“Rapunzel”

“Rapunzel”

By Brother Grimm

There were once a man and a woman who had long, in vain, wished for a child. At length it appeared that God was about to grant their desire.

     These people had a little window at the back of their house from which a splendid garden could be seen, which was full of the most beautiful flowers and herbs. It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world.

     One day the woman was standing by this window and looking down into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion, and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it. She quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable.

     Her husband was alarmed, and asked: 'What ails you, dear wife?'

     'Ah,' she replied, 'if I can't eat some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.'

     The man, who loved her, thought: 'Sooner than let your wife die, bring her some of the rampion yourself, let it cost what it will.'

     At twilight, he clambered down over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily clutched a handful of rampion, and took it to his wife. She at once made herself a salad of it, and ate it greedily. It tasted so good to her - so very good, that the next day she longed for it three times as much as before.

     If he was to have any rest, her husband knew he must once more descend into the garden. Therefore, in the gloom of evening, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him.

     'How can you dare,' said she with angry look, 'descend into my garden and steal my rampion like a thief? You shall suffer for it!'

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     'Ah,' answered he, 'let mercy take the place of justice, I only made up my mind to do it out of necessity. My wife saw your rampion from the window, and felt such a longing for it that she would have died if she had not got some to eat.'

     The enchantress allowed her anger to be softened, and said to him: 'If the case be as you say, I will allow you to take away with you as much rampion as you will, only I make one condition, you must give me the child which your wife will bring into the world; it shall be well treated, and I will care for it like a mother.'

     The man in his terror consented to everything.

     When the woman was brought to bed, the enchantress appeared at once, gave the child the name of Rapunzel, and took it away with her.

     Rapunzel grew into the most beautiful child under the sun. When she was twelve years old, the enchantress shut her into a tower in the middle of a forest. The tower had neither stairs nor door, but near the top was a little window. When the enchantress wanted to go in, she placed herself beneath it and cried:

  'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

      Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the enchantress, she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.

     After a year or two, it came to pass that the king's son rode through the forest and passed by the tower. Then he heard a song, which was so charming that he stood still and listened. It was Rapunzel, who in her solitude passed her time in letting her sweet voice resound. The king's son wanted to climb up to her, and looked for the door of the tower, but none was to be found. He rode home, but the singing had so deeply touched his heart, that every day he went out into the forest and listened to it.

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     Once when he was thus standing behind a tree, he saw that an enchantress came there, and he heard how she cried:

 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

     Then Rapunzel let down the braids of her hair, and the enchantress climbed up to her.

     'If that is the ladder by which one mounts, I too will try my fortune,' said he, and the next day when it began to grow dark, he went to the tower and cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

     Immediately the hair fell down and the king's son climbed up.

     At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man, such as her eyes had never yet beheld, came to her; but the king's son began to talk to her quite like a friend, and told her that his heart had been so stirred that it had let him have no rest, and he had been forced to see her. Then Rapunzel lost her fear, and when he asked her if she would take him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought: 'He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does'; and she said yes, and laid her hand in his.

     She said: 'I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse.'

     They agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for the old woman came by day. The enchantress remarked nothing of this, until once Rapunzel said to her: 'Tell me, Dame Gothel, how it happens that you are so much heavier for me to draw up than the young king's son - he is with me in a moment.'

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     'Ah! you wicked child,' cried the enchantress. 'What do I hear you say! I thought I had separated you from all the world, and yet you have deceived me!'

     In her anger she clutched Rapunzel's beautiful tresses, wrapped them twice round her left hand, seized a pair of scissors with the right, and snip, snap, they were cut off, and the lovely braids lay on the ground. And she was so pitiless that she took poor Rapunzel into a desert where she had to live in great grief and misery.

     On the same day that she cast out Rapunzel, however, the enchantress fastened the braids of hair, which she had cut off, to the hook of the window, and when the king's son came and cried:

'Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.'

     she let the hair down. The king's son ascended, but instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks.

     'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.'

     The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes.

     He wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife. Thus he roamed about in misery for some years, and at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness. He heard a voice, and it seemed so familiar to him that he went towards it, and when he approached, Rapunzel knew him and fell on his neck and wept. Two of her tears wetted his eyes and they grew clear again, and he could see with them as before. He led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and they lived for a long time afterwards, happy and contented.

Spider Woman”

Spider Woman”

From Pawnee Tribe

Long ago Spider Woman and her daughters lived off by themselves and tended a garden. People would travel there to get corn, bean, and squash seeds from the woman, but she would tell them that first they had to play a dice game with her. In this game the people would jump up and down just as dice do when tossed in a basket. While people were jumping up, spider woman would send storms and the people would freeze to death. Then she hung the skulls of her victims from the walls of her lodge.

Finally the people decided that something had to be done about the spider woman. There were two young boys in their village who seemed to possess great powers. The people asked these boys to visit the spider woman. The boys traveled   several days until they came into a cornfield with a grass lodge nearby. Skulls were hanging from the walls of the lodge.  They spoke with a girl outside the lodge who warned them to go away quickly. If her mother saw them, she would make them eat poisoned human flesh. The boys told her that they would leave for a short time and then return.

When they were far side of cornfield, the boys ate a piece of root from their medicine bag and then returned to Spider Woman’s lodge. This time she saw them draw near and called to them to come into her lodge. She suspected that they had come for her daughters and decided to kill them like all the others who had approached her lodge. “You must be hungry,” she said to them. The boys replied that they were, indeed, very hungry from their long journey.

