Rapunzel

A man and his wife had long wished in vain for a child. From a little window at the back of their house they could see into a splendid garden full of flowers and herbs. It was surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared go in, because it belonged to an enchantress of great power whom the whole world feared.

One day the wife looked down into the garden and saw a bed planted with the finest rapunzel, a leafy green called rampion. She longed for it so badly that she began to waste away, pale and miserable, until she told her husband she would die if she could not eat some. That evening at dusk he climbed over the wall, snatched a handful and brought it to her. She made a salad and ate it greedily, and the next day she wanted it three times as much.

So at dusk he climbed the wall again. But as he dropped down on the other side, he froze in terror: the enchantress stood right in front of him. “How dare you sneak into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief?” she said, with an angry look. He begged for mercy, explaining his wife’s terrible craving. The enchantress softened, but on one condition. “Take as much as you like. But you must give me the child your wife will bear. It will be well looked after, and I will care for it like a mother.” In his fear the man agreed to everything. When the baby girl was born, the enchantress appeared at once, named her Rapunzel, and carried her away.

Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve, the enchantress shut her up in a tower deep in the forest. It had no stairs and no door, only a little window at the very top. Whenever the enchantress wanted to come in, she stood below and called: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me!” Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, as fine as spun gold. She would unpin her braids, wind them round a hook by the window, and let them fall twenty ells to the ground, and the enchantress climbed up by them.

A few years later a king’s son rode through the forest and heard singing so lovely that he stopped to listen. It was Rapunzel, passing her lonely hours with her sweet voice. He searched for a door to the tower but found none. He rode home, but the song had so touched his heart that he came back to the forest every day. Once, hidden behind a tree, he watched the enchantress call out and climb the golden hair. “If that is the ladder,” he thought, “I will try my luck too.” The next evening at dusk he called the words himself, and the hair came tumbling down.

At first Rapunzel was terrified, for she had never seen a man. But he spoke to her kindly and told her how her singing had given his heart no rest. She lost her fear, and when he asked her to marry him she thought, He will love me more than old Mother Gothel does, and put her hand in his. Since she had no way down, they made a plan: each time he came he would bring a skein of silk, and she would weave a ladder. Until then he visited every evening, while the old woman came by day.

The enchantress noticed nothing until Rapunzel let slip a careless remark. In the Grimms’ 1857 edition, she wonders aloud why the old woman is so much heavier to pull up than the young prince. “You wicked child!” cried the enchantress. “I thought I had shut you away from all the world, and still you have deceived me!” In her fury she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful braids, snipped them off with a pair of scissors, and banished the girl to a desolate wilderness to live in grief and want.

That same evening the enchantress fastened the cut braids to the hook. When the prince called, she let them down, and he climbed up to find not his beloved but the enchantress, glaring at him with poisonous eyes. “The pretty bird is gone from her nest,” she mocked. “The cat has caught her, and it will scratch out your eyes too. You will never see Rapunzel again.” Beside himself with grief, the prince leapt from the tower. He survived, but the thorns he fell into pierced his eyes, and he was blind.

For years he wandered the forest, living on roots and berries and weeping for his lost wife. At last he came to the wilderness where Rapunzel lived in poverty with the twins she had borne, a boy and a girl. He heard a voice he knew and followed it. When he drew near, Rapunzel recognised him, threw her arms around his neck and wept. Two of her tears fell into his eyes, and suddenly they grew clear and he could see as before. He led her home to his kingdom, where they were welcomed with joy, and they lived long and happily together.