The Six Swans · page 21 2101Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried,102"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair."103Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her. "104If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I will for once try my fortune," said he, and the next day, when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried.105"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair."106Immediately the hair fell down, and the King's son climbed up.107At 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.108Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for a 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.109She said, "I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down.110Bring 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."111They agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the old woman came by day.112The 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." "113Ah! you wicked child," cried the enchantress, "what do I hear you say!114I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me!"115In 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, snip, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground.116And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert, where she had to live in great grief and misery.117On the same day, however, that she cast out Rapunzel, the enchantress in the evening fastened the braids of hair which she had cut off to the hook of the window, and when the King's son came and cried,118"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your hair,"119she let the hair down.120The King's son ascended, but he did not find his dearest Rapunzel above, but the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. "121Aha!" she cried mockingly. "122You would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well.123Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her more."124The King's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower.125He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes.126Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did nothing but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife.127Thus he roamed about I in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel lived in wretchedness.128He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept.129Two of her tears wetted his eyes, and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as before.130He led her to his kingdom, where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.1 2← previousBriar Rosenext →Mother Holle↑ back to Grimm's Fairy StoriesThis page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11027/19/page/2/