The Maiden in the Tower (Type 310)

This story follows a maiden kept in a castle or high tower by her guardian - an ogress or fairy - until a prince finds and falls in love with her. They flee the tower, often in a Magic Flight sequence where the maiden throws objects such as balls of yarn to create magical barriers and stop the guardian from chasing them. This may lead into the motif of the Forgotten Fiancee, where magic steals the prince's memories of his bride, and she must use her powers to remind him. Alternately, the heroine may be cursed with ugliness or turned into an animal, and must break the curse. Sometimes, it’s explained that the maiden came to be in the tower because her parents stole from her captor’s garden. The most colorful characteristic of this story is the maiden with impossibly long hair which doubles as a climbing rope to her tower prison.

Popular in Italy and France; French versions are more likely to end in tragedy. Sometimes overlaps with ATU 408, "The Three Oranges," in variants where the prince is cursed or fated to seek out a certain maiden. Also similar to the widespread ATU 313 ("The Magic Flight" or "The Devil's Daughter"), also characterized by a sorceress-heroine, a magic-flinging chase, and the Forgotten Fiancée arc.
 
Anthousa, Xanthousa, Chrisomalousa: Greece. A prince is cursed with love for "Anthousa, Xanthousa, Chrisomalousa" (Anthousa the Fair with Golden Hair), who turns out to be a girl living in a tower only accessible by her hair. Using Anthousa's magical skills, they escape from the ogress who keeps her there. Concludes with the Forgotten Fiancee arc.
  • Georgios A. Megas, Folktales of Greece, p 42, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1970
  • Soula Mitakidou and Anthony L. Manna, with Melpomeni Kanatsouli, Folktales from Greece: A Treasury of Delights, p 9
Beautiful Catharinella
  • Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Grimm's Other Tales. William Hansen, selector. Ruth Michael-Jenas and Arthur Ratcliff, translators. London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1956.
The Fair Angiola: Italy. Seven women steal jujubes from a witch's garden. The witch hides herself to catch them, and leaps out when one mistakes her ear for a mushroom. She claims the woman's daughter when she turns seven; the woman gives up her daughter Angiola out of fear that the witch will eat her. The witch raises her as a daughter and keeps her in a tower accessible by her hair. A prince falls for her and asks her to come with him. Angiola conceals her escape by bribing the furniture, but forgets the broom, which tells the witch where she went. A Magic Flight sequence follows. When the witch cannot follow, she angrily curses Angiola to have a dog's face. The prince keeps Angiola in a distant cottage. However, Angiola's pet dog begs the witch to lift the curse, and she is able to marry the prince.
  • Gonzenbach, Laura. Beautiful Angiola: The Great Treasury of Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales Collected by Laura Gonzenbach. Jack Zipes, translator and editor. New York: Routledge, 2004.
  • Crane, Thomas Frederick. Italian Popular Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1885.
The Fairy-Queen Godmother: Basque. A fairy queen offers to become the godmother to the new child of a family with numerous children. She takes the baby away, names her Pretty-Rose (Bellarose) and puts "a glint of diamonds" on her forehead, and raises her in a mountain home. One day Pretty-Rose meets a prince. She gets her godmother drunk so that she can leave with the prince in his flying chariot. The next day, Pretty-Rose discovers that the "diamond glint" is gone and she is no longer beautiful. Pretty-Rose sends her talking dog to beg the godmother to return it. Pretty-Rose marries the prince, everyone marvels at her beauty, and she provides money for her parents and siblings. Fenelchen: Malta. The plant of the story is Fennel. To escape the old woman, Fenchelchen transforms herself and the prince into different objects. The Forgotten Fiancee arc follows. Filagranata: Rome. Very similar to Petrosinella. The Garden Witch: Italy. Combines elements of Rapunzel with Hansel and Gretel. During a famine, a pregnant woman and her friend steal cabbages from a garden. The old gardener eventually catches them by disguising herself as a mushroom; to save her life, the pregnant woman promises to hand over her child when it's sixteen. The witch agrees. The woman has a daughter who grows up; despite her efforts, the witch eventually takes her and begins fattening her up to eat. The girl tricks her, pushes her into the oven, and goes home to her mother.
  • Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. George Martin, translator. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. no. 181, p. 650ff.
  • Zipes, Jack. The Collected Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Giuseppe Pitre, p. 123. "The Old Woman of the Garden."
Girl Tentelina and the Wolf: North Macedonia. Here, it is the girl’s brother who rescues her from the tower where she has been locked by a wolf.
  • Shapkarev, Kuzman. Сборник от български народни умотворения [The Bulgarian Folklore Collection]. Vol. VIII: Български прикаски и вѣрования съ прибавление на нѣколко Македоновлашки и Албански [Bulgarian folktales and beliefs with some Macedo-Romanian and Albanian]. 1892. pp. 165-169.
The Godchild of the Fairy in the Tower: France. Reads closely to Rapunzel, until the prince takes her away; then ends abruptly, with the fairy transforming the girl into a frog and giving the prince a pig’s snout. Lanjeh: A Jewish tale from Morocco. A monstrous shapeshifter adopts a little human girl named Lanjeh and keeps her in the top room of her huge house. People notice Lanjeh's beauty as she grows older, including a king's son. When he visits her, she lowers a bucket of water on her long braid so that he may drink, but her foster-mother notices a damaged hair. Lanjeh runs away with the prince, leading to the Magical Flight motif. However, the prince is carried off by an eagle after not listening to Lanjeh's advice, and his parents throw Lanjeh in jail. Lanjeh realizes her errors in mistreating her foster mother, and a wise rabbi figures out how to catch the eagle and save the prince.
