Rapunzel

Once upon a time there lived a man and a woman who had long wished for a child, but year after year none came. At last the woman began to hope that her wish was about to come true.

At the back of their house was a small window that looked down into a splendid garden, full of the loveliest flowers and herbs. But the garden was surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared go into it, for it belonged to an enchantress of great and feared power.

One day the woman stood at the window and saw a bed of rapunzel greens growing there, so fresh and green that she longed to taste them. The longing grew stronger every day, and since she knew she could never have any, she grew pale and unhappy. Her husband, worried, asked, "What troubles you, dear wife?"

"If I cannot eat some of the rapunzel from the garden behind our house," she said, "I think I shall die."

The man loved her dearly, so in the evening he climbed over the wall, snatched a handful of the greens, and brought them home. His wife made a salad of them and ate it eagerly — and it tasted so good that the next day she longed for it three times as much. So her husband climbed down into the garden once more.

But this time, as he dropped down from the wall, he found the enchantress standing before him.

"How dare you," she said, her eyes flashing, "climb into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief? You will pay for this."

"Please," he begged, "let mercy stand in place of justice. I did it only from need. My wife saw your rapunzel from our window and longed for it so badly that she would have died without it."

The enchantress's anger cooled a little. "If that is true," she said, "then take as much rapunzel as you like — but on one condition. You must give me the child your wife is soon to bear. It shall be well cared for, and I will love it as my own."

In his fear, the man agreed to everything. And when the child 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 turned twelve, the enchantress shut her up in a tower deep in a forest — a tower with no stairs and no door, only a small window at the very top. Whenever the enchantress wished to come in, she would stand below and call:

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair to me."

Rapunzel had long, wonderful hair, fine as spun gold. At the sound of that call she would unwind her braids, fasten them to a hook by the window, and let them tumble down — far down to the ground — so the enchantress could climb up.

A year or two passed, and one day a prince rode through the forest and passed near the tower. He heard a voice singing, so sweet that he stopped to listen. It was Rapunzel, who sang to pass the lonely hours. The prince searched for a door but found none, and rode home — yet the song stayed in his heart, and every day he returned to the forest to listen.

One evening, hidden behind a tree, he saw the enchantress come to the tower and call out her rhyme, and watched Rapunzel's golden hair come tumbling down and the old woman climb up by it. "So that is the ladder," he thought. "Then I will try my luck as well."

The next evening, as dusk fell, he went to the tower and called:

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."

At once the hair came falling down, and he climbed up.

Rapunzel was frightened at first, for she had never seen a man before. But the prince spoke to her gently, and told her how her singing had touched his heart so deeply that he could not stay away. Her fear melted, and when he asked her to be his wife, and she saw how young and kind he was, she thought, "He will surely love me better than old Mother Gothel does," and she said yes, and put her hand in his.

"I would gladly go with you," she said, "but I don't know how to climb down from here. Each time you come, bring me a skein of silk, and I will weave it into a ladder. When it's finished, I'll climb down and you can carry me away on your horse." They agreed that he would visit her each evening, since the old enchantress always came by day.

For a while the enchantress noticed nothing. But one day Rapunzel forgot herself and said, "Mother Gothel, why is it that you're so much harder to pull up than the young prince? He's always beside me in a moment."

"Oh, you wicked girl!" cried the enchantress. "What is this you're telling me? I thought I had hidden you from the whole world, and yet you have deceived me!"

In her fury she seized Rapunzel's beautiful hair, wound it around her hand, and with a pair of scissors cut off the long golden braids in a few swift strokes. Then, giving no comfort, she carried Rapunzel far away to a lonely wilderness, where the poor girl was left to live in sorrow and hardship.

That same evening, the enchantress fastened the cut braids to the hook at the window. When the prince came and called his rhyme, she let the hair down as always. He climbed up eagerly — but at the top he found not his beloved Rapunzel, but the enchantress, watching him with cold, angry eyes.

"So," she said, "you've come for your darling. But the pretty bird no longer sits in her nest — she sings no more. You will never see Rapunzel again."

Grief-stricken, the prince did not know what he did. He flung himself down from the tower. He lived, but he fell into a thicket of thorns, and they hurt his eyes and took his sight. Sightless and sorrowful, he wandered through the forest, eating only roots and berries, weeping for the wife he had lost. For years he wandered so, until at last he came to the very wilderness where Rapunzel was living, in hardship, with the two children — a boy and a girl — who had been born to her there.

He heard a voice singing, and something in it seemed so familiar that he went toward it. As he came close, Rapunzel knew him at once and ran to him, and threw her arms around him and wept. Two of her tears fell upon his eyes, and in that moment his sight came back to him, clear as it had ever been.

He led her home to his kingdom, where they were welcomed with great joy, and there they lived long afterward, happy and at peace.