Rumpelstiltskin (A 3D Puppet Wonder Book, Grosset & Dunlap, 1975, adapt. Oscar Weigle, pictures by T. Izawa and S. Hijikata)
This vintage board book retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" was published by Grosset & Dunlap as part of their 3D Puppet Wonder Book/Puppet Storybook collection. This wonderful collection features pictures of puppets staged and photographed by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata. For a list of other books in the series (and links to my reviews) see Puppet Storybooks/3D Puppet Wonder Books.
Cover and title page
The cover is white, with red title and black and red series title, and use of green lines and borders. The front cover features a central 3D lenticular image, which is what gives the series its name.
There are no separate front and back endpapers – the front endpaper is the beginning of the double-spread title page, and the back endpaper is the final scene of the story.
The title page features a scene where the king directs the miller's daughter to spin straw into gold. The king is a bearded, long-haired man in green and ermine-trimmed robes, wearing a crown and livery collar, and pointing to the straw behind the maid. The room is brick with a jail-like window.
The back cover provides a list of Puppet Storybooks (unnumbered) and a description of the series.
Story
"Rumpelstiltskin" is tale type¹ 500 ("The name of the helper"/"Guessing the helper's name"). The Grimms' version (KHM 55)² is the best known.
In this retelling by Oscar Weigle, the miller is described as "foolish" and his daughter as "beautiful" and "clever". In his pride, he stops the king who was walking near the mill one day, to list her "accomplishments", and the king ("who loved gold most particularly") is interested to hear she can spin straw into gold.
He arranges for the daughter to be brought to a huge pile of straw at his castle and tells her: "You must spin this into gold by sunrise or you shall die."
This is repeated over several nights. The king promises that if she can complete the task on the third night she will never have to do it again and will become his queen.
Rumpelstiltskin is described as "an elfish man" who spins increasingly large amounts of straw into gold for the miller's daughter on consecutive nights, first in exchange for her necklace, then her ring, and finally her first child when she becomes queen.
The story speaks of the king and queen's happiness and even how she gives her father some of the gold "so he could live comfortably". When Rumpelstiltskin appears to claim her first born child, "a lovely princess", we learn "[t]he queen had quite forgotten him and her promise to him".
When the queen cries and pleads for mercy, "the tiny man" decides to give her three days to guess his name: "If you do, you may keep the child. If you don't, I shall take her with me."
The queen guesses all the names she knows between A to Z (ending with "Zweifach"!) then sends her court messengers around the kingdom to bring back unusual names. Those are also a loss, but after he leaves on the second day a court messenger returns with a tale of having seen "a very small man dancing and singing" in the forest. His song was:
Today I brew, tomorrow I bake
Next day the queen's child I shall take;
How glad I am that nobody knows
My name is Rumpelstiltskin!
When the queen tells Rumpelstiltskin his name (after first toying with him a bit) he says a witch must have told her and "stamped about furiously". But he doesn't stamp through the ground. We learn he simply "made his way off, and the queen never saw him again". The ending tells us:
"The princess grew up to be as beautiful as the queen – and the king, the queen, and their daughter were truly happy."
I've never really liked the story of Rumpelstiltskin, I think because there are no characters you can truly like. The king is unappealing, having money on his mind and murder on the other side of his ultimatum; the queen has no integrity, not keeping her promise (and in this case not even remembering it); Rumpelstiltskin is helpful and shows pity but also wants to steal a child, so...there are no heroes here.
Weigle's version is close to the Grimms' version but he adds some additional details, changes some, and wraps up some loose ends. In the Grimms' version³:
- The miller is described as "poor" rather than "foolish" (which begs the question of where the daughter gets her necklace and ring) and the daughter is only described as "beautiful", not "clever". Perhaps "clever" was added to give some basis to the miller's listing of her accomplishments, but she doesn't show any cleverness in the story.
- The king is specifically described as "greedy for gold", and there is no clarity that she will not be asked to spin again after the third night.
- Rumpelstiltskin is only described as "a little man", not "elfish", and he is shown to feel "pity" for the queen when he gives her a chance to guess his name.
- The miller's daughter doesn't know what will happen and doesn't know what else to do when she agrees to give away her firstborn child, whereas in Weigle's story we see no hesitation – we are just told "[t]he girl agreed".
- The queen's father is not mentioned again after the opening scene.
- The queen offers "all the wealth of the kingdom" in exchange for keeping her child, whereas in Weigle's story she goes straight to pleading for his mercy.
- The guessed names are quite different, but the rhyme is very similar to the one given here, and on the last day the queen also guesses several common names before saying "Rumpelstiltskin".
- Rumpelstiltskin says "the devil told you that" rather than blaming a witch.
- The ending is much more explicit, with Rumpelstiltskin ripping himself in two, and no mention of the princess growing up and her and her parents having a happily-ever-after ending.
Pictures
The pictures of posed puppets, staged by Izawa and Hijikata, are delightful.
The first scene shows the miller, bending forward with cap in hand, in a forest setting, the mill in the background. The king and one of his men-at-arms stand on a forest path. The king wears puffy sixteenth-century-style breeches and matching tunic with paned sleeves, boots with spurs, a purple cape, and red cap with elaborate feathers. The man-at-arms wears a simpler red tunic and holds a halberd. A hunting horn hangs about his waist and he holds a hunting dog by the collar.
The miller's daughter wears a pink gown with stripes, puffs, and an orange collar. Her golden hair is covered by a simple bonnet. Later, as queen, her coiffed hair is covered only by a crown with a jeweled hairnet, and she wears a red dress with black and white trims. The elaborate details of her costume, and those of the others, is part of the lasting charm of these puppet pictures.
Rumpelstiltskin has the long ears of an elf, accompanied by a long nose, and wears a tall hat decorated with long feathers, along with general sixteenth-century-style dress. In the scene where he confronts the queen in the princess's bedchamber, he stands on the golden footboard and directs at the princess a long dark stick that looks much like a wizard's wand.
The court messenger wears a long brown tunic with paned sleeves, sword, tights and spurred shoes, and a yellow cap, and the common people are dressed in simpler medieval clothing.
The settings are immaculate, each convincing in their own individual way, from the forest scene at the beginning and when the messenger spies on Rumpelstiltskin as he dances outside his woodland cottage, to the prison-like brick room filled with straw, the golden bed of the princess's bedchamber, with its rich blue and red curtains and marble floor, and what appears to be the outer bailey of the castle, where the messenger unrolls his scroll to proclaim to the common people.
Summary
This book is a beautiful composition. Weigle's retelling holds its own with other variants of the "Rumpelstiltskin" story, but the most striking aspect is the art by Izawa and Hijikata, which brings to life a late medieval or early modern setting for the story and impresses with their level of detail.
There don't appear to be a lot of copies of this book available online, but perhaps they're lingering in physical stores...?