*Note that the original story has been slightly modified in terms of addressing contemporary narrative.
*The story may contain mentions of death and/or contain scenes of violence, so parents are advised to read the story by themselves before reading to children.
Rapunzel
by
Brothers Grimm
There were once a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child. For so very long, the woman hoped that God was about to grant her greatest 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 hated 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 plant called rapunzel, and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, and had the greatest desire to eat some of it. This desire increased every day, and as she knew that she could not get any of it, she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable.
Seeing his wife sad, her husband asked, “What makes you so sad, dear wife?”
“Oh”, she replied, “if I can’t eat some of the rapunzel, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.” The man, who loved her, thought, sooner than let his wife die, he will bring her some of the rapunzel, no matter the cost.
At twilight, he climbed up and over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rapunzel, 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 descend into the garden once again. In the gloom of evening, therefore, he climbed up and over the wall as he did the night before.
But, when he had found himself in the garden, he was terribly afraid for he saw the enchantress standing before him.
“How dare you”, said the enchantress with angry look, “descend into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief? You shall suffer for it.”
“Oh”, the man answered, “please choose mercy over justice, I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rapunzel 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 is what you claim, I will allow you to take away with you as much rapunzel as you will, but under 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 gave birth to a child, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the little baby girl the name of Rapunzel, and took her away.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower, rising in a forest, and had neither stairs or doors, 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 hair, wound it around one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.
After a year or two, 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.”
Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her.
“If that is the ladder by which I will get to see the girl behind that beautiful voice, 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.”
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 seen, 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 the old dame Gothel does.” So, 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 make 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 didn’t notice anything, 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.“
“Oh! 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 golden braids, wrapped them twice around 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. The enchantress 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.”
The enchantress 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 look in her eyes.
“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 around the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but cry over the loss of his dearest wife. The prince roamed around in misery for some years, and after a long time walking 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, happily ever after.
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The Brothers Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Karl and Wilhelm Carl, were German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together collected and published folklore during the 19th century.
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