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in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, 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 tresses,
wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the
hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

After a year or two, it came to pass that 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 to me.'

Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress
climbed up to her. 'If that is the ladder by which one mounts, 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 to me.'

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 yet beheld, 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 old Dame Gothel
does'; and 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 weave 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 remarked nothing of this, 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.'
'Ah! 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
tresses, wrapped them twice round 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.

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