queen had a beautiful baby, and she thought no more about the little man at all — until one night he suddenly stepped into her bedchamber. "Now give me what you promised," he said. The queen was horrified. She offered him all the riches of the kingdom if he would only let her keep her child, but the little man said, "No, something living is dearer to me than all the treasure in the world." Then the queen began to weep and lament so bitterly that the little man, who was not entirely without pity, felt sorry for her. "I will give you three days," he said. "If by that time you can find out my name, you shall keep your child." The queen lay awake all that night, turning over in her mind every name she had ever heard, determined to find some way to save her baby.
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The next morning, the queen sent for her most trusted huntsman and told him everything — about the little man, the straw and the gold, and the promise she had made. "Ride out across the whole kingdom," she told him, "and bring me back every name you can find, however strange or ordinary, for my child's life depends on it." The huntsman set out at once, riding first to the nearest villages, asking farmers and travelers for every name they knew. He came back that evening with a long list — Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, and every other name he could gather — but when the queen recited them to the little man that night, one by one, to each one he only said, "No, that is not my name," and shook his head.
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On the third day, the huntsman rode deep into the forest where he had never gone before, following a narrow track past old mossy oaks and tangled thickets. Just as the sun was going down, he came to a little hill at the edge of a clearing, and there, in front of a small house built into the hillside, a fire was burning. Around the fire, in the most comical way, hopped a strange little man, dancing on one leg and singing to himself in a high, merry voice: "Today I bake, tomorrow I brew, the next I'll fetch the queen's child too. Oh, how glad I am that nobody knows that Rumpelstiltskin is my name!" The huntsman could hardly believe his luck. He noted the name carefully, turned his horse, and rode as fast as he could back toward the castle to tell the queen.
Page 9
The huntsman reached the castle just before the third day was up and told the queen the name he had heard sung in the forest. That evening, when the little man came to the nursery to claim the child, the queen pretended at first not to know, and asked him teasingly, "Is your name perhaps Conrad?" "No," said the little man. "Is your name perhaps Harry?" "No," he said again, grinning, certain he could not be found out. "Then perhaps," said the queen slowly, watching his face, "your name is Rumpelstiltskin?" The little man's grin vanished at once. "The devil told you that! The devil told you that!" he screamed, stamping his foot on the floor in such a terrible rage that it went right through the floorboards.
Page 10
In his fury at being found out, the little man stamped his foot so hard into the ground that it split open right beneath him, and with a last furious shriek he sank down and down out of sight, swallowed up by the earth, and was never seen in that kingdom again. The queen ran at once to gather up her baby, laughing and crying all at once, and carried the child out into the garden to show the king, who came hurrying out from the great hall when he heard the news. From that day on, the queen kept her child safe beside her always, and the kingdom returned to its ordinary, peaceful ways — the straw rooms long since swept clean, the gold long since spent and resettled, and nothing left of the little man at all but the crack in the earth where he had gone down, which slowly, over the following spring, closed over and grew green with grass.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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