Award-winning storyteller Bill Gordh (Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence winner, National Association of Parenting Periodicals Gold Award winner) presents this folk tale live with no script, accompanied only by his own dynamic banjo playing.

A poor miller told the king that his daughter could spin straw to gold. The king was delighted and ordered the daughter to come to the palace. He showed her a room full of straw and told her she must spin it into gold by the morning or die. She did not know what to do. She cried. A little man appeared who, after receiving a necklace, spun the straw into gold. The king put her in a larger room full of straw and told her the same thing. This time the girl gave the little man a ring. The king had a larger room filled with straw and told her that this time if she was successful, they would be married. She had nothing to offer the little man this time and finally agreed that she would give him her firstborn. He went to work, and the girl married the king. When her baby was born, the little man came back.

She did not want to give up the baby. He told her if she could guess his name the baby would stay with her. He would come three evenings in a row, and if by the third evening she had not guessed, the baby would be hers. The first two nights she guessed names with no luck, but just before the third night one of her courtiers reported hearing a little man in the forest singing and dancing around a fire. She asked what he was singing and the courier reported that he was singing that his name was Rumpelstiltskin. When the little man came, she told him his name and kept her baby. He flew out the window.