November 29, 2025 • 28 mins
Most people in the West are familiar with the old Rapunzel fairy tale -- a beautiful princess is confined to a tower until a prince, captivated by her beauty, uses her hair as a ladder and comes to her rescue. But where did this story come from, exactly? Tune in to learn more in today's Classic episode from 2019.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The fellow ridiculous historians. What is your favorite fairy tale?
(00:05):
They're also dark? Yeah, the real ones, right, the original ones.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, the red Shoes. You know about that one cutting
the feet off. It's like I've heard that referenced in
a movie recently. But Rapunzel, Uh, the prince I believe
falls into a briar patch and is blinded, and it's
you know, all kinds of horrible things happen to that guy.
I think we've talked about this, Ben, But my exposure
to a lot of the dark versions of these fairy
(00:29):
tales came from an anime series that played on Nick
Junior back in the day that was, I believe just
called Grim's fairy Tales, and it had a version of
Rapunzel where all of that horrific stuff happened.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh yeah, And like so many other kids growing up
in the anglosphere, we are familiar with all types of
fairy tales. When we started to ask ourselves back in
twenty nineteen whether there was some sort of grain of
truth to this great game of telephone. So in today's
classic episode, we're going to ask whether or not a
(01:07):
lady really used her hair as a ladder h.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, I don't know that counts very Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Ridiculous history is a production of iHeartRadio. Man. There are
(01:48):
so many Catholic saints. Did you know there's a Saint
Noel and a Saint Benjamin?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Ben? I am not kidding you.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
What is the saint of?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I don't have his his patron saint information here, but
I do know that he was a Jesuit saint, and
I thought it was I thought it was cool. Sometimes
for my friends I search out saints with similar names,
which is not how you decide which you know saint
is your saint. Yes, I just thought it was neat
(02:19):
that there was a Benjamin and a noble.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Both of whom were martyred. Correct? Who were marty Do
you have to be martyred to become a saint? Is
that like a requirement?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I want to say no, but I am not myself Catholic.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
No, no, nor am I. But I did learn something
very interesting today. There are several flavors of martyr. Did
you know this? Yes, there's the proto martyr, who is
like the first martyr in a given region. Then there's
the great martyr, which is like a martyr who was
martyred under the most nasty of circumstances, like involving torture
and you know, consternation. You know, Jesus would have been
(02:53):
a great martyr, you know that kind of treatment. And
that brings us to today's story, which is about fairy tales.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, for anyone curious about the Saint Benjamin, it is
a deacon. He's a deacon and a martyr as well
in Persia, and he died from merciless torture.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So a great martyr perhaps, perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
But hopefully we're not torturing our super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I just want to give a shout out to Proto Martyr.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Fantastic band so good.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I was listening to them today. Yeah, kind of sound
like Nick Cave meets wire sure and a little bit
of like television kind of thrown in there. Really really cool.
I highly recommend checking them out as well. Good rat Casey,
Good rat Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
So if you are a fan of this show, odds
are that you, like us, are fascinated by fairy tales.
I did a lot of research in a different life
into the origin of fairy tales, which't I'm sure everybody
knows the origins of fairy tales are much more dark
and grizzly than the Disney adaptations that you see today.
(04:01):
Our subject today concerns of fairy tale. It's very well known,
popularized perhaps by Disney's Tangled film, and that is the
story of Rapunzel, the trope of a princess locked in
a tower who's got a ton of long hair.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's so cool, Ben, because a lot of these stories
that you're talking about that had very grizzly roots had
even grizzlier roots before Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm got their
hands on them and kind of sanitize them, clean them
up a little bit, because oftentimes the story that led
to the story was just unbearably grizzly, as we're going
(04:40):
to get into today. And then when you get to
stuff like Tangled, another step removed from the Grim Brothers,
it's even further sanitized. With Rapunzel. It turns out that
the origins of the story of the aforementioned long haired
princess locked in a tower goes back to pay times. Yeah, yeah,
(05:01):
you're pagan Rome.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It goes back to several different places, for sure. A
lot of fairy tales kind of borrow things from a
lot of earlier, similar, pre existing stories. That's why the
Princess locked in a Tower is a trope that occurs
in more than one place. But this story does have
a real life incident that happens in Pagan Rome. It
(05:25):
concerns someone who became known as Saint Barbara. According to
the legend, Barbara was the daughter of a wealthy man
living in the third century in a place called Nicomedia,
which is part of modern day Turkey. Her father was
super protective and was very, very concerned that the evil
(05:48):
influences of the outside world would corrupt his daughter lead
to her ruination and debauchment. So he locked her in
a tower, and this gave Barbara a lot of time
to think so over her period of isolation, according to
the story, let me amend that this is a legend,
(06:09):
she what she became convinced that the pagan gods of
Rome weren't all they were cracked.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Up to be. Yeah, ben I actually saw a version
of the story where a Catholic priest crept in through
the window and like schooled her on Catholicism. Because my
question is if all she knew was the pagan ways.
