Rapunzel                        Rewritten by Wayne Wallace

 

            Once upon a time, in the late 60’s, there lived a hippy couple who were bummed because they had no children.  These people had a little window in the back of their crash pad which looked into a most lovely garden, full of all manner of beautiful flowers, delicious looking vegetables and very groovy looking herbs and vines.  The garden was surrounded by a high wall and no one dared to enter it, for the garden belonged to an evil witch, of great power, who was feared by the whole world.

One day, the dude’s old lady stood at the window overlooking the garden, and saw there a bed of the finest looking hemp plants she had ever seen.  The leaves looked so fresh and green that she longed to smoke them.  The desire grew day by day, and just because she knew that she couldn’t have any of the hemp, she pined away and became quite pale and wretched.  Then her old man became alarmed and said,

“What’s got you so freaked out dear old lady?”

“Oh,” she answered, “If I don’t get some of that primo weed out of the garden behind the house, I know I will surely die!”

The dude, who loved his old lady dearly, thought to himself, “Gee man, rather than let your old lady die, you should climb the wall and get her some of that weed, no matter how risky it may be.”  So, at dusk he climbed over the high wall into the witch’s garden, and hastily gathered an armful of loco weed.  He returned with the misgotten stash to his old lady.  She methodically dried the weed, separated the seeds and stems from the potent leaves and crumbled the leaves into a manageable size.  She took some papers and rolled some very nice joints.  The weed was so awesome that the dude and his old lady stayed stoned for a week, until all the hemp was gone.  The dude’s old lady just had to have some more of that shit!  If she were to know any peace of mind, there was nothing for the dude to do but climb the wall and fetch some more of the forbidden pot.  So, at dusk, he again climbed over the wall, but when he reached the other side, he drew back in terror, for there, standing before him was the old witch!

“How dare you!” she said with a wrathful glance. “Climb into my garden and steal my hemp like a common thief?  You shall suffer for your foolhardiness.”

“Easy, evil witch lady”, he implored, “pardon my presumption; necessity alone drove me to the deed.  My old lady saw your Maui Wowie plants from her window, and conceived such a desire for it that she would have most certainly died if her wish had not been gratified.”  Then the Witch’s anger was a little appeased, and she said:

“If it is as you say, you may take as much of my prize ganga away with you as you like, but on one condition only.  That you give me your first born child.  You shall give it to me and I will raise it as its mother.”

The dude, knowing they had tried and tried in vain to have a child, figured this to be a pretty good deal, so he agreed to everything she asked.  The couple lived for several months in a blissful fog as they used up the clandestine pot.  Then, one day, the dude’s old lady discovered that she was knocked up!  The next several months went along uneventfully until the dude’s old lady gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.  They named her Repunzel (you know how hippies name their kids weird names.)  At the hospital, the witch was there to collect the baby.  They handed her over fearfully, for remember, the evil Witch was feared by the whole world.  She carried the beautiful baby away with her..

 

Chapter 2

 

Rapunzel grew to be the most beautiful child under the sun.  When she was twelve years old, the witch decided to shut her up in a tall tower in the middle of a great wooded area.  The tower had neither a door nor stairs, only a small window at the very top..  Rapunzel was reaching puberty and the Witch wanted to protect her chastity at all costs.  When the Witch wanted to get in, she called out:

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.”

For Rapunzel had wonderfully long, golden hair, and it was as fine as spun gold.  Whenever she heard the Witch’s voice she loosened her braids and let her hair fall down, out the window, about a distance of twenty yards, and the Witch would climb up to the window by it.

After they had lived like this for a few years, it happened one day that a Prince was hiking in the woods and passed by the tower.  As he drew near, he heard someone singing so sweetly that he stood spell-bound, and listened. It was Rapunzel in her loneliness trying to wile away the time by letting her sweet voice ring out into the wood.  The Prince longed to see the owner of this beautiful voice, but he sought in vain for a door with which to enter the tower.  He went home, but was so haunted by the song that he had heard that he returned every day to the wood and listened.  One day, when he was standing thus behind a tree, he saw the old Witch approaching and heard her call out:

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.” 

