Rapunzel

There once lived a man and his wife who had long wished for a child in vain. At length the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire. Through a small window in their house they could see a splendid garden full of beautiful flowers and herbs, but it was surrounded by a high wall and belonged to a powerful enchantress, whom no one dared approach.

One day the wife was standing at the window looking into the garden when she saw a bed filled with the finest rapunzel (a type of lettuce). It looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, and she knew she could not have it. This craving increased every day, and as she knew that she could not get any, she pined away and looked pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed and asked, 'What ails you, dear wife?' 'Ah,' she replied, 'if I don't get some rapunzel from the garden behind our house, I shall die.' The man, who loved her dearly, thought, 'Before you let your wife die, you must get her some of the rapunzel, whatever the cost.'

So at twilight he climbed over the wall into the enchantress's garden, hastily gathered a handful of rapunzel, and brought it to his wife. She at once made herself a salad and ate it greedily. It tasted so good that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before. If she was to have any peace, her husband must once more climb into the garden. So at dusk he crept in again, but as he was climbing down the wall, the enchantress suddenly appeared before him and was furious. 'How dare you,' she cried, 'climb into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief? You shall suffer for this!' 'Ah,' he answered, 'have mercy on me. I had to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rapunzel from our window and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she had not gotten some to eat.' The enchantress allowed her anger to be softened and said to him, 'If the case is as you say, I will let you have the rapunzel. But I have one condition: you must give me the child that your wife will bear. I will care for it as if it were my own.' The man, in his terror, agreed to everything.

When the woman came to the childbed, the enchantress appeared at once, named the baby Rapunzel, and took her away.

Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child beneath the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower in the middle of a forest. The tower had neither stairs nor a door, but only a small window at the very top. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she stood below and called out:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'

Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold. Whenever she heard the enchantress's voice, she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them around a window hook, let her hair fall twenty yards down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

After they had lived thus for a few years, it happened that the King's son was riding through the forest and passed by the tower. He heard a song so lovely that he stopped to listen. It was Rapunzel, who in her loneliness passed her time by letting her sweet voice ring out. The prince wanted to climb up to her and looked for the tower's door, but he could find none. He rode home, but the song had so touched his heart that he went into the forest every day and listened to it.

One day, as he was standing behind a tree, he saw the enchantress approach and heard her call out:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'

Then Rapunzel let down her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her. 'If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,' said the prince, and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and called out:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'

Immediately the hair fell down, and the prince climbed up. At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man came in, for she had never seen one before. But the prince began talking to her in a friendly way, told her that his heart had been so stirred by her singing that he could have no peace until he had seen her himself. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him as her husband, she thought, 'He will love me more than Dame Gothel does.' She said yes and laid her hand in his.

'I will willingly go with you,' she said, 'but I do not know how to get down. Every time you come, bring a skein of silk with you, and I will weave a ladder. When it is finished, I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.' They agreed that until then he would come to her every evening, for the old woman came only in the daytime.

Thus they lived for a while in joy and pleasure, and Rapunzel did not suspect that Dame Gothel was wicked. But one day she said to Rapunzel, 'Tell me, Rapunzel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me?' 'Ah!' she replied, 'you are much lighter than the prince. When he climbs, I do not feel his weight at all.' Oh, you wicked child!' cried the enchantress. 'I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me!' In her anger she seized Rapunzel's beautiful hair, wrapped it around her left hand a few times, seized a pair of scissors with her right, and snip, snap, the hair was cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. She was so hardhearted that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

On the same day, however, that she banished Rapunzel, the enchantress fastened the cut-off braids to the window hook. When the prince came that evening and called out:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair to me.'

She let the hair down, and the prince climbed up, but instead of his beloved Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who looked at him with wicked and venomous eyes. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly. 'You have come for your darling, but the beautiful bird is no longer in the nest, and she sings no more. The cat has got her, and will scratch your eyes out as well. Rapunzel is lost to you. You will never see her again.' The prince was beside himself with grief, and in his despair he threw himself down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns on which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered about in the forest, eating nothing but roots and berries, and weeping and lamenting the loss of his beloved wife.

Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, until at last he came to the desert where Rapunzel lived with her two children, twins, a boy and a girl, whom she had borne in her grief and poverty. When he heard a voice that he thought he recognized, the prince advanced toward it. Rapunzel recognized him and wept. Two of her tears fell on his eyes, and they became clear again, and he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom, where they were received with great joy, and they lived happily ever after.