Exactly what the title says it is.
This is adapted from Monsters and Villains of the Movies and Literature by Gerrie McCall, Dragons: Fearsome Monsters from Myth and Fiction by Gerrie McCall, and Mythical Monsters by Chris McNab.
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HANDS: Rumpelstiltskin's swift hands have the magical ability to spin straw into gold. They can also whip up nightmares to haunt a human's sleep. FEET: He is a skilled dancer, so his traditional pointed dwarf shoes do not interfere with his dance around his campfire in the woods at night. ARMS: The dwarf's wiry arms possess superhuman strength, enabling him to tear his own body in half. HEAD: His pointed hat and pointed ears identify Rumpelstiltskin as a dwarf.
A poor miller hoping to impress the king boasts that his daughter can pin straw into gold. The king shuts her in a tower room with nothing but straw and a spinning wheel. She is expected to spin the straw into gold. If she fails, she will be killed. But the young woman cannot spin the straw into gold. She begins to despair, and then a dwarf named Rumpelstiltskin appears in the locked room. In exchange for her necklace, the dwarf uses his magical powers to spin the straw into gold. Impressed, the king tells her to do it again and locks her in the tower room with even more straw on the second night.
Rumpelstiltskin appears again, and this time she trades him her ring for spinning the straw into gold for her. The king demands that she repeat the trick a third night and locks her up one last time. Now she has nothing left to trade the dwarf, so she promises her first-born child to him if he will spin the straw into gold. The king marries her. Nothing more is heard of Rumpelstiltskin until she bears her first child and the dwarf comes to claim the baby.
DID YOU KNOW? The young woman offers Rumpelstiltskin all her riches if he will allow her to keep her baby. He agrees that she may keep her child if she can guess his name. He gives her three days for the task. A messenger overhears Rumpelstiltskin singing a rhyme about his name and reports the dwarf's name to the woman.
When the woman correctly guesses his name, Rumpelstiltskin is enraged. He stomps his right foot so hard that it is buried into the ground up to his waist. In his fury, he grabs his own left foot in both hands and rips himself in two.
Rumpelstiltskin appears in the animated movie Shrek the Third, as a member of Prince Charming's army of villains.