Persinette

by Laura Christensen

  But Parsley, recollecting the gall-nuts, quickly threw one on the ground, and lo, instantly a Corsican bulldog started up—O, mother, such a terrible beast!—which, with open jaws and barking loud, flew at the ogress as if to swallow her at a mouthful. But the old woman, who was more cunning and spiteful than ever, put her hand into her pocket, and pulling out a piece of bread gave it to the dog, which made him hang his tail and allay his fury.

  Then she turned after the fugitives again, but Parsley, seeing her approach, threw the second gall-nut on the ground, and lo, a fierce lion arose, who, lashing the earth with his tail, and shaking his mane and opening wide his jaws a yard apart, was just preparing to make a slaughter of the ogress, when, turning quickly back, she stripped the skin off an ass which was grazing in the middle of a meadow and ran at the lion, who, fancying it a real jackass, was so frightened that he bounded away as fast as he could.

  The ogress having leaped over this second ditch turned again to pursue the poor lovers, who, hearing the clatter of her heels, and seeing clouds of dust that rose up to the sky, knew that she was coming again. But the old woman, who was every moment in dread lest the lion should pursue her, had not taken off the ass’s skin, and when Parsley now threw down the third gall-nut there sprang up a wolf, who, without giving the ogress time to play any new trick, gobbled her up just as she was in the shape of a jackass.

  So Parsley and the Prince, now freed from danger, went their way leisurely and quietly to the Prince’s kingdom, where, with his father’s free consent, they were married. Thus, after all these storms of fate, they experienced that truth that—

  “One hour in port, the sailor, freed from fears,

  Forgets the tempests of a hundred years.”

  “Rapunzel” by the Brothers Grimm

  First published in 1812 in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen, with revised versions published in 1819, 1837, 1840, 1843, 1850 and 1857. Read each of these versions in the original German on Wikisource.org.

  Like most of you, I grew up with the story of Rapunzel. I only learned about her precursor Persinette’s existence after my university degree introduced me to the seventeenth-century literary scene in France. So picture me surprised when I first read “Persinette” and saw how remarkably similar they were, and yet—how could that be? The Brothers Grimm stories were supposed to be folk tales derived from oral tradition, not borrowed tales from the French aristocracy’s salons.

  So, in preparation for this book, I set out on a research adventure, seeking answers to this and other questions. Here is what I discovered.

  In 1790, a young French-to-German translator and writer by the name of Friedrich Schulz (or Joachim Christian Friedrich Schulz), translated “Persinette” and published it in his five-volume collection Kleine Romane. He was a writer of some renown, having made a name and a living for himself with his novel Mortiz, his translations from French, and his commentary on what he saw of the French Revolution during his stay in France in 1789. In his translation of “Persinette,” he changed the parsley to rampion (rapunzeln) and gave Rapunzel the name by which we know her now. He also kept the Fairy as she was (Fee) rather than change her to some other creature.

  No one seems to agree on whether the Brothers Grimm, some twenty years later, had read Schulz’s translation and wanted to retell it or if they had simply listened to someone recount a story he or she had once read or heard told. Yet the 1812 published version of the tale features a Fairy and is remarkably simplistic in comparison to the later revised versions, which I would suggest indicates a recorded oral retelling.

  In fact, I was surprised to see how much the story evolved from 1812 to the Grimm brothers’ final version in 1857. I wondered when and how the beautiful, powerful Fairy of “Persinette” and Schulz’s version changed to the old witch in the version of “Rapunzel” I was most familiar with. So I looked through the Grimm editions and compared the versions of the story in each one. I soon discovered that in 1819, the Fairy (Fee) became an Enchantress or Sorceress (Zauberin) and first got her name Frau Gothel. In 1837, she gets her “old” epithet and is named much sooner in the story. In 1850, we learn that “the old woman came by day” (bei Tag kam die Alte), as opposed to how she was described in 1843 as “the Enchantress, who came only days” (die Zauberin, die nur bei Tage kam).

  Likewise, Rapunzel became cleverer as the years went on. It took her until 1850 to concoct her “skeins of silk to make a ladder” escape plan. But that was also the year old Mother Gothel retaliated and taunted the Prince about the bird and the cat, which you will see in the following translation.

