[Slow string instruments play and fade to be heard under The Narrator]
Narrator: Hello. Welcome to Mythical, the podcast that wanders the dark and fantastical pages of fairy tales. This season, I’m reading the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Today’s story is one full of tricks in honor of the month of October and Halloween. It is “Rumpelstiltskin.” Shout out to This Film is Lit, on Instagram, for correctly guessing today’s story. This Film is Lit is a podcast that talks all about books and their film adaptions. Thanks for playing along! Before I begin, I’d like to introduce this week’s podcast partner: The Lift. [Ominous music] Female Child with a Voice that Echoes: How many choices do you make in a day? In a year? In a lifetime? How many really matter in the end? Do you agonize over the small ones and avoid the important ones? Here on my lift, in this place where all things are possible, your choices matter. Your choices require sacrifice. Will you make the right one? Choose to listen to The Lift in iTunes, Tune In, Stitcher, and now iHeart Radio. [Ominous music fades] [Strings play under the Narrator] Narrator: If that audio drama sounds intriguing, go give them a listen after this episode. Now that you’ve been introduced to The Lift, let’s begin today’s fairy tale. I’m The Narrator, and I’ll begin as all good stories should with once upon a time. [Chimes to indicate the start of the story] Narrator: Once upon a time there was a miller who was poor, but he had a beautiful daughter. Now, one day he happened to talk to the king and said, Narrator as the Miller [Feeble and slow]: I have a daughter who knows the art of transforming straw into gold. Narrator: So the king had the miller’s daughter summoned to him right away and ordered her to spin all the straw in a room into gold in one night and if she couldn’t do this, she would die. Then she was locked in the room where she sat and wept. For the life of her, she didn’t have the slightest inkling of how to spin straw into gold. Narrator’s Comments: So the king is going to kill this poor innocent girl if she doesn’t spin any straw into gold, which just goes to show that her father is a liar, so shouldn’t the king be punishing the father instead? And how did the miller happen to be talking to the king one day? That’s very random, considering he’s poor and a miller. Narrator: All of a sudden a little man entered the room and said, Narrator as Rumpelstiltskin [Sinister]: What will you give me if I spin everything into gold? Narrator: She took off her necklace and gave it to the little man, Narrator’s Comments: Well, she doesn’t seem frightened by a random little man walking into a room that she’s locked in. Narrator: And he did what he promised. The next morning the king found the entire room filled with gold, but because of this his heart grew even greedier, and he locked the miller’s daughter in another room full of straw that was even larger than the first, and she was to spin it all into gold. Then the little man came again, and she gave him a ring from one of her fingers, and everything was spun into gold. However, on the third night the king had her locked again in another room that was larger than the other two and filled with straw. Narrator’s Comments: Because her proving herself twice was not nearly enough. Three time’s the charm! Is that where it comes from? Third time’s the charm? Spin these three rooms into gold and you won’t die. Third time’s the charm! Narrator as the King [deep and stately]: If you succeed, you shall become my wife. Narrator: He said. Then the little man came again and spoke. Rumpelstiltskin: I’ll do everything for you one more time, but you must promise me your firstborn child that you have with the king. Narrator’s Comments: Wow! First born. Go straight from a ring on a finger, a piece of jewelry, to give me the child you will push from your body. That escalated quite quickly. Narrator: Out of desperation she promised him what he wanted, and when the king saw once again how the straw had been spun into gold, he took the miller’s beautiful daughter for his wife. Soon thereafter the queen gave birth, and the little man appeared before her and demanded the promised child. However, the queen offered the little man all that she could and all the treasures of the kingdom if he would let her keep her child, but it was all in vain. Then the little man said, Rumpelstiltskin: In three days I’ll come again to fetch the child. But if you know my name by then, you shall keep your child. Narrator’s Comments: What an odd game to play. I wonder how many times Rumpelstiltskin has played this game with someone. And how did know she was locked up in a room and needed help? And how did he know he could leverage her desperation into something that he wanted. What kind of creature is Rumpelstiltskin? There are so many questions. Narrator: During the first and second nights the queen tried to think of the little man’s name, but she wasn’t able to come up with a name and became complete depressed. On the third day, however, the king returned home from hunting and told her, King: I was out hunting the day before yesterday, and when I went deep into the dark forest, I came upon a small cottage, and in front of the house there was a ridiculous little man, hopping around as if he only had one leg and screeching: Rumpelstiltskin: Today I’ll brew, tomorrow I’ll bake. Soon I’ll have the queen’s namesake. Oh, how hard it is to play my game, for Rumpelstiltskin is my name! Narrator’s Comments: Did she tell