Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin
Rumpelstiltskin
	Illustration from Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book (1889)
Folk tale
Name	Rumpelstiltskin
Also known as	Tom Tit Tot; Päronskaft; Repelsteeltje; Cvilidreta; Rampelník; Tűzmanócska; Eiman;
Country	Germany; United Kingdom; Netherlands; Czech Republic; Hungary;
Published in	Grimm's Fairy Tales; English Fairy Tales;

"Rumpelstiltskin" (/ˌrʌmpəlˈstɪltskɪn/ RUMP-əl-STILT-skin;^[1] ‹See Tfd›German: Rumpelstilzchen pronounced [ʁʊmpl̩ʃtiːltsçn̩]) is a German fairy tale^[2] collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales.^[2] The story is about an imp who spins straw into gold in exchange for a woman's firstborn child.^[2]

Plot

In order to appear superior, a miller brags to the king and people of his kingdom by claiming his daughter can spin straw into gold.^{[note 1]} The king calls for the girl, locks her up in a tower room filled with straw and a spinning wheel, and demands she spin the straw into gold by morning or he will have her killed.^{[note 2]} When she has given up all hope, a little imp-like man appears in the room and spins the straw into gold in return for her necklace of glass beads. The next morning the king takes the girl to a larger room filled with straw to repeat the feat, and the imp once again spins, in return for the girl's glass ring. On the third day the girl is taken to an even larger room filled with straw, and told by the king that if she can spin all this straw into gold he will marry her, but if she cannot she will be executed. While she is sobbing alone in the room, the little imp appears again and promises that he can spin the straw into gold for her, but the girl tells him she has nothing left with which to pay. The strange creature suggests she pay him with her first child. She reluctantly agrees, and he sets about spinning the straw into gold.^{[note 3]}

The king keeps his promise to marry the miller's daughter. But when their first child is born, the imp returns to claim his payment. She offers him all the wealth she has to keep the child, but the imp has no interest in her riches. He finally agrees to give up his claim to the child if she can guess his name within three days.^{[note 4]}

The queen's many guesses fail. But before the final night, she wanders into the woods^{[note 5]} searching for him and comes across his remote mountain cottage and watches, unseen, as he hops about his fire and sings. He reveals his name in his song's lyrics: "tonight tonight, my plans I make, tomorrow tomorrow, the baby I take. The queen will never win the game, for Rumpelstiltskin is my name".

When the imp comes to the queen on the third day, after first feigning ignorance, she reveals his name, Rumpelstiltskin, and he loses his temper at the loss of their bargain. Versions vary about whether he accuses the devil or witches of having revealed his name to the queen. In the 1812 edition of the Brothers Grimm tales, Rumpelstiltskin then "ran away angrily, and never came back". The ending was revised in an 1857 edition to a more gruesome ending wherein Rumpelstiltskin "in his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and tore himself in two". Other versions have Rumpelstiltskin driving his right foot so far into the ground that he creates a chasm and falls into it, never to be seen again. In the oral version originally collected by the Brothers Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin flies out of the window on a cooking ladle.

History

According to researchers at Durham University and the NOVA University Lisbon, the origins of the story can be traced back to around 4,000 years ago.^{[undue weight? – discuss]}^[3]^[4] A possible early literary reference to the tale appears in Dionysius of Halicarnassus's Roman Antiquities, in the 1st century AD.^[5]

Variants

The same story pattern appears in numerous other cultures: Tom Tit Tot^[6] in the United Kingdom (from English Fairy Tales, 1890, by Joseph Jacobs); The Lazy Beauty and her Aunts in Ireland (from The Fireside Stories of Ireland, 1870 by Patrick Kennedy); Whuppity Stoorie in Scotland (from Robert Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1826); Gilitrutt in Iceland;^[7]^[8] جعيدان (Joaidane "He who talks too much") in Arabic; Хламушка (Khlamushka "Junker") in Russia; Rumplcimprcampr, Rampelník or Martin Zvonek in the Czech Republic; Martinko Klingáč in Slovakia; "Cvilidreta" in Croatia; Ruidoquedito ("Little noise") in South America; Pancimanci in Hungary (from 1862 folktale collection by László Arany^[9]); Daiku to Oniroku (大工と鬼六 "The carpenter and the ogre") in Japan and Myrmidon in France.

An earlier literary variant in French was penned by Mme. L'Héritier, titled Ricdin-Ricdon.^[10] A version of it exists in the compilation Le Cabinet des Fées, Vol. XII. pp. 125–131.

