Rumpelstiltskin

Once, a name so strange that no one had ever heard it held the fate of a newborn child. If no one could guess that name within three nights, the baby would have to go away with the owner of that name. It all began with a single boast.

Long ago, at the edge of a forest, there lived a miller and his daughter. The family was poor, and all year round they depended on the old mill beside the stream. One day the miller found himself standing before the king. Perhaps he wanted to seem a little special, or perhaps he simply bragged to look important. Either way, he let slip that his daughter could spin straw into shining gold thread.

When the king heard this, greed rose in him at once. He sent for the girl to come to the palace the very next day. He led her to a room piled high with golden straw, with an old spinning wheel in the middle. Before daybreak, he ordered, she must spin all of that straw into pure gold. If she failed, she would lose her life. Then he locked the door tight and walked away.

The girl sat alone among the towering heaps of straw, trembling as she looked around. She had never touched a spinning wheel in her life, let alone known how to turn straw into gold. She put her head down and sobbed.

Just then the door creaked softly open, though no one stood outside to push it. A tiny man stepped in. His face was strangely wrinkled, and his eyes glittered in the candlelight. He asked her why she was crying. When she had told him her trouble, he smiled to himself and asked what she would give him if he helped her through the night. The girl quickly took off the necklace she was wearing and handed it to him.

The little man sat down at the spinning wheel. He worked the treadle, and the whole room filled with its steady sound, whirr, whirr, whirr. One bundle of straw after another turned into spools of glittering gold thread. They piled up higher and higher around his feet until it was nearly dawn.

The king walked in and saw the whole room gleaming with gold. He was overjoyed, but his greed grew right along with his joy. He took the girl to another room, piled with even more straw, and repeated exactly the same threat as the night before. That night the little man appeared again and asked again what she would pay. This time she gave him the ring from her finger. Once more he sat at the wheel, once more it hummed until morning, and once more the room was flooded with gold.

Still the greedy king was not satisfied. He brought her to an even bigger room of straw. But this time he made a promise. If she could do it one last time, he would marry her and make her his queen. That night the little man came back, just as he had twice before. But the girl had nothing left to give. The necklace and the ring were both gone.

The little man looked at her for a long while. Then he named his price. She must promise that later, once she was queen, her first child would belong to him. The girl looked at the towering straw in front of her and at the locked door. She thought that perhaps by then things would be different. With nowhere left to turn, she nodded and agreed. The little man sat down at the wheel once more and spun the last of the straw into gold.

The king kept his word and married her, and she became queen. Not long after, the queen gave birth to a child. Holding her baby in her arms, she nearly forgot the promise she had made that night long ago, in the room full of straw.

But the little man had not forgotten. One day he suddenly appeared right in front of the queen and reminded her of her promise, word for word. The queen froze. Then, terrified, she begged him to take all the gold, silver and jewels in the whole kingdom in exchange for her child.

The little man shook his head. A living being, he said, was worth more than all the treasures in the world, and he would not trade. But as he watched the queen hold her baby and sob, his face softened a little. Very well, he said, he would give her three nights. If in those three nights she could guess his true name, she could keep her child. If not, the child would go with him.

At once the queen sent people out across the whole kingdom to collect every kind of name and bring them back to her. On the first night, when the little man arrived, she read out one name after another, the familiar ones and the ones that sounded very odd. Each time she finished a name, the little man shook his head with a sneer and said that was not it. The second night went the same way. The list was longer, and far stranger than the night before, but the little man still shook his head and told her to guess again.

On the third day, the queen's messenger was still traveling far and wide in search of more names. On his way back, passing the foot of a high mountain at the edge of the forest, he suddenly saw firelight flickering in a clearing. The fire burned in front of a tiny house. Beside the fire, the little man was hopping about on one leg. As he hopped, he sang in a voice that rang through the whole empty forest.

And in that very song he called out his own true name, a name no one had ever heard before. It was Rumpelstiltskin.

The messenger heard every word. He hurried all the way back to the palace, reaching it just before full dark, and told the queen everything.

That evening the little man appeared before the queen again and asked whether she had guessed his name. The queen pretended to hesitate. First she tried a few other names, some ordinary and some she had never tried before. The little man still shook his head, and he sounded far more pleased with himself than on the two nights before. At last the queen looked him straight in the eye and asked slowly, "Is your name Rumpelstiltskin?"

The little man went stiff. His face changed color, full of shock and blazing rage. "Only magic could reveal my name," he shouted. "No one could ever find that out alone." In his fury he stamped one foot hard on the floor. The ground beneath him suddenly gave way and split open into a dark hole. The little man sank slowly down into it and vanished from the room. No one ever saw him again.

The queen held her child close. The baby slept peacefully in its mother's arms, knowing nothing of the long, anxious nights just past. Later, two German scholars, the Brothers Grimm, wrote this story down in a collection of old tales, song and all. The name that once held a child's fate is now only a story, told by the fire each evening. And in the old straw room, the spinning wheel now stands silent in a corner under a layer of dust. No one sits there anymore to spin straw into gold.