  • Rush, Barbara. The book of Jewish women's tales. 1994. No. 26, p. 111.
Lolabe: An Arabic tale from Palestine. A classic example of long-haired tower maiden, Magic Flight and Forgotten Fiancee. A prince is cursed to seek out Lolabe, who is the daughter of a ghoul. "Lolabe," which means spiral, is an unusual name for girls and of unclear meaning here.
  • Muhawi, Ibrahim and Sharif Kanaana. Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales. 1989. no. 18.
Louliyya, Daughter of Morgan: Egypt. Prince Yousif is cursed to seek out Louliyya, the daughter of Morgan, who turns out to be a maiden with long climbable hair in a tower. She uses magic to flee with him and escape her father the ogre. However, before dying, the ogre turns Louliyya into a dog and Yousif into a lark. Louliya finds Yousif's parents, who are able to free her. She disenchants Yousif, and they are married.
  • El-Shamy, Hasan M., ed. and trans. Folktales of Egypt. Folktales of the World. 1980. no. 8, p. 54-63.
The Maid and the Negress: Portugal. A long-haired maiden, imprisoned in a tower, receives regular visits from her lover, a prince. One day, a witch notices and spies on them. Afterwards, she mimics the prince's voice to call to the maiden and climb her hair to the tower, and there tries to convince the maiden to abandon the prince. Disturbed, the maiden flees with the prince and enchants everything in her tower to mislead the witch, but forgets a broomstick and besom, which alert the witch to her departure. A Magic Flight sequence follows. The story then follows the False Bride motif similarly to “The Three Oranges”: the prince returns home, but a black woman turns the maiden into a dove and takes her place. The prince eventually catches the dove, frees her from the enchantment, and executes the impostor. Parsillette: France. Reads like a garbled version of Rapunzel or Persinette. The garden theft involves fruit, but the heroine is still named after parsley. Her fairy godmothers give her magical gifts but imprison her in a tower out of fear that she'll leave them. She runs away with a young man, but is betrayed by her talking parrot. Her godmother curses her with ugliness, and Parsilette chooses to return and beg forgiveness, while her lover dies instantly. Parsilette goes on to later marry a prince, presumably with her godmother's blessing. Persinette: France. A literary tale by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force, published in 1698. A pregnant woman craves parsley, and her husband steals it from the garden of a fairy. The fairy allows this in exchange for raising the child as her goddaughter. She names the baby Persinette, from persil (parsley). As the girl grows older, she moves her into an extravagant tower only accessible by climbing her long hair. A prince finds her and they begin a relationship. Persinette’s pregnancy exposes the truth; the fairy cuts off her beautiful hair, sends her to a distant cottage, and confronts the prince, who throws himself from the tower and is blinded. He wanders until he finds Persinette and their twin children; Persinette’s tears restore his sight. Their enduring love softens the fairy’s heart, and she brings them back to the prince’s kingdom. See also "Rapunzel."
  • Christensen, Laura (2015). Persinette (French Fairy Tales & Folklore Book 1). Amazon Digital Services.
Petrosinella: A pregnant woman steals parsley; the garden owner, an ogress, demands her child and returns to take her when she is a young girl. The girl, Petrosinella, lives in a tower only accessible by her hair and learns magic arts. She uses these arts to escape with a prince in a Magic Flight sequence and kill the ogress. They marry and are happy. One of the first identifiable versions of the tale, and a direct ancestor to the Rapunzel branch of stories. Rapunzel: Germany. A reworking of "Persinette," first translated into German by Friedrich Schulz in 1790 in his book Kleine Romane. Schulz’s translation changed the plant from parsley to the salad green rapunzel (probably lamb’s lettuce). The Brothers Grimm evidently heard an informant retelling the Schulz tale, and believed it was an originally German folktale. They removed French elements, making the fairy a more solidly malevolent witch, and edited it to be more child-friendly, such as removing references to Rapunzel’s pregnancy. Despite its differences from oral tradition, the Grimms’ Rapunzel is the most famous version of The Maiden in the Tower. Reptensil: America.
  • Roberts, Leonard W. South From Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955.
Snow-White-Fire-Red (Bianca-comu-nivi-russa-comu-focu): Italy. A typical example including the Magic Flight and the Forgotten Fiancee arcs. Uzembeni; or, Usikulumi’s Courtship: South Africa. Uzembeni (“Axe-bearer”) is a cannibal who eats men and has two beautiful daughters. She bites the cheek of one daughter, scarring her. A prince named Usikulumi comes to court the girls. They dig a pit in their home and hide him before their mother can return. She smells man, but the girls deny knowing anything. The next day, the daughter with the wounded cheek chooses to stay behind and tells her sister to flee with Usikulumi. Uzembeni discovers the escape and pursues them; they climb a tree, but she cuts the tree down with an axe. Usikulumi’s dogs tear Uzembeni apart (they have to do it twice because she can regenerate) and Usikulumi returns home with his bride. In an alternate version, Usikulumi has supernatural aid from a swallow’s skin, and Uzembeni returns to life yet again but goes home in defeat when she can’t find them. This story does not feature a tower or long hair, but also is not quite a “Master Maid” type since the girl is not a magical protector.
  • Heiner, Heidi Anne, editor. Rapunzel and Other Maiden in the Tower Tales From Around the World. 2010.
  • Callaway, Henry. Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, in their own words. 1868. p. 47ff.

