Once there was a man and his wife who had long wished for a child, and at last the wife knew that a child was coming. Now at the back of their house was a little window that looked out upon a splendid garden, full of the finest flowers and herbs; but it was surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared enter, for it belonged to a witch of great power, whom all the country feared.
One day the wife stood at that window and saw a bed planted with the freshest rapunzel, a green herb like young lettuce, and it looked so cool and so good that she longed for it, and could think of nothing else. Day by day she pined, and grew pale and wretched, until her husband was afraid for her. “What ails you, dear wife?” he asked. “Ah,” she said, “if I cannot have some of the rapunzel from the garden behind our house, I shall surely die.”
The man loved her, and that evening he climbed the wall and gathered a handful of the rapunzel and brought it to her, and she made it into a salad and ate it greedily. But it tasted so good that her longing grew threefold, and she gave him no peace until he went again. So at dusk he climbed the wall a second time; but when he came down on the other side, there stood the witch before him, terrible to behold.
“How dare you climb into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief,” she said. “You shall pay for it dearly.” The man begged for mercy, and pleaded his wife’s longing, and at last the witch’s anger cooled a little. “Take what you will,” she said, “but on one condition: the child your wife is carrying, you must give to me when it is born.” In his fear the man agreed to everything, and when the child, a girl, was born, the witch came at once and took her away, and named her Rapunzel, and the child was as lovely as the morning.
When Rapunzel was twelve years old, the witch shut her up in a tower that stood in the middle of a wood, and it had neither stair nor door, only one little window at the very top. When the witch wished to come in, she stood below and called:
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.”
For Rapunzel had hair long and fine and gold as spun silk, and when she heard the witch she wound her braids round a hook by the window and let them fall the long way down, and the witch climbed up by them.
So it went for some years, until one day a king’s son came riding through the wood, and heard a voice so sweet that he stopped to listen. It was Rapunzel, singing to pass the lonely hours. He looked for a door and found none, and rode home; but the song had gone to his heart, and he came back day after day to hear it. One day, hidden among the trees, he saw the witch come and heard her call, and saw the golden hair come tumbling down, and watched her climb. “If that is the ladder,” he thought, “then I too will try my luck.”
The next evening, when the witch had gone, he stood beneath the tower and called, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” Down came the hair, and up climbed the prince. At first Rapunzel was frightened, for she had never seen a man, but he spoke to her gently, and told her how her singing had moved him, and little by little her fear left her. And when he asked whether she would have him for her husband, she saw that he was young and kind, and she put her hand in his and said yes. “But how am I to get down from here?” she said. “Bring me each time a skein of silk, and I will weave a ladder, and when it is finished I will climb down, and we will go away together.”
All might have gone well, but one day, without thinking, Rapunzel said to the witch, “How is it that you are so much heavier to draw up than the young prince, who is here in a moment?” “Wicked child!” cried the witch. “What is this I hear?” And in her fury she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful hair and cut it off with a snip, and carried her far away to a lonely place, and left her there in grief.
Then the witch went back to the tower, and fastened the shorn braids to the hook, and waited. And when the prince came at evening and called, she let the hair down, and up he climbed, expecting his Rapunzel, and found instead the witch, with fury in her eyes. “You have come for your darling,” she said, “but the sweet bird sings no more; she is lost to you, and you will never see her again.”
In his grief the prince leapt from the window. He was not killed, but the thorns among which he fell pierced his eyes, and he was blind. So he wandered through the wood, living on roots and berries, and doing nothing but weep for the loss of his dearest wife, and thus he wandered for a year and more in misery.
At last his wandering brought him to the lonely place where Rapunzel lived in wretchedness. He heard a voice that seemed dear and familiar, and he went toward it, and Rapunzel knew him, and fell upon his neck and wept. And two of her tears fell upon his eyes, and at once they grew clear again, and he could see as well as ever. Then he led her to his kingdom, where they were welcomed with joy, and they lived long and happily thereafter.
Love shut away in a high tower will find its window in the end, and even sorrow, borne faithfully, can come round at last to joy.