Then Rapunzel let down her braids and the Witch climbed up by them.  “So that’s the staircase, is it?” said the Prince.  “Then I too will climb and try my luck.”

So, on the following day, at dusk, he went to the foot of the tower and cried:

 “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.”

And as soon as she had let it down the Prince climbed up.

At first Rapunzel was terribly frightened when a man came in, for she had never seen one before, but the Prince spoke to her so kindly, and told her at once that his heart had been so touched by her singing, that he felt he should know no peace of mind until he had seen her.  Very soon Rapunzel forgot her fear, and when he asked her to marry him she consented at once.  “For”, she thought, “he is young and handsome, and I’ll certainly be happier with him than with the old Witch.  Besides she was very curious about the huge bulge in the front of his tight white pants.”  So, she put her hand on that huge bulge, which grew even larger, and said:

“Yes, I will gladly go with you, only how am I to get down from this tower?  Every time you come to see me you must bring a basket of hemp that I can make a rope with which to climb down. And you will take me away on your horse.”

They arranged that until the rope was ready, he was to come to her every evening, because the Witch was with her during the day.  The old Witch of course, knew nothing of what was going on, until one day, Rapunzel, not thinking (she was blonde after all) said, “How is it good mother, that you are so much harder to pull up the side of the tower than the young Prince? He is always with me in a moment.”

“Oh you wicked child!” cried the Witch.  “What is this I hear? I thought I had hidden you safely from the whole world, and in spite of it, you have managed to deceive me.”

In her wrath she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful hair, wrapped it around her left arm and then grabbed a pair of scissors in her right hand and snip, snip, off it came.  The beautiful braids lay on the ground.  And even worse than this, she was so hard-hearted that she took Rapunzel to lonely desert place to live in loneliness and misery.

But on the evening of the day in which she had driven poor Rapunzel away, the Witch fastened the braids to a hook in the window, and when the Prince came, he called out:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.  Mr. Wiggily, (their pet name for that bulge) wants to visit.

The Witch let the braids down and the Prince climbed up as usual, but instead of his beloved Rapunzel, he found the old Witch.  The Witch grabbed “Mr. Wiggly” which was precariously exposed and with the same scissors that she had used to snip the golden locks of Rapunzel, snipped off any likelihood of sons and daughters for the Prince.

“Holy shit!” the Prince screamed as he grabbed the stump.  “Aha,” the Witch said, “you thought you’d find your lady love but she has flown the coop.  Never again will you see her!”  Then the evil Witch pushed the whimpering Prince out the window to the forest below.

 

Chapter 3

 

The Prince, besides being emasculated by the evil Witch, landed in a bed of thorns, under the tower window and the thorns pierced out his eyes. He wandered, blind and disfigured, through the wood, eating nothing but berries and roots, weeping and lamenting the loss of his lovely bride-to-be. So he wandered about for some years, as wretched and unhappy as he could well be, and at last he happened upon the home of the dude and his old lady. It was an extremely fine home for the couple had made a fortune growing prize pot from the seeds they had saved from the plants in the witch’s garden. The Prince told them his sad story. “Your bride-to-be, Rapunzel is our long lost daughter. We will spare no expense finding her.” Declared the dude.

The dude hired a famous detective to find Rapunzel. The detective combed every desert area around the world until he found, in Death Valley, California, a short haired blonde who called her self merely “Rap.”

Rapunzel, was very excited to be reunited with her mother and father and the “worse-for-wear” Prince. They all lived together in the Dude and his old lady’s huge plantation in the Florida keys. Rapunzel still loved the Prince and lovingly guided him from place to place. A Miami engineer designed a hydraulic prosthesis for the Prince. At last word, Rapunzel and the Prince were living happily ever after.

 

END……………………….

 

Epilogue: The Evil Witch was so pissed by the reunion of the lovers and Rapunzel’s parents that she set up headquarters somewhere on a Caribbean Island and during hurricane season, stirs her pot and conjures up hurricanes to try to get to the now happy family.

Final Word: Again, the traditional story was written by the Brothers Grimm. The modernization is mine.

WW