Type 402, The Animal Bride

These stories follow a prince who, in search of a bride who can complete various tasks, encounters a frog or other animal who completes all the tasks better than rival brides and is revealed as an enchanted maiden. In the variants listed here, the maiden’s backstory is similar to Rapunzel, involving a garden theft, trade of a child, and/or imprisonment in a tower.
Some versions of "The Maiden in the Tower" also include a transformation curse, such as "The Fair Angiola," "Louliyya," and "The Godchild of the Fairy in the Tower," although it is not the main plot focus.

Blond Beauty: France. A pregnant woman fears that her child will be a frog. A fairy comforts her and raises the child as her own, calling her Blond Beauty. The girl lives in a castle only accessible by windows, and must let down her long hair for people to climb up. One day a prince meets her; they fall in love and he takes her away. Furious at her deception, the fairy turns her into a frog. When the prince is required to present a beautiful bride to win part of the kingdom, the frog begs to be freed and the fairy turns her back into a human. The prince must then build a castle, and the girl again asks the fairy, who builds them a silver castle. Golden Hair; or, the Little Frog: France. Golden Hair is the goddaughter of the Virgin Mary. She deceives Mary and runs away with a prince, and Mary turns her into a frog. The prince continues to visit her; he goes to her for help with impossible tasks, and she asks the Holy Virgin, who provides, leading up to restoring her to humanity. Recorded in 1960 from Mme Rouyer.
  • Massignon, Genevieve, ed. Folktales of France. Jacqueline Hyland, translator. Folktales of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. No. 29, pp. 111ff.
Ribike: Hungary. The heroine craves redcurrants (Hungarian: ribizli) and is turned into a lizard. The Tale of the Toad (Das Mährchen von der Padde): Germany. A young woman loves parsley so much that her mother steals it from a convent garden for her. When princes start arguing over her because of her beauty, the convent abbess has had enough and wishes that she would become a frog, which comes true. To win the crown, the princes are sent to retrieve impossibly fine linen, dogs that can fit inside walnut shells, and finally the most beautiful bride. The youngest prince encounters the frog, who provides each and then joins him as his bride, riding in a cardboard carriage drawn by rats; during their journey, she becomes her beautiful human self again riding in a magnificent coach. 
This story has been retold in English under the titles of “Puddocky” (which enhances the Rapunzel parallels) and “Cherry, or the Frog Bride” (which changes the parsley to cherries). It has sometimes been confused with the Brothers Grimm story “The Three Feathers,” also a Type 402 tale. The White Cat: France. One of the earlier published versions, a literary tale by Madame D’Aulnoy. It follows the usual Type 402 plot, but when the white cat is disenchanted and turned back into a princess, she explains her Rapunzel-like backstory. Her mother craved fairy fruit while pregnant, and the fairies traded it in exchange for raising her child. They kept the girl in an inaccessible tower. Against their plans for an arranged marriage, she met a handsome young king and fell in love; the fairies discovered this, killed the king, and turned the girl into a cat. With the curse broken, she and her new husband rule happily.

