Rumpelstilsken
(American tale)

Once there was a very poor miller, but he had the most beautiful daughter in all the land. Now he had to speak to the king one day, so to make himself seem important, he boasted that his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king foolishly believed the miller but just to be sure that the miller was telling the truth, he told the miller's daughter to come to his castle and spin some gold.
When the poor girl came to the castle, she was led to a room full of straw. It had one spinning wheel and the girl was locked in the small room and was told to get to work. The king had also said, if there was no gold by the next morning, the girl would be sentenced to death. The girl got very scared then and she began to cry.
Suddenly the door opened and a little man walked into the room. "Hello!" the little man said cheerfully. The poor miller's daughter looked up and said through her tears replied "Hello". "Why are you crying?" asked the little man. "I am crying because if I do not spin straw into gold I will be killed!" the girl replied, tearfully. "I will do it for you if you give me something", the man said. So the girl gave the little man her necklace and the little man sat down on a stool and started to work.
In the morning the king came in and when he saw the reels all full of gold, he was greedy as well as overjoyed. So he sent the girl to a bigger room and told her to spin all that straw into gold as well, if she succeeded, she would be crowned queen.
So that night, the little man came and the girl asked him if he would spin the straw into gold again, and the man said he would if the girl would give him her first newborn. So the girl agreed, thinking that she wouldn't have a baby. So when the king came into the room in the morning, the little man was gone and all of the straw was spun into gold.
Even though she is a miller's daughter, she is the richest girl I could ever have for a wife! The king thought happily. So the king married the girl and she became a queen. But soon she gave birth to a beautiful child, and she never gave a thought to the little man and the promise she made to him. Soon the little man was knocking at her door and demanding a child. The queen was frightened and asked if the man would take all her jewels instead. But he said no, then he said something that the queen was OK with. He said that if the queen could guess his name, then he would leave without the baby and never be seen again. So the queen asked if one of these names were his, and she named all of the boy's names that she could think of at the time. But the man shook his head at each name. "I will come back tomorrow and you can guess some more. So the queen guessed some more names the next day, all of them being wrong. The queen then got so annoyed that she followed the man home!
The man stopped in a clearing an started to sing (terribly of course) and dance. In the song,the girl heard " that my name is Rumpelstilsken." Then the queen ran back to the castle. Then the next day the man came to the castle and after a few wrong names she guessed the right one, and the man got so mad that he tore himself in half.

drawings: Sasha (Russia), Andres (Mexico)