Where to begin, where to begin? It has been so long since any one has bothered to hear my side of the story that I hardly know how or where to start! After all, who wants to listen to the ugly old enchantress like me? Anyways, I guess I should start on that warm spring day twenty-five years ago….
I lived in a huge mansion all by myself and I was, as is to be expected, very, very lonely. It seemed like whenever I tried to befriend the townspeople, they ran away in fright, as if they thought that I would turn them into a grasshopper (how utterly preposterous! I would never turn a person into a grasshopper).
One day, I was walking in my garden path when I came upon a man. He was clearly trying to steal some of my beautiful plants. Naturally, I was awfully upset that anyone would want to steal from a poor, helpless, lonely old woman like myself. I was fully intending to turn him into a toad, (they're so much easier than grasshoppers) when he stopped me.
"Please!" He cried, "Don't hurt me! I was just getting some rampion for my wife. She is with child and wanted me to fetch her some for her salad." I took pity on the poor man. His wife had sent him here, probably against his own will, just because of her own selfish desire to have some rampion.
"You may take as much rampion as you like for your wife." I told him. How could a kindhearted soul like me have done less? The man was exceedingly grateful and immediately agreed to let me come and visit him and his wife once the baby was born. I was tremendously pleased that I had made a friend and could barely wait for the baby's birth that I might see him again.
I soon heard news of the baby's arrival. Once I had, I prepared to go and visit the man and his family. I found the cottage easily, but when I knocked on the small wooden door I received no reply. Puzzled, I walked around to the back door and knocked there, too. After minutes of waiting and knocking, someone finally answered me.
"We won't let you have the baby!" came the man's voice. Having no idea at all what he was talking about, I asked him what he meant. "We won't let you take our first born child away from us!" He shouted back. I opened the door so that it would be easier to talk to him, for it was very trying to have to shout through the door. I found him and his wife cowering in the corner with a newborn child. "Alright, alright! You can have her!" He yelled at me, "Just leave me and my wife alone!" With that, he shoved the infant into my arms and then slammed the door in my face.
I was very flustered and confused, but I thought it would be best if I took the child home with me and waited for her parents to come and get her. After all, maybe all that they had meant was that I should baby-sit her for a few days. Yes, I decided, they just wanted me to look after her for a while. When I got home, I realized that I did not know the baby girl's name, so I started calling her Rapunzel, which was another name for rampion, the flower that her father had attempted to steal from my garden.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. I raised Rapunzel like the daughter I never had. I gave her everything her heart desired. I even built her a tower in the woods, just like she always wanted. Now, Rapunzel was quite spoiled, but I loved her too much and did not see it. I was blinded by her beauty and intelligence and never saw that she thought only of herself.
Then one day when I went to visit her in her tower (which had no stairs or ladders of any sort, just as she requested), I saw a young man walking away from it. Curious, I went up to the base of her tower and called out as I always did, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" Immediately she let down her long, beautiful golden hair for me to climb up. When I got there and asked her who the young man visiting her was, however, she claimed to not know who I was talking about. I let it slip, believing that she just had a friend from town who came to talk with her. How wrong I was.
One day, when Rapunzel was out on her daily walk, I was sitting in her tower waiting for her return. I heard someone below cry "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" Knowing that it was her friend from town, I let down the imitation hair that we kept near the window for times when Rapunzel herself needed to climb up and down. He climbed up, but when he saw me, he immediately grew violent.
"You!" he shouted, "You are the one who imprisons my beautiful Rapunzel in this horrendous tower that has no stairs or ladders!" I was confused and insulted that he should speak to me in such a manner. I was about to retort, when Rapunzel herself appeared in the window and spoke to her friend.
"My dear prince, we must flee!" she called to him. She looked at me with hate in her eyes which I had never seen before. "She is the evil enchantress I have told you about, and we must go swiftly or she shall change us into grasshoppers!" With that, they both climbed down the imitation hair and ran off into the woods, and I was left all alone.
When I think of my dear Rapunzel, who I raised so lovingly and who I waited on hand and foot, I still cry. Yet when I think of her betrayal and elopement with the prince, I cry harder still. Surely you cannot think that I could pretend to such grief as this? Now that you know the truth of the matter, I hope that you will pity me and my loneliness, and not sympathize with that rascal Rapunzel.