Once, a man and a woman lived in a house with a small window at the back. From this window, they could see a beautiful garden full of the finest flowers and herbs. A high wall surrounded the garden, and no one dared to enter it because it belonged to a powerful witch.
One day, the woman looked down into the garden and saw a bed of fresh, green salad plants called Rapunzel. She wanted to eat them so much that she became pale and thin. Her husband was worried and asked, "What is wrong, dear wife?"
"If I cannot eat that Rapunzel from the garden, I will die," she replied.
The husband loved her very much, so he decided to climb over the wall at night. He quickly grabbed some of the plants and took them to his wife. She ate them greedily, but the next day, she wanted even more. To keep her happy, the husband went back into the garden a second time. However, as he climbed down the wall, he was terrified to see the witch standing there.
"How dare you steal from my garden?" she shouted.
The man was very afraid. "Please, have mercy!" he said. "I only did it because my wife was dying to taste your plants."
The witch calmed down a little and said, "If that is true, you may take all the Rapunzel you want. But there is one condition: you must give me the child your wife is about to have. I will care for it like a mother."
The man was so scared that he agreed. When the baby was born, the witch appeared, named the girl Rapunzel, and took her away.
Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child in the world. When she was twelve, the witch shut her in a high tower in the middle of a forest. The tower had no door and no stairs—only a small window at the very top. When the witch wanted to enter, she stood below and cried:
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me."
Rapunzel had incredibly long, golden hair. When she heard the witch, she tied her hair around a hook and let it fall twenty meters down. The witch then climbed up the hair like a rope.
A few years later, a prince was riding through the forest and heard a beautiful voice singing. It was Rapunzel. He wanted to climb up to her, but he could not find a door. He went back every day to listen. One day, he saw the witch arrive and heard her call out the special words.
"If that is the ladder," the prince thought, "I will try it myself."
The next evening, he went to the tower and shouted, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" The hair fell down, and he climbed up. Rapunzel was frightened at first because she had never seen a man before. But the prince spoke kindly to her and told her he loved her voice. Soon, they fell in love, and she agreed to marry him.
"I want to escape with you," she said, "but I don't know how to get down. Bring some silk every time you visit. I will weave a ladder, and when it is finished, we will go away together."
The witch didn't notice anything until one day Rapunzel accidentally said, "Tell me, Old Gothel, why are you so much heavier than the prince? He is up here in a second!"
"You wicked child!" the witch screamed. "I tried to hide you from the world, and you have deceived me!" In a rage, the witch cut off Rapunzel’s beautiful hair. She was so cruel that she took the poor girl to a lonely desert and left her there to live in misery.
That evening, the witch waited in the tower. When the prince arrived and called out, she let down the cut hair. The prince climbed up, but instead of Rapunzel, he saw the angry witch.
"Aha!" she laughed. "Your beautiful bird is gone! You will never see her again!"
The prince was so upset that he jumped from the tower. He survived the fall, but he landed in thorns that blinded him. For years, he wandered the forest, eating only roots and berries and crying for his lost wife.
Finally, he reached the desert where Rapunzel lived with her two young children. He heard a familiar voice and followed it. When Rapunzel saw him, she ran to him and wept. Two of her tears fell into his eyes, and suddenly, he could see again! He took her and the children back to his kingdom, where they lived happily ever after.