Array The Brothers Grimm - Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm - A New English Version

The king said to the miller, ‘I like the sound of that. If your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her to the castle tomorrow, and we’ll see what she can do.’

When the girl was brought to him, he took her to a room that was filled with straw right up to the ceiling. He gave her a spinning wheel and several spools and said, ‘There you are. Work all day and all night, and if you haven’t spun all this straw into gold by tomorrow morning, you’ll be put to death.’

Then he himself locked the door, and she was left there all alone.

The poor girl sat there with no idea what to do. Of course she couldn’t spin straw into gold, and the longer she sat there the more frightened she became, and finally she began to cry.

Then suddenly the door opened, and in came a little man.

‘Good day, Miss Miller, and what are you blubbering for?’

‘I’m supposed to spin this straw into gold, and I don’t know how to do it, and if I don’t they’re going to kill me!’

‘Oh. Well, what will you give me if I do it for you?’

‘My necklace!’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’

He peered at the necklace and nodded, and put it in his pocket, and then he sat down at the spinning wheel. He set to work so fast she could hardly see his hands. Whir! whir! whir! went the wheel, and the first spool was full. He put another one on, and whir! whir! whir! and that one was full too. It went on like that till morning, and then all the straw was spun, and all the spools were filled with gold. Then the little man left without another word.

At sunrise the king came and unlocked the door. He was pleased to see all that gold, and a bit surprised, too, that the miller’s daughter had managed to do it. But it wasn’t enough for him, so he took her to another room, even larger, that was filled with straw like the first one.

‘Spin all this in one night, or lose your life!’ he said, and locked the door.

Once again the poor girl began to cry, and once again the door opened, and there was the little man.

‘What will you give me if I spin all this into gold for you?’

‘The ring from my finger!’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’

He squinted at it, and put it in his pocket. Then he began to spin. The wheel went whir! whir! whir! all night long, and by morning all the straw was turned into gold.

The king was even more delighted, but he still hadn’t got enough gold. He took the miller’s daughter to an even larger room filled with straw like the others, and said, ‘Spin this into gold, and I’ll make you my wife.’ He was thinking: ‘She’s only a miller’s daughter, but I’ll never find a richer wife in all the world.’

When the girl was alone, the little man opened the door a third time.

‘What will you give me?’

‘I’ve got nothing left!’

‘Then you’ve got to promise me that when you’re queen you’ll give me your first child.’

‘Well, who can tell what’ll happen in the future?’ she thought, and she promised the little man what he asked for.

He set to work, and by the morning all the straw had been spun into gold. When the king saw it he kept his promise, and the miller’s lovely daughter became the queen.

A year later she brought a beautiful child into the world. She’d put the little man out of her mind, but all of sudden there he was.

‘Now you must give me what you promised!’ he said.

‘Oh, no, no, please, anything but that! I’ll give you all the wealth in the kingdom.’

‘What would I want that for, when I can spin gold from straw? I want a living baby, that’s what I want.’

The queen began to cry and weep so much that the little man felt sorry for her.

‘All right, I’ll give you three days,’ he said. ‘You find out what my name is in three days, and you can keep your child.’

The queen sat up all night trying to remember every name she’d ever heard. She sent a messenger into the town to ask for any unusual names, and wrote down everything he came back with. When the little man returned, she began:

‘Is it Caspar?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Melchior?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Balthazar?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

She went on through all the names the messenger brought back, and each time the little man said, ‘No, that’s not my name.’

The second day she sent the messenger out into the country. There must be some strange names out there, she thought, and there were. When the little man came back she tried them out.

‘Is it Pickleburster?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Hankydank?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it McMustardplaster?’

But he always answered, ‘No, that’s not my name.’

She was getting desperate. On the third day, though, the messenger came back with a strange tale.

‘I haven’t heard any more names of the sort I found yesterday, your majesty, but when I was near the top of the mountain in the thickest part of the forest, I saw a little house. There was a fire burning in front of it, and a little man — you should have seen him, he looked absurd — was dancing about in front of it, hopping on one leg and singing out:

Well, you can imagine how pleased the queen was to hear that.

When the little man came in he was rubbing his hands together and hopping with glee and saying, ‘Now, milady, what’s my name? Eh? Eh?’

‘Is it Tom?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it Dick?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Is it — let me see — Harry?’

‘No, that’s not my name.’

‘Well, I wonder if it could be… Rumpelstiltskin?’

‘The Devil told you that! The Devil told you that!’ the little man yelled, and in his fury he stamped his right foot so hard that he drove it into the ground right up to his waist. Then he took hold of his left foot with both hands and tore himself in two.

Tale type:ATU 500, ‘The Name of the Supernatural Helper’

Source:a story told to the Grimm brothers by Dortchen Wild

Similar stories:Katharine M. Briggs: ‘Duffy and the Devil’, ‘Peerifool’, ‘Titty Tod’, ‘Tom Tit Tot’, ‘Whuppity Stoorie’ ( Folk Tales of Britain )

No selection from Grimm would be complete without ‘Rumpelstiltskin’. The brothers revised the tale after the first edition, of 1812, mainly in the direction of greater elaboration: for example, in the first edition Rumpelstiltskin simply runs away angrily once his name is discovered, instead of bisecting himself in the ingenious manner described here, which comes from the edition of 1819. Stories with a repetitive structure can take a fair amount of elaboration.

Spinning was a household occupation of great economic importance before the Industrial Revolution put paid to that mode of subsistence. A wife who could spin well was a prize worth having, even (in a story anyway) for a king. We still talk about spinning a yarn when we mean telling a story, though the connection is long lost.

The English ‘Tom Tit Tot’ (from Folk Tales of Britain ), with its greedy, slatternly, sexy heroine, is to my mind an even better version of this tale.

In the old days there was a king who had a beautiful pleasure garden behind his palace, and in this garden there was a tree that bore golden apples. Every year, once the apples were ripe, the king had them counted and numbered, but one year, the very morning after the count was taken, one was found to be missing. The head gardener reported this to the king, and as a result the king ordered the tree to be guarded every night.