# Rapunzel _Brothers Grimm_ · 8 min read · ages 8-12 A man gives his unborn daughter to an enchantress for the rampion his wife craves, and the girl grows up locked in a tower until a king’s son climbs up by her braids. The enchantress casts her out, he falls into thorns that blind him, and years later her tears heal his eyes and he leads her home to his kingdom. --- There were once a man and a woman who had wished for a child a long time, and wished in vain. At last the woman began to hope that God would grant her heart’s desire. At the back of their house was a little window, and from it they could look down into a splendid garden that was full of the loveliest flowers and herbs. A high wall ran all around it, and nobody dared to set foot inside, for the garden belonged to an enchantress who had great power and was feared by all the world. One day the woman stood at that window, looking down, and she saw a bed planted with the finest rampion. It looked so fresh and so green that a craving came over her, and she wanted nothing in the world so much as to eat some of it. The longing grew stronger every day, and because she knew she could never have any, she began to waste away and looked pale and wretched. Her husband took fright and asked her, “What is the matter, dear wife?” “Oh,” she answered, “if I cannot have some of the rampion out of the garden behind our house, I shall die.” The man loved her, and he thought, “Rather than let my wife die, I had better fetch her some of that rampion, whatever it costs me.” So in the dusk of the evening he climbed over the wall into the enchantress’s garden, snatched a handful of rampion in great haste, and carried it home to his wife. She made herself a salad of it at once and ate every leaf with delight. But it had tasted so good to her, so very good, that the next day she wanted three times as much. If she was ever to have any peace, her husband would have to go down into the garden again. So at dusk he let himself over the wall a second time. But when he had climbed down, his heart turned over with fear, for the enchantress was standing right in front of him. “How dare you,” she said, with anger in her eyes, “come down into my garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall pay for this.” “Oh,” he answered, “let mercy take the place of justice. I only made up my mind to do it out of need. My wife saw your rampion from our window, and she longs for it so terribly that she would die if she could not have some to eat.” Then the enchantress let her anger cool, and she said to him, “If matters stand as you say, you may take as much rampion with you as you like. But I make one condition. You must give me the child your wife is going to bring into the world. It shall want for nothing, and I will care for it like a mother.” In his terror the man agreed to everything, and when the child was born the enchantress appeared at that very hour, gave the little girl the name Rapunzel, and carried her away. Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her up in a tower that stood in a forest. It had neither stairs nor door, only a little window right at the top. When the enchantress wanted to come in, she stood below and called, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Rapunzel had long and splendid hair, as fine as spun gold. Whenever she heard the enchantress’s voice she untied her braids, wound them around a hook by the window, and let them fall twenty ells to the ground, and the enchantress climbed up by them. A year or two later it happened that the king’s son rode through the forest and came past the tower. He heard singing there, so lovely that he stopped his horse and listened. It was Rapunzel, who in her loneliness passed the time by letting her sweet voice ring out. The king’s son wanted to climb up to her and looked for a door into the tower, but there was none to be found. He rode home, and yet the singing had touched his heart so deeply that he went out into the forest every day to listen. Once, as he stood behind a tree, he saw an enchantress come to the tower, and he heard her call up, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Then Rapunzel let down her braids, and the enchantress climbed up to her. “If that is the ladder one goes up by,” said the king’s son, “then I will try my luck as well.” The next day, as it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and called, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. At once the hair came falling down, and the king’s son climbed up. At first Rapunzel was badly frightened, for she had never in her life set eyes on a man. But the king’s son began to talk to her in a friendly way and told her that her singing had stirred his heart so much that it had given him no peace, and that he had had to come and see her himself. Then Rapunzel’s fear left her, and when he asked whether she would take him for her husband, and she saw how young and handsome he was, she thought, “He will love me better than old Mother Gothel does.” So she said yes, and laid her hand in his. “I will gladly go away with you,” she said, “but I do not know how to get down. Every time you come, bring a skein of silk with you. I will weave a ladder out of it, and when the ladder is finished I will climb down, and you shall take me up on your horse.” They agreed that until then he would come to her every evening, since the old woman came by day. The enchantress noticed nothing at all, until one day Rapunzel said to her, “Tell me, Mother Gothel, how does it happen that you are so much heavier to pull up than the young king’s son? He is with me in a moment.” “You wicked child,” cried the enchantress. “What is this I hear from you? I thought I had shut you away from the whole world, and yet you have deceived me.” In her fury she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful hair, wound it twice around her left hand, took up a pair of scissors in her right, and snip, snap, it was cut away, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she carried poor Rapunzel off into a wilderness, where she had to live in great grief and misery. But that same evening, on the very day she had cast Rapunzel out, the enchantress tied the cut braids to the hook by the window, and when the king’s son came and called, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. she let the hair fall down to him. The king’s son climbed up, but at the top he did not find his dearest Rapunzel. He found the enchantress, who looked at him with wicked and poisonous eyes. “Aha,” she cried mockingly, “you have come to fetch your beloved. But the pretty bird is no longer sitting in the nest, and she sings no more. The cat has taken her, and it 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 grief, and in his despair he threw himself down from the tower. He came away with his life, but the thorns he fell into pierced his eyes. So he wandered blind through the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but mourn and weep for the loss of his dearest wife. For some years he roamed about in misery, and at last he came to the wilderness where Rapunzel was living wretchedly with the twins she had borne, a boy and a girl. He heard a voice, and it sounded so familiar to him that he walked toward it. As he came near, Rapunzel knew him, and she fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears fell on his eyes, and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as well as before. He led her home to his kingdom, where he was received with joy, and they lived long afterward in happiness and contentment. --- - Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/rapunzel-original - Source: Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, trans. Margaret Hunt (Project Gutenberg #5314) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5314) - Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, trans. Margaret Hunt (Project Gutenberg #5314) — translation: author died 1859/1863 (+70 passed); translator Margaret Hunt died 1912 (+70 passed) - License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)