Rumpelstiltskin

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a spinning-wheel rhythm, dulcimer and a steady clock-tick)

[Verse 1]
My father's mouth spun me to gold before a single wheel had turned —
"she'll spin you straw to treasure, King" — and it was my neck that burned.
Locked in the straw with a hanging dawn, I wept on the useless loom,
till a little man came dancing in and priced my way out of the room.

[Chorus]
A ring, a chain, and then the thing I never thought he'd name —
"the first child that you bear as queen." A name for a name, that's the game.
There is power in a hidden name, and terror in one lost —
the whole self folds around a word, and the word is worth any cost.

[Verse 2]
The king kept only the gold in mind, so he married the girl who could spin,
and I gave him gold and gave him a child and I hid my bargain in.
Then the little man came to collect, and my heart went down like lead —
"three days," he grinned, "to guess my name," so sure it couldn't be said.

[Bridge]
(the clock-tick quickens)
I sent my rider to the far hills and he heard, by a fire in the wood,
the little man sing his own true name, drunk on how safe he stood.

[Outro]
"Is it... Rumpelstiltskin?" — and the word struck him like a blade,
and he tore himself clean in two on the floor of the trap his own name made.