The Golden Boy

The premise of this limerick you shall find,

If you choose to read beyond the last line!

The Golden Boy

A tale of gold the brothers Grimm spin.

My story on track for ending in sin.

I baked, I brewed, was ready to stew,

A baby boy since my name no one knew.

‘Til out the queen’s mouth, Rumpelstiltskin!

The Premise

What started out as a humble attempt to meet a Vocal + Assist Facebook Group Challenge ended up landing me a Top Story. Super Yay! Our challenge, if we so happened to choose it, was to “Write a piece of flash fiction, no word minimum, 1000 words maximum. […] No specific genre but you MUST include the word ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ somewhere in the story.”

I began by reading the original Grimm’s fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin. After all, it’s been a while since I read any of their originals. If you know anything about the brothers Grimm, their “fairytales” are really the stuff of nightmares gone awry. The endings aresuper tragic and the tale which begins simple enough quickly turns into a murder scene or twisted descent into hell on earth.

I received a comment that the limerick in my Rumpelstiltskin inspired story was great. Two slight issues: 1) The rhyme was not originally mine—that title goes to the brothers Grimm, and 2) Although it is quite close, it doesn’t actually meet the requirements of a limerick.

Original Rhyme From “Rumpelstiltskin”

Today do I bake,

tomorrow I brew,

The day after that the queen's child comes in;

And oh! I am glad that nobody knew

That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!

The number of lines is correct. But Rumpelstiltskin’s little ditty is missing one crucial element. It rhymes; however, the rhyme scheme is off. We need AABBA for a limerick. What we have here from our dear Mr. Rumpelstiltskin is a rhyme scheme of ABCBC. His rhyme is catchy and can easily catch you off guard.

So I wanted to update Rumpelstiltskin’s song to be a true limerick while also highlighting his twist in fate. Yup, I’m kind of nerdy like that!

Read my Vocal + Assist story here:

Learn more about poetry here:

(Specifically line numbers and rhyme scheme.)