<P> In the Aarne--Thompson classification system for folktales it is type 310, "The Maiden in The Tower". </P> <P> Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book . Other versions of the tale also appear in A Book of Witches by Ruth Manning - Sanders and in Paul O. Zelinsky's 1997 Caldecott Medal - winning picture book, Rapunzel and the Disney movie Tangled . </P> <P> Rapunzel's story has striking similarities to the 11th - century Persian tale of Rudāba, included in the epic poem Shahnameh by Ferdowsi . Rudāba offers to let down her hair from her tower so that her lover Zāl can climb up to her . Some elements of the fairy tale might also have originally been based upon the tale of Saint Barbara, who was said to have been locked in a tower by her father . </P> <P> A lonely couple, who want a child, live next to a walled garden belonging to an evil witch named Dame Gothel . The wife, experiencing the cravings associated with the arrival of her long - awaited pregnancy, notices some rapunzel (or, in most translated - to - English versions of the story, rampion), growing in the garden and longs for it, desperate to the point of death . One night, her husband breaks into the garden to get some for her . She makes a salad out of it and greedily eats it . It tastes so good that she longs for more . So her husband goes to get some more for her . As he scales the wall to return home, Dame Gothel catches him and accuses him of theft . He begs for mercy, and she agrees to be lenient, and allows him to take all the rapunzel he wants, on condition that the baby be given to her when it's born . Desperate, he agrees . When his wife has a baby girl, Dame Gothel takes her to raise as her own and names her Rapunzel after the plant her mother craved . She grows up to be the most beautiful child in the world with long golden hair . When she turns twelve, Dame Gothel lockes her up inside a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor a door, and only one room and one window . When she visits her, she stands beneath the tower and calls out: </P>

Where did the story of rapunzel come from