Parsley, Parsley, Let Down Your Hair
© Stefan.lefnaer / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Most people have some familiarity with “Rapunzel,” a German fairy tale about a beautiful girl with unreasonably long hair held captive by a witch at the top of a tall tower. What most people don’t know is that Rapunzel was almost called “Parsley.”
The early part of the Rapunzel tale describes the situation around the titular maiden’s birth. A married couple yearns to have a child. When the wife finally conceives, she begins to have life-threatening cravings for an herb that grows in a nearby garden. The husband steals the herb for his wife, but he is caught and escapes with his life only by promising the garden’s keeper his unborn child.
In the earliest version of the tale, an Italian work called “Petrosinella” dating back to 1634, the mother steals parsley from the garden of an ogress. In a later version called “Persinette,” adapted by the French in 1697, the husband raids a fairy garden for its parsley. Notably, the French “Persinette” means “little parsley.”
Having the wife desire parsley makes sense in the context of the story. The Greeks long considered parsley an omen of death, a funeral herb to be draped over tombstones. It was seen as something dangerous, and only bad things could come from stealing it. In the south-west of England, parsley patches were said to be watched over by guardian spirits. Those attempting to transplant parsley would be threatened with punishment or death unless they offered up a family member in their place within the year. That works with the story. It makes sense.
Then the Germans got a hold of the tale.
In 1790, a German translator, Friedrich Schultz, published a re-telling of Persinette. He made a few small changes. Most notably, he changed the coveted herb in the garden, and therefore the heroine’s name, to “rapunzel.” In 1812, the Brothers Grimm included the tale in a collection of theirs, and the rest is history.
Why change the herb? Rapunzel (Campanula rapunculus), or “rampion” in English, is a spinach-like plant with a edible turnip-like root. It produces purple, bell-shaped flowers. Interestingly, the long stigma of the flower is split and curls down towards the anthers at the base of the flower almost like Rapunzel’s legendary hair. However, it is unlikely the herb was changed for any botanical reasons.
Parsley was a Mediterranean herb, and may have been unknown to most Germans at the time. Rapunzel was something a German audience could recognize. Moreover, the direct German translation of “Persinette,” “Petersilchen,” didn’t have the same ring to it as “Rapunzel.” Schultz most likely changed the herb because “Rapunzel” just sounds nicer.
Shockingly, this single event represent the only instance in history when a German opted for a word that sounded nicer.
Brian Rutter, PhD, is the cofounder of Hundredfold Video and plant biologist working for 2Blades at the University of Minnesota. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our “Sower Stories – Odd Facts About Plants” and video production tips in your inbox every month!
Works Cited:
Folkard, Richard. Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore of the Plant Kingdom. London: Folkard and Son,1884.
“Rapunzel and Parsley: A Fairytale’s History.” writinginmargins.weebly.com, 08 June 2020, https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/home/rapunzel-and-parsley-a-fairytales-history, Accessed 09 September 2024.
“What is the Plant ‘Rapunzel?’” writinginmargins.weebly.com, 06 July 2020, https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/home/what-is-the-plant-in-rapunzel, Accessed 09 September 2024.