How she can all of a sudden have her a
grasp of Christianity.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Right, that's a great plot hole to point out the
story where she encounters an agent of the Christian God
rather than just realizing the Christian God says that the
priest was a Catholic and snuck into her chamber get this,
disguised as a doctor, and that he kept coming and
over time he taught her the Catholic faith and eventually
(06:57):
baptized her.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
That's right. There are other versions of the story that
don't mention the priest at all that implied that she
was just sort of immaculately gifted with the understanding of
the Trinity. And this goes back to this idea of
her window arrangement in that tower, right, m.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Hmmm, Yes, because the story says that originally her father
locked her in a tower that had two windows, but
when she converted to Christianity, regardless of how she did it,
she installed a third window in the tower to symbolize
not a stunning plot twist, the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, because all that time up there alone, she kind
of figured out masonry too.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Right, Yeah, and how to make windows, uh, huh yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, with like what tools exactly. There's another version of
the story where while her father was away, he had
workmen that were doing some improvements on the land, or
maybe even installing the windows in the first place, and
that she asked them to put in a third window.
And then when the father returned and saw this third window,
he questioned, he said, daughter, what gives she and she
(08:04):
cops to her new found faith.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
At which point he yeah, she said, father, I am
a Christian now, at which point he drew a sword
to kill her immediately. But she used the power of
prayer and created an opening in the wall and then teleported. Essentially,
she was magically transported or I guess in this case
you would say miraculously transported to a mountain gorge and
(08:30):
two shepherds saw her arrive.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, so let's let's take a step back if if
you're okay with this, Ben, let's pick up the kind
of more grizzly version, the grim version of the Rapunzel
story that many people may be unfamiliar with. Do you
remember a show that was broadcast on Nickelodeon in the
mid nineties early nineties even that was called Grim's Fairy
(08:53):
tale classics. Yes, so it was a Japanese produced anime SI.
I think they were like twelve episodes, and I think
it was distributed in America by ham Saban of Power
Rangers Fame. And the thing I most remember is that
the versions of the stories in this cartoon were the
(09:14):
pretty weird, messed up versions. In the grim version of
the Rapunzel story, it starts with a married couple. The
wife is pregnant and she demands some lettuces from this garden,
this fenced in garden that belongs to it enchantress. Other
versions say that she's like a medicine woman that has
the power to use herbs to heal or to her
(09:36):
or evil witch exactly, and so she finally convinces her
husband to go in and get her this. It's rampion.
This is one thing, and also Rapunzel another name for
this kind of root vegetable. You can make a salad
out of the leaves. And the witch eventually catches him
because he goes back and she agrees not to murder
him on site. But in that classic fairy tale trope,
(10:00):
he has to surrender his firstborn child that was the
cause of all of this. In the first place right well.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
In her defense, she also, in addition to spirit his life, says,
I'll give you all the herbs you want.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
So there's there's another plus.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But the irony is that the wife only is craving
these herbs because are the vegetables, because she's pregnant, right,
And that's a big part of the story too.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
So he agrees, and fast forward to the time that
the child is born, a girl named Rapunzel of the
evil witch, by the way many versions of the story,
is named Dame Gothel. How Gothic is that super and
Dame Gothel, upon the child's birth, takes her to raise
his her own and she actually gives her the name Rapunzel.
