20 Rapunzel (Germany)

Once a man and wife had long wished in vain for a child.In the back of their house there was a little window that looked out over a wonderful garden, full of beautiful flowers and vegetables. But there was a high wall around the garden, and no one dared enter it because it belonged to a witch. One day the wife stood at this window, looking down into the garden,and her eyes lit on a bed of the finest rapunzel^[1]. And it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it and her mouth watered. Her craving for it grew from day to day, and she began to waste away because she knew she would never get any. Seeing her so pale and wretched, her husband took fright and asked: “What’s the matter with you, dear wife?”“Oh,”she said, “I shall die unless I get some rapunzel to eat from the garden behind our house.”Her husband, who loved her,thought: “I shall get her some of that rapunzel, cost what it may.”

As night was falling, he climbed the wall into the witch’s garden, took a handful of rapunzel, and brought it to his wife.She ate it hungrily right away. But it tasted so good, so very good, that the next day her craving for it was three times as great. So at nightfall the husband climbed the wall again, but when he came down on the other side he had an awful fright,for there was the witch right in front of him.

“Oh, please,”he said, “my wife saw your rapunzel. She felt such a craving for it that she would have died if I hadn’t got her some.”At that the witch’s anger died down and she said: “If that’s how it is, you may take as much rapunzel as you wish, but on one condition: that you give me the child your wife will bear.”In his fright, the man agreed to everything, and the moment his wife was delivered, the witch appeared, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took her away.

Rapunzel grew to be the loveliest child under the sun.When she was twelve years old, the witch took her to the middle of the forest and shut her up in a tower that had neither stairs nor door, but only a little window at the very top. When the witch wanted to come in, she stood down below and called out: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair for me.”Rapunzel had beautiful long hair, as fine as spun gold. When she heard the witch’s voice, she undid her braids and fastened them to the window latch. They fell to the ground twenty ells^[2] down, and the witch climbed up on them.

A few years later it so happened that the king’s son was passing through the forest. When he came to the tower, he heard someone singing. And he saw a witch come to the foot of the tower and heard her call out something. Whereupon Rapunzel let down her braids, and the witch climbed up to her. The next day, when it was beginning to get dark, he went to the tower and called out as the witch did. A moment later her hair fell to the ground and the prince climbed up.

At first Rapunzel was dreadfully frightened, for she had never seen a man before, but the prince gently told her how he had been so moved by her singing that he couldn’t rest easy until he had seen her. At that Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked if she would have him as her husband and she said yes. And they agreed he would come every evening and bring a skein of silk every time to make a ladder for her to climb down. The witch noticed nothing until one day Rapunzel said to her: “Tell me, Godmother, how is it that you’re so much harder to pull up than the young prince?”“Wicked child!”cried the witch, “You’ve deceived me.”In her fury she picked up a pair of scissors and cut her lovely long hair. She then sent poor Rapunzel to a desert place, where she lived in misery and want.

At dusk the witch fastened Rapunzel’s severed braids to the window latch, and when the prince climbed up, she was waiting for him with angry, poisonous looks. “Aha!”she cried. “You’ve come to take your darling wife away, but the bird is gone from the nest, she won’t be singing any more;you’ll never see her again.”The prince was beside himself with grief, and in his despair he jumped from the tower. It didn’t kill him, but the brambles he fell into scratched his eyes out and he was blind. He wandered through the forest,weeping and wailing over the loss of his dearest wife.

At last he came to the desert place where Rapunzel was living in misery with the twins she had borne—a boy and a girl. When he approached Rapunzel recognized him, fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears dropped on his eyes,which were made clear again, so that he could see as well as ever. He took her to his kingdom, where she was welcomed with rejoicing, and they lived happy and contented for many years to come.

—Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm

[1]　rapunzel：萵苣的一種。

[2]　twenty ells：形容頭髮很長。ell為舊長度單位，相當於45英寸。