Son of the Witch (ATU 425B)

In these stories linked to the myth of Cupid and Psyche, a young woman is aided in various impossible tasks by the son of her fairy captor. The variants included here include introductions similar to Rapunzel, with the girl first imprisoned as punishment for her parent stealing from a garden.
 
El fijo de l'Orco ("The Son of the Ogre"): Italy.
  • Gargiolli, Carlo (1878). Novelline e canti popolari delle Marche. pp. 11–13.
  • Prato, Stanislao. Quattro novelline popolari livornesi accompagnate da varianti umbre. Raccolte, pubblicate ed illustrate con note comparative. 1880. p. 73.
Fragolette: France. A retelling of Prezzemolina, with strawberries as the plant.
  • Heiner, Heidi Anne, editor. Rapunzel and Other Maiden in the Tower Tales From Around the World. 2010.
  • Laboulaye, Édouard. Derniers contes bleus. 1884. pp. 137-166.
Prezzemolina: Italy. A seven-year-old girl picks parsley from a garden on her way to school, earning her the name Prezzemolina. The garden's owner, a witch, captures her and forces her to work as a servant. The witch’s son, Bensiabel, aids Prezzemolina in several impossible tasks and ultimately escaping the witch; they marry. Andrew Lang's Fairy Books translated this story without attribution into English under the title Prunella, changing the parsley to plums. La storia della Bella Parsemolina (Verona)
  • Righi, Ettore Scipione; Viviani, Giovanni; Zanolli, Silvana. Fiabe e racconti veronesi. Volume 3. 2007. pp. 86-90.
La Bella Parsembolina Prezzemolina: Genova. Love interest Gatto-Berlacco is cursed into the form of a cat. La Prezzemolina: In this variant, it is the heroine's mother who stole parsley, and the love interest is named Meme.
  • Imbriani, Vittorio (1877). La Novellaja fiorentina. Livorno: Vigo, Editore. pp. 209–215.
  • Zipes, Jack (2013). The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales: From the Brothers Grimm to Andrew Lang. p. 60.
  • Calvino, Ítalo (1980). Italian Folktales. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 310-315 (no. 86).

Similar Tales

These are stories which prominently feature a maiden in a tower.

