The Golden Touch (King Midas)

Quick Answer

Why This Story Works for Bedtime

It’s reflective and meaningful, ending with relief and a clear lesson. For bedtime, it’s great for older kids: you can emphasize love and gratitude over ‘more’.

Story Synopsis

King Midas is unimaginably rich, yet he still longs for more gold. When a magical being offers to grant a wish, Midas asks for a ‘golden touch’: that whatever he touches will turn to gold. At first, he is thrilled. A branch becomes gold. A stone becomes gold. The palace shines with sudden wealth. But the joy doesn’t last. When Midas sits down to eat, his bread turns hard and golden. His fruit becomes metal. Even water becomes gold before he can drink. The gift he begged for makes ordinary life impossible. Then the true heartbreak arrives. Midas reaches for someone he loves—his little daughter—and the golden touch turns what should be warm and living into something cold and still. In that moment, Midas understands what he has valued wrongly. He begs to undo the wish. The magic offers a path to release: wash away the spell and return to simple, human needs. When the golden touch lifts, food is food again, water is water again, and love can be held safely. The Golden Touch is a timeless reminder: wanting ‘more’ can blur what is already precious, and gratitude is its own kind of wealth.

Story Excerpt

Once upon a time there lived a very rich king named Midas. He wore a crown, and he had a palace, and he had a treasure-room underground where he kept his shining heaps of gold. And he had a little daughter. Her real name has been forgotten by many, but it is pleasant to call her Marygold. King Midas loved Marygold dearly. Yet he loved gold in a strange, tangled way—so much that it crowded his thoughts. When the sunset clouds turned yellow, he wished he could squeeze them into his strong box. When Marygold ran to him with buttercups and dandelions, bright as little suns, he would say, “Poh, poh, child! If those flowers were real gold, they would be worth the plucking!” Long ago, before gold had taken such a tight hold on him, Midas had truly loved simple things: roses in his garden, and music too. But now, if he looked at his roses at all, it was only to imagine every petal as a thin plate of gold. And the only music he cared to hear was the chink of coin against coin. So it happened that, whenever King Midas wished to feel especially pleased, he went down to his treasure-room—a dark, dreary place, with one narrow sunbeam slipping in through a small window. There he would drag out a bag of coins, or a heavy bar, or a great cup, and move them into the sunbeam so they could shine. Then he would count, and sift, and toss the gold in his hands, and whisper, “O Midas, rich King Midas, what a happy man you are!” But even as he said it, the polished gold cup threw back a little reflection of his face that looked almost as if it were grinning at him—like it knew he was being foolish. For Midas called himself happy, yet he was not satisfied. He wanted more than a room of treasure. He wanted the whole world to be his treasure-room.

In One Glance