A Treasury of Fairy Tales by Helen Cresswell & Siân Bailey

Author:Helen Cresswell & Siân Bailey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-10-09T21:00:00+00:00

“How dare you climb into my garden and tear up my plants!” she cried in a terrible voice. “I have caught you red-handed, and now it will be the worse for you!”

The poor man, shaking and trembling, explained how greatly his wife had longed for the rampion, and begged the witch to forgive him.

“Never!” she cried. “But I will make a bargain with you. Your wife is about to have a child. I will let you go free and take with you as much rampion as you like, on condition that when the child is born I shall have it, to bring up as my own.”

The man agreed, for he was so terrified that he hardly knew what he was saying, and scrambled safely back over the wall with the stolen rampion and a heavy heart.

Soon afterwards, a daughter was born, and when she was only a few days old the witch came and carried the child off with her. She gave her the name Rapunzel (which is another name for rampion).

When Rapunzel was twelve years old the witch locked her in a tall stone tower that stood in the thickest and darkest part of a great wood. It had neither staircase nor doors, only a little window in Rapunzel’s own room right at the very top.

Whenever the witch wanted to enter, she would stand below and call up,

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

Rapunzel had long yellow hair, which she wore in plaits wound about her head. When she heard the witch, she would twist them round a hook by the window and let them down. They fell like thick golden ropes, and the witch would climb up by them.

When Rapunzel had been in the tower for several years it happened one day that the king’s son rode by. He heard a beautiful voice singing nearby, and pushing his way through the dim green thicket came for the first time upon the lonely sunless tower. Rapunzel’s voice drifted down from the little window, and she sang so sweetly of her loneliness that the Prince longed to join her. He searched about the tower to find a door, but in vain, and in the end he was forced to ride away.

After that, he would often ride in the wood and make his way to the tower in its secret thicket. And one day, while he was hidden there among the laurel leaves, the old witch herself appeared, and he heard her call out,

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

The Prince saw Rapunzel’s face at the high window, he saw her lift her hands to unpin her braids, and a minute later the golden ropes of hair came tumbling to the ground. The witch climbed up while the Prince watched.

“If that is the ladder that will take me up to that fair lady, then I shall try my own luck,” he thought.

Next day he went at evening into the forest and came to the tower in the half darkness. He called from the

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