Rumpelstiltskin

Hello readers!

If you missed my announcement on Friday, my latest book is now out and available for purchase!  Sleeping Love is a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.  An amnesiac princess, a surly knight, and a bumbling prince - what could possibly go wrong?  Hijinks ensue, of course.  If you're interested, Sleeping Love can be purchased here in both paperback and ebook format.  Your support means the world to me!

And now, on with our tale!

One of the Germanic fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm was Rumpelstiltskin.  At first glance, this story might not seem like it has all that great of a mom.  Ladies, please, do not trade your unborn child to a strange man with magic!  Nothing good will come of it.  For as any fan of Once Upon a Time will tell you...

There was once a poor miller who boasted to the king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king demanded proof of this, and had the daughter locked in a room full of straw overnight. The girl was threatened with death if she could not spin it into gold before the morning.

Unable to do what her father had boasted of, the girl wept. As she cried, a little man appeared in the room. He asked why she was crying. When she explained what had happened, the man promised to win the straw into gold for her in exchange for payment. She gave him her necklace, and by morning the room was full of spun gold.

But the king was a greedy man, and he was not satisfied. He locked the girl in an even larger room full of more straw. She was ordered to spin it all to gold before morning, or she would be killed. Once again she began to cry – and again, the little man appeared. In exchange for her ring, he soon had all of the straw spun into gold. The king again was filled with greed, and locked her in the largest room of all, filled with straw. On the third night she had nothing to give the little man when he appeared. He offered to repeat his spinning trick in exchange for something she did not yet possess: the child she and the king would bear.

Since the girl could not imagine herself as queen, she agreed. The straw was all transformed into gold. When the king arrived the next morning, he made her his queen. The bargain with the little man was mostly forgotten, until a child was born to the royal duo. He appeared in her room one night and reminded the queen of her promise. Unwilling to part with her child, she begged and pleaded. The little man offered her a bet. If she could guess his name in three days, he would leave her and the child alone. If she could not, the child would be his.

For three days the queen thought of every name she could and quizzed the little man – but none belonged to him. During this time messengers swept the kingdom, searching for his name. One happened to be near the little man's home. He overheard the man cackling about how he, Rumpelstiltskin, had bested the queen.

Armed with this knowledge, the queen confronted the little man when he returned to claim her child. She called him Rumpelstiltskin. Having lost his own bet, Rumpelstiltskin's fury was so intense that he tore himself in two. The queen and her child were safe.

Trading a child off to a stranger is definitely not a great example of motherhood.  However, once the child was born the queen loved the baby with all of her heart.  She went to great lengths to protect her child from Rumpelstiltskin.  Her actions make her a good mom (at least in my opinion).

I'll be back next week with another fairy tale without dead moms (or wicked stepmothers)!  See you then!