(10:47):
And Rapunzel grows up to be a real looker. She
is the most beautiful child in the world, with long
golden hair. But as soon as she turns twelve, the
witch or enchantress locks her up inside a tower in
the middle of nowhere in the woods. There are no stairs,
there's no door, there's just one room and one window,
(11:07):
and the way that the witch visits her is by
using her hair as rope. So that's where we get
the famous line Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair so
that I might climb thy golden stair, or just to
shout out to prefaf's the more popular modern version. Casey,
we were talking about this off airic. You guys think
(11:28):
we could play a clip of that line without getting
sued perfect perfect, So that's that's not the original line
is thy golden stairs.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And that's of course the Beastie Boys from the incredible
album Paul's Boutique.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And this is how Rapunzel's life is set to be.
For the rest of her life. As you can imagine,
she's bored in this tower. She muses herself any number
of ways, combing her incredibly long.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Hair, possibly learning about masonry.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Possibly learning masries, singing to herself, building windows, whatever. But
singing is the key.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Singing is the key because the handsome prince, of course,
has got to be a handsome prince. Here's this mellifluous
singing and comes a calling, and then she lets down
the hair. He doesn't even know. I don't know. It's
unclear to me. How does he get up there in
the first place. He doesn't know how to ask for
the hair.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
He stalks her.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Oh wait, a minute, he does know because he's overheard
the witch doing it. He stalked her at this point. Yeah,
that's not creepy at all. He keeps coming back to
listening to singing. It's like, what's going on, I'm so interesting.
Presumably he even impersonates the voice of the witch to
get her to let down the hair in the first place,
and then all of a sudden he appears to her
and she's like, whoa, who's this JABBRONI coming in through
(12:50):
my window? Trying to pretend to be my grandmama, because
at this point she thinks the witch is like her family.
She doesn't remember her parents, and they get it on right.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Eventually, he continues to visit her. The number of visits
depends on the version you read, and eventually the prince
ask Rapunzel to make an honest man of him, and
they agree to get married, and they say, okay, next
step is that we have to figure out how to
get you the heck out of here. So they say, look,
(13:21):
we know when Dame Gothel the enchantress or evil witch
comes by, So every time the witch comes by, I'll
be out aside, out of mind, but I'll visit you
in the night, and when I visit you, I will
bring you a piece of silk, and I won't bring
it all at one So just visit night after night,
bring you a piece of silk, and then you will
naturally make a ladder out of it, because she has
(13:43):
also acquired that particular skill or craft. But something goes wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, you know, as things are wont to do in
the fairy tale world. The witch overhears this plan, and
while the prince is away, she goes up there, confronts
her Punzel, lobs off her hair with a butcher's knife
for like a par of scissors or whatever, depending on
this the version, and then sends her away into the wilderness.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yes, in the first edition of the Grim Fairy Tales version,
she says to the witch, without knowing exactly what she's saying,
that her dress is growing tighter around her waist, which
is an allusion to pregnancy. That's right, and the and
the witch catches on. And then in the second edition,
she cuts off Punzel's hair throws her out in the woods.
(14:35):
The prince comes calling that night, and the evil witch
lets down the hair that she has cut off. He
climbs up. You know, we can imagine he's looking forward
to spending some time with his fiancee, and to his
utter and abject horror, he meets the witch instead of
(14:55):
her Punzel, and she says, you're never going to see
that girl again. She throws him from the tower, which
I think in most versions of the story, he ends
up hitting a thornbush and he goes blind.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, they poke his eyes out. And that's the thing, dude.
In that anime version I was telling you about, it
does that. It has that happen, and it's sort of
like it is not like bloody or like you know, scarred,
weird gouged out eyes or anything, but he's kind of
got like red, patchy kind of scratch marks all over
his eyes and they're sort of like closed, you know.
And then he also wanders the wilderness and eventually here's
(15:31):
that singing that he liked so so well and realizes
that it's Rapunzel and she has given birth to twin boys,
I believe according to the Grim version, and then she
cries tears of joy into his eye holes and he
is cured and the sight is restored to him. So,
you know, as much trials and tribulation as they go
(15:53):
through it does ultimately end up with them all living together.
