Sunday, January 27, 2008

A modern retelling of an old tale

My 10 year old had to make a poem of a traditional story for her homework. She chose Rumpelstiltskin and we worked on it together. The following is what we came up with. Quite a formidable duo we make, methinks! LOL

RUMPELSTILTSKIN

Once a miller boasted to the king,
That his daughter could make gold in a ding,
All she’d need was plenty of straw,
In order to give him gold galore!

The king was rich and far from needy,
But alas he became much too greedy,
“Gold!” he drooled, “And lots of it!”
I could even have a golden throne on which to sit.”

He filled a room with straw, and in he pushed the girl,
“Hurry and spin by morning, so go on, give it a twirl!”
Desperate, the poor girl sat and wept,
When suddenly, in a little man crept.

“Aye, aye,” said he, “You look like you’ve had a fright.”
Weeping, she told the man of her plight.
He agreed to help, they struck a deal,
Then at once he got spinning at the wheel.

In the morning, the king came in,
“Ahh, I see, you spun it in the night within!”
He was happy to see the room filled with gold
But thought, “I need much more since I am getting old.

He gave her still more straw to spin into gold.
Again the little man came to her and thought , “This is getting old!
They made a deal; “I’ll spin the straw but if you and the king should marry,
I want your firstborn child, but just don’t call him Harry!”

The straw was spun, the girl and king were wed,
In time she forgot the promise she'd made,
And soon she was blessed with her very own child,
The man reappeared looking quite wild.

“You must keep your promise and give me what’s mine,
Unless,” said he, “You can guess my name then it’s fine!
If you guess my name in the next three nights,
Then keep your baby and there’ll be no fights.”

She guessed and guessed, “Charlie? Bob? Dave?”
Each time he said, “No way, that’s not it. Behave!”
A messenger helped her and gave her a clue,
She knew it was right and knew what to do.

The last day came and she said, “Pot Belly? Cherry bun?”
Until, she said, “Perhaps RUMPELSTILTSKIN is the one?!”
He shouted in fury and went quite red. “You cheated!”
He spun and spun right through the floor and was defeated.

THE END

4 comments:

Fruitful Fusion said...

Assalaamu Alaykum sis,

Yes, a formidable duo ma sha Allah. Coincidentally, I was reading a bit of poetry with my 7 yr old yesterday.

Will wait for some more of you and dd's work :)

Rainbow In The Grey Sky said...

Aslamu alakum sis
very nice verson , i recently wrote an English play for my dd1 school, they, they kept the original script only change the scene to be set in Algeria rather than London's South kensigton its nice when you can help the kids with school work as i felt so redundent after making hijrah as i didn't understand the work (all in french or Arabic)!!!

Anonymous said...

mashaallah sis nice made me smile

Rayhana said...

Assalaamu'alaykum dear sis,

Mashaa Allaah, this is great! :)

Reminds me very much of Roald Dahl's poems.. :)