  When I went looking for a translation to include for this book, I searched for the earliest English translations I could find. Unfortunately, I could not find any translations of the 1812 version with the Fairy, but I did find scanned pages of the earliest edition of the translation I grew up on, which was first published in 1853. Unlike most of the translations that followed, this translation uses the English word “radishes” instead of “rampion” or “rapunzel” for the plant her mother craves. However, this translation does mention Rapunzel’s twin children, which, though every German version includes them, are surreptitiously edited out of most nineteenth-century English translations, including Andrew Lang’s famous version from 1890. (Got to love Victorian sensibilities.)

  SOURCES & FURTHER READING

  • See Manfred Kuehn and Heiner Klemme’s fascinating biography of Friederich Schulz: http://www.manchester.edu/kant/bio/FullBio/SchulzJCF.html

  • Read Schulz’s Kleine Romane as scanned pages online, including his 1790 translation of “Rapunzel” at http://books.google.com/books?id=acJIAAAAcAAJ.

  • The only English translation of the Grimm Brothers’ first edition of “Rapunzel” I found was in D.L. Ashliman’s side-by-side comparison of the Grimm Brothers’ 1812 version to the tale’s final form in the 1857 version: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012a.html.

  • Andrew Lang’s 1890 translation can be found, transcribed from The Red Fairy Book, here http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/rapunzel/index.html.

  • You can read transcriptions of each of the Grimm Brothers’ versions of “Rapunzel” in German at http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Rapunzel.

  • A good starting place for all things fairy tale can be found at http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/.

  “Rapunzel” by the Brothers Grimm

  Translated by an unknown translator, found in Household Stories Collected by the Brothers Grimm, Newly Translated, with Two Hundred and Forty Illustrations by Edward H. Wehnert, Vol. 1, published in London in 1853. Read scanned pages online at Archive.org.

  Once upon a time there lived a man and his wife, who much wished to have a child, but for a long time in vain. These people had a little window in the back part of their house, out of which one could see into a beautiful garden, which was full of fine flowers and vegetables; but it was surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go in, because it belonged to a Witch who possessed great power, and who was feared by the whole world. One day the woman stood at this window looking into the garden, and there she saw a bed which was filled with the most beautiful radishes, and which seemed so fresh and green that she felt quite glad; and a great desire seized her to eat of these radishes. This wish returned daily, and as she knew that she could not partake of them she fell ill, and looked very pale and miserable. This frightened her husband, who asked, “What ails you, my dear wife?”

  “Ah!” she replied, “if I cannot get any of those radishes to eat out of the garden behind the house I shall die!” The husband, loving her very much, thought, “Rather than let my wife die I must fetch her some radishes, cost what they may.” So, in the gloom of the evening, he climbed the wall of the Witch’s garden, and, snatching a handful of radishes in great haste, brought them to his wife, who made herself a salad with them, which she ate with relish. However, they were so nice, and so well-flavoured, that the next day after she felt the same desire for the third time, and could not get any
rest, so that her husband was obliged to promise her some more. So, in the evening, he made himself ready, and began clambering up the wall; but oh! how terribly frightened he was, for there he saw the old Witch standing before him. “How dare you,” —she began, looking at him with a frightful scowl,—“how dare you climb over into my garden to take away my radishes like a thief? Evil shall happen to you for this.”

  “Ah!” replied he, “let pardon be granted before justice; I have only done this from a great necessity : my wife saw your radishes from her window, and took such a fancy to them that she would have died if she had not eaten of them.” Then the Witch ran after him in a passion, saying, “If she behave as you say I will let you take away all the radishes you please, but I make one condition : you must give me the child which your wife will bring into the world. All shall go well with it, and I will care for it like a mother.” In his anxiety the man consented, and when the child was born the Witch appeared at the same time, gave the child the name “Rapunzel,” and took it away with her.

  Rapunzel grew to be the most beautiful child under the sun, and when she was twelve years old the Witch shut her up in a tower, which stood in a forest, and had neither stairs nor door, and only one little window just at the top. When the Witch wished to enter she stood beneath, and called out—

  “Rapunzel! Rapunzel!

  Let down your hair!”

  for Rapunzel had long and beautiful hair, as fine as spun gold; and as soon as she heard the Witch’s voice she unbound her tresses, opened the window, and then the hair fell down twenty ells, and the Witch mounted up by it.

  After a couple of years had passed away it happened that the King’s son was riding through the wood, and came by the tower. There he heard a song so beautiful that he stood still and listened. It was Rapunzel, who, to pass the time of her loneliness away, was exercising her sweet voice. The King’s son wished to ascend to her and looked for a door to the tower, but he could not find one. So he rode home, but the song had touched his heart so much that he went every day to the forest and listened to it; and, as he thus stood one day behind a tree, he saw the Witch come up and heard her call out—

  “Rapunzel! Rapunzel!