The Canary Prince: Italy. A prince visits a princess's tower by turning into a canary. When he is wounded, the princess disguises herself as a doctor and leaves the tower to cure him. An example of ATU 432, "The Prince as Bird." See also Marie de France's Yonec.
  • Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. George Martin, translator. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. no. 18, p. 52ff.
Danae: Greek myth. Princess Danae is imprisoned in a bronze tower or underground chamber by her father, in order to prevent a prophecy that her child will kill him. Zeus visits her in the form of a golden rain and she gives birth to a son, Perseus. Her father sets her and the child adrift in a chest, but they are rescued and Perseus grows up to become a hero.
The Doomed Prince: A fragmentary Late Egyptian tale. The Prince of Egypt woos a king's daughter who is confined in a tall tower. He reaches her by jumping all the way up to the tower. They are married, but a prophecy says the prince will be killed by a snake, crocodile or dog; his wife saves him from the snake, but the rest of the story is lost.
  • Anderson, Graham. Fairytale in the Ancient World. 2000. pp. 121-122.
The Dove: Italy. A prince is cursed to fall in love with an ogress’s daughter. The ogress catches the prince and gives him impossible tasks, but the daughter Filadoro completes each one for him. Filadoro flees with the prince through an underground tunnel, but the ogress curses them, leading into the Forgotten Fiancee arc. Filadoro sends speaking doves to remind the prince of her. This is ATU 313 (The Magic Flight), but adds the long-haired maiden of “The Maiden in the Tower.” Ethniu: Irish myth. Her father Balor imprisons her in a tower due to a prophecy that her child will kill him. One of Balor's enemies impregnates Ethniu anyway and she gives birth to triplets. Balor tries to have the children drowned, but one survives to grow up and kill him.
The Fated Marriage: Crete. A man loses his wife in childbirth and receives the prophecy that their daughter will wear out twelve shifts while not in honest wedlock. He builds a tower and locks up the girl there with a servant. One day the girl sees a prince and falls in love with him; she lets down a rope so he can climb to her. After they've carried on their affair for twelve years, she gives birth to a child. To keep it secret, she and her maidservant send the baby to the palace in a basket with various gifts from the prince. Mystified, the king orders that every woman in the kingdom must come and sing a lullaby to the child to determine who is the mother. Because of the royal order, the girl's father is forced to let her attend. She is identified as the mother, and marries the prince.
  • Dawkins, R. M., ed. and trans. More Greek Folktales. London: Clarendon Press, 1955.
The Girl on the Island: India. From the Jaiminiya Brahmana. A man named Gauriviti is about to kill an eagle, who promises to instead take him to the daughter of the demon Asita Dhamnya. The eagle carries the young man to the girl, who is kept guarded in her father's palace "in the middle realm of air." The girl gives birth to their son, and the demons kill him in disgust, but Gauriviti revives him.
  • O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Tales of Sex and Violence: Folklore, Sacrifice and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. pp. 95-96.
King of Denmark's Son: Italy. A princess is kept in a tower due to a prophecy that she'll fall for the first man she sees. Nevertheless she hears of the beauty of the King of Denmark's son and becomes obsessed; however, he rebuffs the envoys her father sends. She leaves her tower by floating in a barrel, and makes her way to a palace where she meets the prince. He falls for her beauty, she reveals that she's the girl he rejected, and they marry.
A similar Greek tale is “The Girl Shut up in a Tower”, from Dawkins, R. M., Modern Greek Folktales, no. 30, page 162.
  • Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. George Martin, translator. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. no. 36, p. 107ff.
Maid Maleen: Germany. A king locks his daughter Maleen and her maidservant in a tower when she falls for a prince he disapproves of. After seven years, the girls' food runs out and they break out of the tower to discover the kingdom destroyed. They get jobs as servants in the court of Maleen's prince, now betrothed to an ugly and cruel princess. The other princess, unwilling to be seen in public, sends a disguised Maleen in her place for the wedding ceremony. The prince notices the switch when the princess returns later that night. The princess tries to kill Maleen, but the prince rescues her and claims her as his true bride. ATU 870, "The Princess Confined in the Mound."
  • Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Household Tales. Margaret Hunt, translator. London: George Bell, 1884. "Maid Maleen."
  • Langrish, Katherine. "Maid Maleen: a fairytale study of trauma?" Seven Miles of Steel Thistles (blog). 2019.
  • Müllenhoff, Karl. Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg. 1845. pp. 410-414.
Rudaba: A character in the Persian epic poem Shahnameh, written around 1000 BC. In one scene, Rudaba offers to lower her hair so that her love interest Zal may climb it to her window; not wishing to hurt her head, he fetches a rope.
Saint Barbara of Nicomedia: medieval Christian legend. Her father locks her in a tower to keep her away from men, but she secretly becomes a Christian. When her father discovers this, he martyrs her. Afterwards, he is struck by lightning and dies.
  • Williams, Harry F. “Old French Lives of Saint Barbara.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 119, no. 2, 1975, pp. 156–85. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/986633.
Saule: Baltic myth.
Yonec: A 12th-century lai by Marie du France. An old lord marries a beautiful young wife, whom he jealously keeps in a tower. A knight named Muldumarec visits her in bird form and they conceive a child, but her husband learns of the affair and puts up spikes on the window which kill Muldumarec. The woman's son Yonec grows up, learns the truth, and kills his stepfather. May be compared to myths like Ethniu and Danae.

Further Reading

  • Bottigheimer, Ruth B. “Fertility Control and the Birth of the Modern European Fairy-Tale Heroine.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 14, no. 1, 2000, pp. 64–79. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41380742.
  • Getty, Laura J. “Maidens and Their Guardians: Reinterpreting the ‘Rapunzel’ Tale.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, 1997, pp. 37–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029886.
  • Warner, Marina. “After ‘Rapunzel.’” Marvels & Tales, vol. 24, no. 2, 2010, pp. 329–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388959.

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