Spider Woman set bowls of food in front of them containing human brains cooked into a mush. Behind her they could see the daughter shake her head, warning them not to eat, but they did anyway. When they were finished the boys excused themselves to go outdoors for a while. Spider Woman feared they would go away, but the boys promised her they would be right back. When they had walked far enough away and were out of sight from the lodge, the boys vomited the poisoned brains and then returned to the lodge. Spider Woman thought it was strange that they appeared normal, so she gave them bowls of what appeared to be black corn, but were really human eyes. Before they began eating what she had prepared, they each took a bit of medicine root from their bag. Again, when they had emptied the bowls, they went outside and vomited all they had eaten.

Spider Woman decided that she couldn’t kill them with poison, so she asked them to stay until the next morning and play a dice game with her. In the morning she gave them what looked like squash but was actually human ears. The boys used their medicine again, and when they came back to the lodge, Spider Woman told them that it was time to play the dice game. The boys once again walked out of sight of the lodge, but when they came back they were covered with white clay and had black streaks painted below their eyes. They sat down and Spider Woman began to sing and call for a windstorm to come. That didn’t kill the boys, so she sang for a snowstorm to come. But, the boys turned into snowbirds, and when the sun returned, they turned into larks.

Finally the woman decided she could not harm the boys so she told them to go back to her lodge with her and they could have her daughters. But the oldest boy said, “No, let me sing and you can dance”. First he called the blizzard, but Spider Woman had power over snow storm, so it didn’t harm her. Then he called for boiling heat. She begged for him to stop, but he kept singing. Then she felt herself being raised off the ground as the boy sang for a swarm of grasshoppers to come. The grasshopper flew all around her and lifted her up into the sky. The boy kept singing the grasshopper song as the woman was taken up to the moon where the grasshoppers left her. Then grasshoppers flew on to the sun, and that is why on hot summer days we see grasshoppers swarming around in the sky. Today we can still see something on the moon. It is Spider Woman’s dress.

“Can–Can”

“Can–Can”

by Arturo Vivante

I'm going to go for a drive," he said to his wife. "I'll be back in an hour or two."

He didn't often leave the house for more than the few minutes it look him to go to the post office or to a store, but spent his time hanging around, doing odds jobs-Mr. Fix-it, his wife called him-and also, though not nearly enough of it, painting-which he made his living from.

"All right," his wife said brightly, as though he were doing her a favor. As a matter of fact, she didn't really like him to leave; she felt safer with him at home, and he helped look after the children, especially the baby.

"You're glad to be rid of me, aren't you?" he said.

"Uh-huh," she said with a smile that suddenly made her look very pretty-someone to be missed.

She didn't ask him where he was going for his drive. She wasn't the least bit inquisitive, though jealous she was in silent, subtle ways.

As he put his coat on, he watched her. She was in the living room with their elder daughter. "Do the can-can, mother," the child said, at which she held up her skirt and did the can-can, kicking her legs up high in his direction.

He wasn't simply going out for a drive, as he had said, but going to a café, to meet Sarah, whom his wife knew but did not suspect, and with her go to a house on a lake his wife knew nothing about-a summer cottage to which he had the key.

"Well, good-bye," he said.

"Bye," she called back, still dancing.

This wasn't the way a husband expected his wife - whom he was about to leave at home to go to another woman-to behave at all, he thought. He expected her to be sewing or washing, not doing the can-can, for God's sake. Yes, doing something uninteresting and unattractive, like darning children's clothes. She had no stockings on, no shoes, and her legs looked very white and smooth, secret, as though he had never touched them or come near them. Her feet, swinging up and down high in the air, seemed to be nodding to him. She held her skirt bunched up, attractively. Why was she doing that of all times now? He lingered. Her eyes had mockery in them, and she laughed. The child laughed with her as she danced. She was still dancing as he left the house.

He thought of the difficulties he had had arranging this rendezvous- going out to a call box; phoning Sarah at her office (she was married, too); her being out; his calling her again; the busy signal; the coin falling out of sight, his opening the door of the phone box in order to retrieve it; at last getting her on the line; her asking him to call again next week, finally setting a date.

Waiting for her at the café, he surprised himself hoping that she wouldn't come. The appointment was at three. It was now ten past. Well, she was often late. He looked at the clock, and at the picture window for her car. A car like hers, and yet not hers-no luggage rack on it. The smooth hardtop gave him a peculiar pleasure. Why? It was 3:15 now. Perhaps she wouldn't come. No, if she was going to come at all, this was the most likely time for her to arrive. Twenty past. Ah, now there was some hope. Hope? How strange he should be hoping for her absence. Why had he made the appointment if he was hoping she would miss it? He didn't know why, but simpler, simpler if she didn't come. Because all he wanted now was to smoke that cigarette, drink that cup of coffee for the sake of them, and not to give himself something to do. and he wished he could go for a drive, free and easy, as he had said he would. But he waited, and at 3:30 she arrived. "I had almost given up hope," he said.

They drove to the house on the lake. As he held her in his arms he couldn't think of her; for the life of him he couldn't.

"What are you thinking about?" she said afterwards, sensing his detachment.

For a moment he didn't answer, then he said, "You really want to know what I was thinking of?"

"Yes," she said, a little anxiously.

He suppressed a laugh, as though what he was going to tell her was too absurd or silly. "I was thinking of someone doing the can-can."

"Oh," she said, reassured. "For a moment I was afraid you were thinking of your wife."