He takes her back to his kingdom because he can
see now and find his way back, and they all happily.
Ever after, there's.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
A Roguain moment in some versions of the story too,
because he touched. When he can see again, he touches
her head and her hair magically grows back, just like
Zup Yep Yep and the evil Witch. When she throws
the guy out of the tower, she ends up dropping
Rapunzel's hair somehow, and it leaves her trapped in the tower.
But this, you know, how, we're talking about the amalgamated
(16:24):
origin of what we call modern fairy tales. We do
know that Rapunzel itself has, at least the Grimm's version
does have a more recent than Roman times influence. A
story called Petro Sinela or Parsley written by a guy
named Giambattista Basile in his collection of fairy Tales in
(16:48):
sixteen thirty four. Interesting, and it's kind of the same,
but it's a little more r rated because the encounters
between the prince and Rapunzel are much more explicit. Yeah,
it's a little little more graphic, little more late night
skinimax got a time, Yeah, indeed, And in the grim version,
(17:09):
the sex is simply implied by the baby bump, by
the tightening waist. So back to Saint Barbara. Did she
have hair long enough to let someone climb up a
tower using it? Could someone climb up a tower using
anyone's hair? In Saint Barbara's case, the hair is not
(17:31):
not as important, it's not really at all. Yeah, it's
just like you assume she has shared, presumably had a cut,
a pay cut.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So when we last left Barbara, her father, who in
this version story is named Diascorus, pursues his daughter somehow
finds this magic mountain gorge uh, and then he's like,
where is she? Where is she? And the first share says,
(18:00):
I don't know, don't talk to me. But the second
betrays her, and for doing this, this shepherd gets turned
to stone and all the sheep and his flock are
turned to locust. And because of this betrayal, Dioscorus does
find his daughter and he decides what no, not to
kill her himself.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's right, well, at least at that moment, but yeah,
he felt like she deserved, you know, her day in
kangaroo court.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Right, which means that she was dragged before the prefect
of the province, a guy named Martin Aus.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, and this is where it really starts to get ugly.
The court, I guess you could call it, beat her
mercilessly and beat her with pieces of raw hide on
her back. They rubbed her wounds with what you'd call
a fur cloth, I guess, just to kind of exacerbate
(18:56):
the pain. And at night she, according to this legend
or story, she prayed to what's referred to in this
article from OCA dot org as the Heavenly Bridegroom and
Jesus the Savior. And according to the story of this martyrdom,
(19:17):
she her wounds were spontaneously healed. And then when they
found her healed, they beat her and brutalized her even more.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, they started to use torches to burn her, or
attempt to. Those torches went out when they were getting
close to her body, and they kept trying to torture.
She kept healing through the power of prayer. OCA, by
the way, is the Orthodox Church in America website, which
is a great resource for stories of saints. Eventually, they say, well, look,
(19:53):
she's not going to renounce her Christian faith. She's obviously,
for some reason, healing very quickly, so they eventually decide
that they are going to kill her. In one version
of the story, they say, okay, well, let's see you
heal from a beheading. In another version, the torture continues
(20:16):
to where her body's raked, wounded with hooks, she's led
naked through the city as people mock her. Then she
is eventually beheaded by her father.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Yeah, yeah, And you know, and this version of the
story that we're reading is from this religious site, so
it's kind of presented as fact. It's clearly one version
of the story that incorporates some of these mystical religious
elements and an added element of come up. And her
father and the prefect were apparently struck by lightning brought
(20:51):
on by the wrath of God and instantly killed.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
What goes around comes around, right. This story continued because,
as is the case with so many saints, relics of
her body remained, and in the sixth century, the relics
of this great martyr Barbara, because as you said, and O,
(21:15):
there are different types of martyrs, the relics of the
saint were transferred to Constantinople and then they stayed there
for six hundred years before they were transferred to Kiev
by a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexius Komenos, who
was also named Barbara. And that is where these relics
(21:36):
rest today, at Kiev's Saint Vladimir Cathedral, where an Akathis
to the Saint is served each Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And here's the thing. The Orthodox Church is largely what
holds this martyrdom in such high esteem. Because of some
of the scarcity of real historical records about this she
actually was taken off the list of martyrs and saints
in nineteen sixty nine by the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
It's true, It's absolutely true. But there's pretty compelling evidence
that this story, this Princess in a tower trope did lend,
did lend some inspiration to the story that we now
know as Rapunzel. And of course, if you have seen Tangled,
a lot of this stuff was cut out of this story.
