RHYMEPLESTILTSKIN

Every year the ninth graders write ballads. It’s excellent practice and reinforces what they’ve been learning about rhyme scheme and meter. I always do whatever I make my students do which means that every year I too write a ballad. I write it on the board and typically it’s lost when I erase it. I sorta liked this years and now I have a place to put it. It’s neither good nor clever, but it rhymes.

“Rumplestiltskin”

“My daughter is amazing, king;
She’s quite beyond compare.
Why she can turn straw into gold
And that is something rare"

The miller’s boast impressed the king.
He locked her in a room.
She had to spin straw into gold
Or she would face her doom.

The king had said he’d marry her
If she could do the deed,
But he would kill her if she failed
So mighty was his greed.

The poor girl wept; she could not spin
Useless straw to gold
And as she cried a man appeared,
Short and fat and old.

The little man announced that he
Could spin pure gold from hay . . . but
She’d have to give her first born child
To him on its birthday.

Of course this is a fairy tale.
It simply isn’t true.
But if you’d been locked in that room,
I wonder what you’d do.