Dear Reader,
Did you grow up being told European fairy tales to put you to sleep, or just to entertain you on a long car ride? You know, nostalgic ones from our childhood about witches kidnapping babies and tricking small children, weird tests to find out if someone was a true prince or princess, and animals trying to trick people so that they can eat them? Yeah, those ones. Like most children in America, I grew up knowing the fairy tales and nursery rhymes that my ancestors knew for generations, and I didn’t think too deeply about them as a child. I was more concerned with the princess being rescued and the hero getting the bad guy. But as an adult I probably overthink these stories as I am going down the road. Sometimes I see for the first time the grim implications of the story or wonder why the hero didn’t do this instead of that. Then sometimes I remember that I didn’t even really like a certain fairy tale, like the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.
A Rancher’s Analysis of the Classic and Creepy Fairytale: Rumpelstiltskin
Our story starts with a bragging father. Most fairy tales start with a father getting his child in some kind of mess whether by his own stupidity or inconveniently dying. (Fathers are mostly just a disposable plot device in fairytales.) This father brags in the marketplace about his daughter’s beauty and many talents, which is all true except for the fact that she is not talented enough to spin straw into gold. Now some may have just thought that this was someone who was just proud of his daughter and exaggerated a bit, but this man had a history of running his mouth, unbeknownst to the king who took his word for gold.
The king sends his guards to find the girl and throw her in a room that is full of straw from the floor to the ceiling. They also give her a spinning wheel and the king tells her if the straw is not turned to gold by the morning, she will be locked in the dungeon forever. Now this leaves me with some questions about the king. If he felt like he could just make this demand of some poor girl and it be ok, then he has some heart issues that need rethinking. The fact that he believes a girl can spin straw into gold just because of a rumor that he heard makes me question his discernment. I am also going to second guess his trading policies if he thought a whole room of straw was more valuable when turned into gold. (He obviously was knowledgeable in agriculture, and I would therefore question his ag policies too.)
With a hopeless task set before her, the young lady understandably starts crying. As she is crying, a little man appears and asks her why she is upset. After the girl explains her situation, he says he can spin the straw into gold for her if she will trade something. So, she trades him her mother’s necklace and he spins the straw into gold. Now with my knowledge of fairy tales, I would not deem it wise to make a deal with a little man who magically appeared in a locked room. Personally I would risk the dungeon, that would be easier to escape from than some magic deal, but we can cut the girl some slack. She soon learns her lesson anyways.
The next morning, the little man is gone, the room is full of gold, and the king has an even bigger itch to scratch. The following night he puts the girl in a room twice the size of the one before full of straw and furnished with a spinning wheel. This night I am sure the girl didn’t really cry, because she was probably expecting the little man to show up, which he does. This time she trades him her mother’s ring for spinning the straw. The next morning the king is once again impressed, and says if she can do it one more night, he will marry her. That night he put her in a room even bigger than the night before and leaves her to her work. But when the little man shows up, she says she has nothing to trade him. He tells her to give him her first-born son, to which she says, “Deal.” Now at this point I would have been bargaining with the little man to just get me out of the castle, because I would not want to be marrying this king with poor manners and an even poorer business model. (Maybe this was the reason he needed a wife!) But she was in a pinch and probably wasn’t sure if she had a future.
After the last night, the king marries the girl, and they develop a loving relationship. She helps him with his trade policies, and he gains a decent understanding of the market value of straw. Things seem to be golden for the couple and the kingdom; the queen even gets pregnant and has a baby. One day, while she is out walking in the garden, the little man shows up and demands the baby from her. Like any good mother she of course refuses, so the little man offers her a new deal. If she can guess his name within three days, she can keep the baby. Now this is where I would definitely stop making deals, I might pretend to agree so I could come up with a plan, but I wouldn’t play the game. Then again, this is a magic story and most magic deals are binding.
For two days the royal couple come up with lists and lists of names which are all wrong and they start to run out of time. But this is a fairy tale and the fates of fairy tales love to change things at the hopeless eleventh hour. The night before the last day, a royal soldier happens to come across the little man’s camp and hears him singing around the fire about how they will never guess his name, which is Rumpelstiltskin. Of course, the guard goes and tells the queen and when Rumpelstiltskin comes the next morning the queen guesses his name. This throws Rumpelstiltskin in a fit of rage, but since magic is binding he has to leave, even if the queen technically cheated (fairytale magic has its own rules).
The King and Queen lived happily ever after, after that. They had many children afterwards, learned better trade policies, and business dealings. And their eldest son, who took the throne after them, always had a decent idea of the market price of straw and had a strict policy of not making deals with little magic men.
Sincerely and Honestly Yours,
The Rancher’s Daughter
From the Rancher's Daughter's Desk 