The Cornish tale of Duffy and the Devil plays out an essentially similar plot featuring a "devil" named Terry-top.^[11]

All these tales are classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as tale type ATU 500, "The Name of the Supernatural Helper".^[12]^[13] According to scholarship, it is popular in "Denmark, Finland, Germany and Ireland".^[14]

Name

Illustration by Walter Crane from *Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm* (1886)

The name Rumpeltiltskin as literally "little rattle stilt" is the usually given explanation of the name. The ending -chen in the German form Rumpelstiltschen is a diminutive cognate to English -kin.

Rumpelstilzchen is regarded as containing Stilzchen, diminutive of Stelze "stilt".^[15]^[17] This etymology seems endorsed by Hans-Jörg Uther's handbook on the Grimms Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Uther cites HdA [de] which gives the examples of Bachstelze, Wasserstelze (names of birds; stilt) as paralleling examples.^[18]^[19] However, this was not the etymology hinted at by Jacob Grimm^[20]

Harry Rand's book on this fairy suggests that Rumpel is not just a noise, but originally a crumpling noise, associated with shrunkenness and dwarfness, as apropos for the imp. So the name Rumpel-stilts is an oxymoronic juxtaposition, embodying the dichotomy of "shortness-tallness". Succinctly it may also be rendered as "crumpled stalk". ^[21]

Grimm suggested -stilt, -stiltchen from Old German stalt with some uncertainty,^[20] and did not much elaborate. Graff's dictionary indicates that Rumpelstilts, or rather the form Rumpelstilz was corrupted phonetically towards Stolz 'haughtiness', but the correct etymology points to stalt as Grimm suggested, and this goes to "stal (1)" meaning "locus, location, place" and stellen meaning to "set, place".^[22]^{[note 6]}

The meaning is similar to rumpelgeist ("rattle-ghost") or poltergeist ("rumble-ghost"), a mischievous spirit that clatters and moves household objects. The name is believed to be derived from Johann Fischart's Geschichtklitterung, or Gargantua of 1577 (a loose adaptation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel), which refers to an "amusement" for children, a children's game named "Rumpele stilt oder der Poppart". Thus a rumpelstilt or rumpelstilz was also known by such names as pophart or poppart,^[19] that makes noises by rattling posts and rapping on planks. (Other related concepts are mummarts or boggarts and hobs, which are mischievous household spirits that disguise themselves.)

Translations

Translations of the original Grimm fairy tale (KHM 55) into various languages have generally substituted different names for the dwarf whose name is Rumpelstilzchen. For some languages, a name was chosen that comes close in sound to the German name: Rumpelstiltskin or Rumplestiltskin in English, Repelsteeltje in Dutch, Rumpelstichen in Brazilian Portuguese, Rumpelstinski, Rumpelestíjeles, Trasgolisto, Jasil el Trasgu, Barabay, Rompelimbrá, Barrabás, Ruidoquedito, Rompeltisquillo, Tiribilitín, Tremolín, El enano saltarín y el duende saltarín in Spanish, Rumplcimprcampr or Rampelník in Czech.

In Japanese, it is transcribed as ルンペルシュティルツヒェン, Runperushutirutsuhyen. The Russian name is close to the original German, Румпельштильцхен, Rumpel'shtíl'tskhen.

In other languages, the name was translated in a poetic and approximate way. Thus Rumpelstilzchen is known as Päronskaft (literally "Pear-stalk") or Bullerskaft (literally "Rumble-stalk") in Swedish,^[24] where the sense of stilt or stalk of the second part is retained.

Slovak translations use Martinko Klingáč. Polish translations use Titelitury (or Rumpelsztyk) and Finnish ones Tittelintuure, Rompanruoja or Hopskukkeli. The Hungarian name is Tűzmanócska and in Serbo-Croatian Cvilidreta ("Whine-screamer"). The Slovenian translation uses Špicparkeljc ("Pointy-Hoof").

In Italian, the creature is usually called Tremotino, which is probably formed from the world tremoto, which means "earthquake" in Tuscan dialect, and the suffix "-ino", which generally indicates a small and/or sly character. The first Italian edition of the fables was published in 1897, and the books in those years were all written in Tuscan Italian.

For Hebrew, the poet Avraham Shlonsky composed the name עוּץ־לִי גּוּץ־לִי Utz-li gutz-li, a compact and rhymy touch to the original sentence and meaning of the story, "My-Adviser My-Midget", from יוֹעֵץ, yo'etz, "adviser", and גּוּץ, gutz, "squat, dumpy, pudgy (about a person)"), when using the fairy-tale as the basis of a children's musical, now a classic among Hebrew children's plays.

Greek translations have used Ρουμπελστίλτσκιν (from the English) or Κουτσοκαλιγέρης (Koutsokaliyéris), which could figure as a Greek surname, formed with the particle κούτσο- (koútso- "limping"), and is perhaps derived from the Hebrew name.

Urdu versions of the tale used the name Tees Mar Khan for the imp.