Rapunzel

There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a

child. At length, the woman hoped that God was about to grant her desire.

These people had a little window at the back of their house from which

a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful

flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no

one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had

great power and was dreaded by all the world. One day the woman was

standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a

bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it

looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, she quite pined away,

and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and

asked: ‘What ails you, dear wife?’

‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘if I can’t eat some of the rampion,

 which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.’

The man, who loved her, thought: ‘Sooner than let your wife die,

bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.’

At twilight, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the

enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his

wife. She at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It

tasted so good to her--so very good, that the next day she longed for it

three times as much as before. If he was to have any rest, her husband

must once more descend into the garden. In the gloom of evening

therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the

wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before

him. 

‘How can you dare,’ said she with angry look, ‘descend into my

garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!’

‘Ah,’ answered he, ‘let mercy take the place of justice, I only made

up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the

window, and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she

had not got some to eat.’

Then the enchantress allowed her anger to be

softened, and said to him: ‘If the case be as you say, I will allow

you to take away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one

condition, you must give me the child which your wife will bring into

the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for it like a

mother.’ The man in his terror consented to everything, and when the

woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the

child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.

Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was

twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower, which lay in

a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, but quite at the top was a

little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself

beneath it and cried:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair to me.’

Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she

heard the voice of the enchantress she unfastened her braided tresses,

wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair

fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

After a year or two, it came to pass that the king’s son rode through

the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song, which was so

charming that he stood still and listened. This was Rapunzel, who in her

solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king’s

son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower,

but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply

touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and

listened to it. Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw

that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair to me.’

Then Rapunzel let down the braids of 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 he, and the next day when it began to grow

dark, he went to the tower and cried:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair to me.’

Immediately the hair fell down and the king’s son climbed up.

At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes

had never yet beheld, came to her; but the king’s son began to talk to

her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred

that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her.

Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take

him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she

thought: ‘He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does’; and she said

yes, and laid her hand in his. She said: ‘I will willingly go away with

you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk

every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when

that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.’ They

agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the

old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until

once Rapunzel said to her: ‘Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that

you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king’s son--he

is with me in a moment.’ ‘

‘Ah! you wicked child,’ cried the enchantress.

‘What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all

the world, and yet you have deceived me!’ In her anger she clutched

Rapunzel’s beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand,

seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut

off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless

that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great

grief and misery.

On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress

fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the

window, and when the king’s son came and cried:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,

Let down your hair to me.’

she let the hair down. The king’s son ascended, but instead of finding

his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with

wicked and venomous looks. ‘

Aha!’ she cried mockingly, ‘you would fetch

your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest;

the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is

lost to you; you will never see her again.’

 The king’s son was beside

himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He

escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his

eyes. Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but

roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of

his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at

length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she

had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a

voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and

when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two

of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again, and he could

see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was

joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and

contented.

Project Gutenberg: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11

"Rapunzel" (/rəˈpʌnzəl/; German pronunciation: [ʁaˈpʊnt͡səl]) is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales.[1] The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Rapunzel by Friedrich Schulz published in 1790.[2] The Schulz version is based on Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698[3] which in turn was influenced by an even earlier tale, Petrosinella by Giambattista Basile, published in 1634.[4] Its plot has been used and parodied in various media and its best known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") is an idiom of popular culture. In volume I of the 1812 annotations (Anhang), it is listed as coming from Friedrich Schulz Kleine Romane, Book 5, pp. 269–288, published in Leipzig 1790.

In the Aarne–Thompson classification system for folktales it is type 310, "The Maiden in The Tower".[5]

Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.[6] Other versions of the tale also appear in A Book of Witches by Ruth Manning-Sanders and in Paul O. Zelinsky's 1997 Caldecott Medal-winning picture book, Rapunzel and the Disney movie Tangled.

Rapunzel's story has striking similarities to the 11th-century Persian tale of Rudāba, included in the epic poem Shahnameh by Ferdowsi. Rudāba offers to let down her hair from her tower so that her lover Zāl can climb up to her.[7] Some elements of the fairy tale might also have originally been based upon the tale of Saint Barbara, who was said to have been locked in a tower by her father.

(Wikipedia)