  Let down your hair!”

  Then Rapunzel let down her tresses, and the Witch mounted up. “Is that the ladder on which one must climb? Then I will try my luck, too,” said the Prince; and the following day, as he felt quite lonely, he went to the tower, and said—

  “Rapunzel! Rapunzel!

  Let down your hair!”

  Then the tresses fell down, and he climbed up. Rapunzel was much frightened at first when a man came in, for she had never seen one before; but the King’s son began to talk in a friendly way to her, and told how his heart had been so moved by her singing that he had had no peace until he had seen her himself. So Rapunzel lost her terror, and when he asked her if she would have him for a husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought, “Any one may have me, rather than the old woman;” so, saying “Yes,” she put her hand within his : “I will willingly go with you, but I know not how I am to descend. When you come, bring with you a skein of silk each time, out of which I will weave a ladder, and when it is ready I will come down by it, and you must take me upon your horse.” Then they agreed that they should never meet till the evening, as the Witch came in the daytime. The old woman remarked nothing about it, until one time Rapunzel began to say to her, “Tell me, mother, how it happens you find it more difficult to come up to me than the young King’s son, who is with me in a moment?”

  “Oh, you wicked child!” exclaimed the Witch, “What do I hear? I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me.” And, seizing Rapunzel’s beautiful hair in a fury, she gave her a couple of blows with her left hand, and, taking a pair of scissors in her right, snip, snap! she cut them all off; and the beautiful tresses lay upon the ground. Then she was so hard-hearted that she took the poor maiden into a great desert, and left her to live in great misery and grief.

  But the same day when the old Witch had carried Rapunzel off, in the evening she made the tresses fast above to the window latch, and when the King’s son came, and called out—

  “Rapunzel! Rapunzel!

  Let down your hair!”

  she let them down. The Prince mounted; but when he got to the top he found, not his dear Rapunzel, but the Witch, who looked at him with furious and wicked eyes. “Aha!” she exclaimed, scornfully, “you would fetch your dear wife; but the beautiful bird sits no longer in her nest, singing; the cat has taken her away, and now will scratch out your eyes. To you Rapunzel is lost; you will never see her again.”

  The Prince lost his senses with grief at these words, and sprang out of the window of the tower in his bewilderment. His life he escaped with, but the thorns into which he fell put out his eyes. So he wandered, blind, in the forest, eating nothing but roots and berries, and doing nothing but weep and lament for the loss of his dear wife. He wandered about thus, in great misery, for some few years, and at last arrived at the desert where Rapunzel, with her twins, a boy and a girl, which had been born, lived in great sorrow. Hearing a voice which he thought he knew, he went up to her; and, as he approached, Rapunzel recognized him, and fell upon his neck and wept. Two of her tears moistened his eyes, and they became clear again, so that he could see as well as formerly.

  Then he led her away to his kingdom, where he was received with great demonstrations of joy, and where they lived long, contented, and happy.

  What became of the old Witch, no one ever knew.

  Part III: Little Translator

  Acknowledgements

  No creative endeavor can be done alone, and I found this especially true with literary translation. So without further ado, I’d like to thank Megan Williams and Myriam Bloom for being my fresh eyes and outsourced English brain whenever I got stuck in the French way of saying things (which was embarrassingly often) and for holding my hand through thick and thin. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my instructors, professors Alan K. Melby and Michael J. Call of Brigham Young University and award-winning literary translator Lisa Carter, for all their guidance, advice, support, and encouragement. I wouldn’t be here, doing this, without you. On that note, I should also thank my fellow students and peers for putting up with me and my various (and often misguided) enthusiasms: Emily Balistrieri, Lise Capitan, Allison Charette, Angela Martin, David Drake, Andrew Bayles, and Jennifer Samsoudine. Thanks, as well, to the members of ELTNA who patiently answered my questions about translating poetry; (I hope to continue to improve, thanks to your advice). And here’s a shout-out to my editor Kristy G. Stewart for believing in this project enough to come aboard.

  Last but not least, dear reader, thank you for taking the time to read this little book of mine. I hope you have enjoyed the tales and thoughts within. Please feel free to drop me a note or leave a review. I would love to hear what you think.

  About the Translator

  Laura Christensen is a French-to-English translator of all things seventeenth-to-nineteenth–century fae, fairy, and fantasy. Follow her progress at www.littletranslator.com or on Twitter @titetraductrice.