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　　 28. Offered the little man all the riches in her kingdom: Here lies some of the greatest irony of the story. The queen now has many treasures to offer in payment for the services she received. However, nothing is now good enough except for her child. The manikin has always asked for her most precious possessions, previously even when those possessions were of small wordly value and now her child which is priceless.

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　　 29. No, a living creature is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world: His refusal of this offer shows how Rumpelstiltskin prefers a person for his prize than riches. It also implies that his intention was to win the baby from the beginning of his participation in the story. He was happy to accept the maid's necklace and ring before, but he took those so he could reduce her to agreeing to the horrible arrangement they made previously.

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　　 30. Little man was sorry for her: Here is one of the few actions which might engender sympathy for Rumpelstiltskin. In some modern interpretations of the tale, the Rumpelstiltskin character is in love with the daughter/queen. Sometimes he is even the child's father. In Donna Jo Napoli's Spinners, the little man is the queen's father and the baby's grandfather.

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　　 31. I'll give you three days to guess my name, and if you find it out in that time you may keep your child: In Joseph Jacobs' notes to Tom Tit Tot, a tale similar to Rumpelstiltskin, he writes: one "sees in the class of name-guessing stories, a 'survival' of the superstition that to know a man's name gives you power over him, for which reason savages object to tell their names (Jacobs 1890).

　　 The name is the key to power (Olderr 1986). When someone knows your name, they have power over you. When Rumpelstiltskin challenges the Queen to guess his name, he is challenging her to gain power over him. If she has power over him, he cannot take her child away from her.

　　 Hornyansky believes that Rumpelstiltskin is a devil character and thus unsympathetic despite the abuse he receives. "There are only two beings in the universe who have secret names, unknown to all but the adept: one of them is God, whose holy Name must not be spoken; the other, over whom mortal man may gain power by pronouncing his mysterious proper name, is the devil" (Hornyansky 1965, 130).

　　 In his early years of fairy tale analysis, Jack Zipes wrote that the tale "demonstrated how we must seek the power to name the forces acting upon us if we want to be free and autonomous" (Zipes 1979, 177).

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　　 32. A messenger to scour the land: In the early versions of the tale collected by the Grimms, the queen sends a faithful female companion or servant to seek the name. By 1857, they had changed the servant to a male one. In a few versions, the king happens to mention the name to the queen after meeting the man beyond the castle.

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　　 33. Kasper, Melchior, Belshazzar: The queen offers obscure names, ones that are present in the Bible, but are not well-known.

　　 Melchior appears in the New Testament as "one of the three sages from the east who came bearing gifts for the infant Jesus; usually represented as a king of Nubia" (WordNet).

　　 Belshazzar appears in the Old Testament as a "Babylonian general and son of Nebuchadnezzar II; according to the Old Testament he was warned of his doom by divine handwriting on the wall that was interpreted by Daniel (6th century BC)" (WordNet).

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　　 34. Sheepshanks Cruickshanks, Spindleshanks?: These names are even more nonsensical than the ones provided the day before, primarily used for their rhyming qualities.

　　 A shank is "the part of the human leg between the knee and the ankle" (WordNet).

　　 A sheepshank is "a knot for shortening a line" (WordNet).

　　 A spindleshanks is "a thin person with long thin legs" (WordNet). The name is ironical since it definitely does not describe Rumpelstiltskin's short stature.

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　　 35. To-morrow I brew, to-day I bake,/ And then the child away I'll take;/ For little deems my royal dame/ That Rumpelstiltskin is my name!: This rhyme fuels many speculations about the little man, but no sure answers. Does he want the child for a meal, such as the witch in Hansel and Gretel? Or does he want a child of his own, like the witch in Rapunzel? Is he baking and brewing in preparation for a celebratory meal with or of the queen's child? Either way, we know he is thrilled at the prospect of gaining the child and does not anticipate the queen learning his name.

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　　 36. Is your name Conrad?: Note that the Queen, now sure of her victory, plays with the tiny man by guessing common names instead of the unusual ones she tried the previous two days. Critics often consider the queen's actions to be reprehensible. Critic Roger Sale, for example, condemns the queen for her cruelty to the only character who has shown her any sympathy and offered her any assistance (Sale 1978). In my view, this is the first time she has the upper hand in any situation and she is savoring it. She has been a victim of the three men in the story, her father, her king/husband, and her helper. Finally she has triumphed and gained some control, the control she needs to protect her child.

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　　 37. Rumpelstiltskin: While most scholars believe that Rumpelstiltskin is simply a nonsense name, others have proposed explanations for the name's meaning and/or origins. I have included some of the theories here.

　　 One theory concerning Rumpelstiltskin's name comes from Edmund Bergler. He thinks that "stilzchen" is derived from a diminutiveversion of the German word for stilts. "Thus man is again defined as one who puts on airs, elevates and elongates himself artificially...and is there to be ridiculed and regarded with contempt" (Begler 1961, 66).

　　 Another theory comes from Lutz Rohrich. One "associates the name 'Rumpelstiltzchen' first of all with the notion of a Rumpelgeist, a poltergeist, a goblin, that is, of a dwarf-like creature. Yet wherever a Martin Luther or Johannes Fischart speak of a 'Rumpelgeist' they always already mean the devil" (McGlathery 1991, 185).

　　 Some analysts consider Rumpelstiltskin to be a synonym for a phallus.

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　　 38. Some demon has told you that!: If Rumpelstiltskin is himself a devil, he speaks the truth: a demon did reveal his name.

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　　 39. In his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist: Bettelheim proposes that Rumpelstiltskin's rage is the true source of his destruction, not the queen's power over him (Bettelheim 1975). However, Bettelheim did not consider the Grimms' changes to the tale. See the next note for more information on the Grimms' changes to the tale's ending.

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　　 40. Tore himself in two: The Grimms changed the ending of the story from the oral tale they originally collected. In the oral version, the manikin flies out a window riding a cooking ladle. The little man's rage was perhaps added and accentuated to make him less sympathetic and more demonic in appearance.

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