the king there was a many who was trying to steal their son all because of a promise that she made? She obviously isn’t going to tell the king that all of the rooms full of straw were spun into gold by this little man, but she doesn’t have to tell him the specifics. She can just tell him there is a little man threatening their family, and either the king could help or he would know. Or is this just one of those random stories where the husband goes out hunting and he comes back and he’s like, “oh darling you won’t believe what happened, it was the craziest thing!” Narrator: When the queen heard this, she rejoiced, and when the dangerous little man came, he asked, Rumpelstiltskin: What’s my name, Your Highness? Narrator: She responded first by guessing. Narrator as the Queen [Soft]: Is your name Conrand? Rumpelstiltskin: No. Queen: Is your name Henry? Rumpelstiltskin: No. Queen: Is your name Rumpelstiltskin? Rumpelstiltskin: The devil told you that! Narrator: The little man screamed, and he ran off full of anger and never returned. [Chimes to signal the end of the story] [Strings play softly under The Narrator] Narrator: The moral of today’s story is don’t make deals with sketchy little men. Also, don’t put your name in a song if you don’t want people to find it out what it is. It says the Rumpelstiltskin runs away and never returns, but does he go off and try and play that game with someone else? It doesn’t say that Rumpelstiltskin would eat the human child, but it is inferred, and for him to have lived as long as he did we may have to assume that he has eaten several children. The final published version of Rumpelstiltskin is my favorite of the two, mostly for how it ends. But first, I’ll go over some over differences that the Brothers Grimm put into the final version of Rumpelstiltskin. As with most of the other final published works of the Brothers Grimm there is more dialogue between the miller’s daughter and Rumpelstiltskin, and the miller and the king. It also feels very over dramatic with the miller talking with the king and telling him that his daughter spins straw into gold to seem more important. The king is very pleased by this art and tells the miller’s daughter that if she can’t do it then she MUST die. And the miller’s daughter is at her wit’s end when she is locked in the room and can’t figure out how to spin straw into gold. There is more of a description of how Rumpelstiltskin works through the night: spinning the wheel three times round and then having one spool full of gold. When the third night comes, in the final version, Rumpelstiltskin asks the miller’s daughter what she will give him, and in this version she says that she has nothing left, and that is when Rumpelstiltskin asks for the child. Where in the first, he asks for the child straight away. When he comes to collect the child, the miller’s daughter does offer him anything else that he would like. But he replies, “something living is more important…than all the treasures in the world,” which means he either wants a child to raise on his own, or he really doe want to eat the human child. There are still three days for the new queen to figure out Rumpelstiltskin’s name. In the later version, Rumpelstiltskin comes back to the queen on each of the three nights. During the first two, the queen does come up with several names such as: Kasper, Balzer, Ribsofbeef, Muttonchops, or Lacedleg. She also sends out messengers and servants to go around the countryside and the village gathering all the names of all the people so she may guess every single one. I feel as though the queen in the first story should have at least one name to guess: Linus, Richard, or any sort of combination of letters and syllables, which is what Rumpelstiltskin sounds like anyway. I can’t quite believe she couldn’t come up with a single name. In this version and the last, there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the amount of names the queen can guess. In the later version, the first names that the queen guesses on day three are different. Rather than Conrad and Henry, she guesses Kunz and Heinz. Rather than the king coming back to the queen and saying that he had found the little man screaming his own name, in the later version it is a messenger, and the messenger is on a mountaintop and sees Rumpelstiltskin in front of his cottage, rather than the king going into a deep forest. The ending of this one is quite different, and it truly does make me laugh. After she correctly guesses his name he does not simply run away. He stamps so ferociously with his right foot that his leg goes deep into the ground, up to his waist, and he is so angry that he grabs his other leg and pulls, but rips himself in two. That’s one way to make sure that Rumpelstiltskin never bothers anyone ever again. Today’s story was read from The Complete First Edition. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of The Brothers Grimm. Translated and Edited by Jack Zipes. If you have a fairy tale you would like me to read aloud, you can email me at [email protected]. You can follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at Mythicalpodcast, where I post behind the scenes, updates, and clues to each week’s episode. If you like the show, please leave a rating and a review wherever you listen to podcasts, as I greatly appreciate it and it helps other people find the show. Thank you for joining me today. I’m the Narrator and this is Mythical. [Music swells and fades]
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2019
Categories |