"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. It is one of the best known of fairy tales, and its plot has been used and parodied by many cartoonists and comedians, its best known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") having entered popular culture.-----------------------A childless couple who wanted a child lived next to a walled garden which belonged to an enchantress. The wife, at long last pregnant, noticed some rapunzel (or, in some versions of the story, radishes), planted in the garden and longed for it to the point of death. For two nights, the husband went out and broke into the witch's garden to gather some for her, but on the third night, as he was scaling the wall to return home, the enchantress (Dame Gothel) appeared and accused him of thievery. He begged for mercy, and the old woman agreed to give him some, on condition that the child his wife was pregnant with be surrendered to her at birth. Desperate, the man agreed; a girl was born; the enchantress appeared, and the child was taken away. She named her Rapunzel. When Rapunzel reached her twelfth year, the enchantress shut her away into a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor door, and only one room and one window. When the witch went to visit Rapunzel, she stood beneath the tower and called out:Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair.-------Upon hearing these words, Rapunzel would wrap her long, fair hair around a hook that sat beside the window, and drop it down to the enchantress, who would then climb up the hair to Rapunzel. One day a prince rode through the forest and heard Rapunzel singing from the tower. Entranced by her ethereal voice, he went to look for the girl and found the tower, but no door leading in, and no stairway leading up. He then returned often, listening to her beautiful singing, and one day saw the enchantress visit, thus learning how to gain access to Rapunzel. When the witch was gone he bade Rapunzel let her hair down ( as in the Persian story of Rudaba ), and he climbed up, made her acquaintance, and finally asked her to marry him. Rapunzel agreed. Together they planned a way to get her out of the tower: he would come each night (thus avoiding the enchantress who visited her by day), and bring her silk, which Rapunzel would gradually weave into a ladder. Before the plan came to fruition however, Rapunzel foolishly gave the prince away. In the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, Rapunzel innocently asks why her dress was getting tight around her belly, alerting the witch. In subsequent editions, she asked the witch one day (in a moment of forgetfulness) why it was easier for her to draw him up instead of her. In anger, Dame Gothel cut short Rapunzel's braided hair and cast her out into the wilderness to fend for herself. When the prince called that night, the enchantress let the braids down to haul him up. To his horror he found himself staring at the witch instead of Rapunzel, who was nowhere to be found. When she told him in anger that he would never see Rapunzel again, he leapt from the tower in despair and was blinded by the thorns below. For months he wandered through the wastelands of the country. During this time, Rapunzel gave birth to the prince's twin children, a boy and a girl. One day, while Rapunzel sang as she fetched water, the prince heard Rapunzel's voice again, and they were reunited. When they fell into each other's arms, her tears immediately restored his sight. The prince led her and their children to his kingdom, where they lived happily ever after.