PORCH PONDERINGS

Let Down Your Hair!

PROMPT May 15th

Many fairy tales are often based in truth. Research the true story behind your favorite fairy tale and share it with your readers. What lesson or warning was the tale trying to impart?


I found this link in researching this prompt:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fairy-tale-true-story_b_6102602

So I decided to choose Rapunzel even though I don’t have a favorite fairy tale. They all amuse me with the rhymes and morality tales. And I’ve always wanted that long blonde hair.

ANYHOO - It seems that the tale of the damsel in the tower with the long blonde hair she lets down for the prince to climb has more teeth to it than I thought. Like most fairy tales, there are many versions in many cultures.

But the one I liked went like this:
A lonely couple lived next to a tall tower inhabited by an evil witch. The couple want a child and when the woman gets pregnant she has cravings for salad greens, ‘rapunzel’ (Campanula rapunculus or Varianella locusta), that grow nearby in the walled gardens surrounding the tower. She refuses to eat anything else and grows weak. The husband scales the wall of the garden to pick the salad greens and one day is caught by the witch. The witch lets him go on one condition, the child born to the couple must be given to the witch when it is born. The desperate husband agrees.

The parents give the baby girl to the witch when she is born. She is named ‘Rapunzel’ after the plant her mother craved. Rapunzel is kept in the tower. The tower has no stair or door, only one window. To reach Rapunzel, the witch must climb her golden hair, and chant this rhyme:

Rapunzel!
Rapunzel!
Let down your hair,
That I may climb your golden stair!

From there, the tale can go two ways. The condensed versions:

1.A prince comes, rescues her from the tower, and they live happily ever after.
The prince comes, Rapunzel escapes, but the prince is blinded by the witch. Rapunzel, who was pregnant, is left to raise her twins alone, while the prince wanders looking for Rapunzel. Eventually he finds her and they all live happily ever after.

2.So the theory is that all the “Maiden in the Tower” stories, which Rapunzel is a part of, are metaphor for the protection of young women from pre-marital relationships by overzealous guardians. Scholars have also drawn comparisons of the confinement of Rapunzel in her tower to that of a convent, where women's lives were highly controlled and they lived in exclusion from outsiders.

But to me, Rapunzel is the tried and true story of a damsel in distress and a prince that comes to save her. That story never grows old. It is retold time and again in novels, TV, and movies.