Rapunzel

"Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. A lonely couple, who want a child, live next to a walled garden belonging to a sorceress. The wife, experiencing the cravings associated with the arrival of her long-awaited pregnancy, notices some rapunzel, growing in the garden and longs for it. She refuses to eat anything else and gets sick, and the husband begins to fear for her life. One night, her husband breaks into the garden to get some for her. She makes a salad out of it and greedily eats it. It tastes so good that she longs for more. So her husband goes to get some more for her. As he scales the wall to return home, the sorceress catches him and accuses him of theft. He begs for mercy, and she agrees to be lenient, and allows him to take all the rapunzel he wants, on condition that the baby be given to her when it's born. Desperate, he agrees. When his wife has a baby girl, the sorceress takes her to raise as her own and names her "Rapunzel" after the plant her mother craved. She grows up to be the most beautiful child in the world, with long golden hair. When she turns twelve, the sorceress locks her up inside a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor a door, and only one room and one window. In order to visit Rapunzel, the sorceress stands beneath the tower and calls out: Rapunzel! Rapunzel!...