Then Rapunzel lowered her plaits of hair and the Witch climbed up to her.
‘If that is the ladder by which one ascends,’ he thought, ‘I will try my luck myself.’ And the next day, when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried—
‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’
The hair fell down at once, and the King’s son climbed up by it.
At first Rapunzel was terrified, for she had never set eyes on a man before, but the King’s son talked to her kindly, and told her that his heart had been so deeply touched by her song that he had no peace, and he was obliged to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked if she would have him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought, ‘He will love me better than old Mother Gothel.’ So she said, ‘Yes,’ and laid her hand in his. She said, ‘I will gladly go with you, but I do not know how I am to get down from this tower. When you come, will you bring a skein of silk with you every time. I will twist it into a ladder, and when it is long enough I will descend by it, and you can take me away with you on your horse.’
She arranged with him that he should come and see her every evening, for the old Witch came in the daytime.
The Witch discovered nothing, till suddenly Rapunzel said to her, ‘Tell me, Mother Gothel, how can it be that you are so much heavier to draw up than the young Prince who will be here before long?’
‘Oh, you wicked child, what do you say? I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me.’ In her rage she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful hair, twisted it twice round her left hand, snatched up a pair of shears and cut off the plaits, which fell to the ground. She was so merciless that she took poor Rapunzel away into a wilderness, where she forced her to live in the greatest grief and misery.
In the evening of the day on which she had banished