(22:27):
And have you seen Tangled?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
No, I have not.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I have not, But I'm gonna go out on a
limb and say there probably wasn't a beheading.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
No, I'm pretty sure not. But again, even in that
I was pretty traumatized by that anime version where the
prince gets his eyes gouged out by thorns, even that
being the sort of more sanitized version. And it makes sense.
The Grim brothers were essentially historians, and they collected oral tradition
of all of these hundreds, I believe, of folk tales
(22:56):
they then used as inspiration for their Grim's fairy tales.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And a lot of these older folk tales from an
academic perspective or a folklore perspective, are immensely and endlessly
fascinating because they provide a window into the realities of
the time. Because in the early versions of stories that
(23:23):
would later inspire this fairy tale or the Grim version
of the fairy tale, a lot more emphasis is put
on the idea of pregnancy and the use of plants
as medicinal aids for pregnant women or for people when
they give birth. And the problem is that this is
a very dangerous time in a woman's life, because it
(23:47):
still is. You know, it was such a dangerous time
because there were many many complications that could result in
injury or death to the mother or the child. So
this worry of having to trust someone who who is
doing things that seem inexplicable, that's right, or him supernatural?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Is a salient and immediate fear.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I mean it's often a sign of a witchcraft or
seen as such when a woman is close to nature
and understands how to harness some of these herbs in
ways that the average layperson does not, and that says
looked upon with suspicion. And it's almost that thing where
making a bargain with a woman like this, you're sort
of rolling the dice because you don't know if she
(24:28):
is there to heal or to harm, and you know
that she potentially has the power to do either, and
you have to trust her right to do that. So
it's sort of it's kind of personifying that inherent paranoia
that comes along with putting your faith in the hands
of another person who you're not really sure of their
motives I guess.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Right, yeah, or you don't trust right sure. And as
I believe I mentioned in an earlier episode, man, what
a what a terrible gig to be a healer back
in that time, because even if you did your best,
something went wrong, people would decide you were a witch.
There's one interesting thing that we should probably we have
(25:07):
to mention right to me, the most fascinating thing about
saints is that they're often called the patron saint of
one thing or another. And Barbara des might surprising people
to learn, is the patron saint of armorers, artillerymen, architects, mathematicians, miners,
and the Italian Navy, the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And if I'm not mistaken, that comes from the idea
in the story that her abusers were struck dead by lightning,
because when you're a minor, you're often subject to caven's
and even explosions from combustible minerals and things like that.
And the idea that Saint Barbara would protect you from
(25:48):
lightning or from those kind of pitfalls of that profession,
right yep.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Absolutely venerated by Catholics who face the danger of sudden
and violent death at work as well. And her name
is invoked against thunder and lightning and all accidents arising
from explosions of gunpowder. And interesting side note, the Spanish
word Santa Barbara then the corresponding word Santa Barbara signify
(26:15):
the powder magazine of a ship or a fortress, and
back in the day it used to be standard operating
procedure to have a statue of this saint at the
magazine to protect the structure from suddenly exploding. So there's
the more, you know, star flying over my head.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
In Santa Barbara, California, which is on the coast, has
a lot of oil and gas fields, and of course
Santa Barbara is Spanish for Saint Barbara.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Fascinating, And now we have to ask ourselves what other
secrets do modern fairy tales or modern versions of fairy
tales hold for us here in twenty nineteen. We'd like
to hear your story about your favorite fairy tale secrets.
I'd also like to before we close out the show,
give a shout out to a new follower I have
(27:04):
on Twitter that just made my day. I think, Casey Nolan,
I think you'll both enjoy this. Somebody made a Twitter
account called ridiculous History out of Context where they just
take quotes or interactions from us and post them without
explaining where they came from or what they pertain to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What we have a joke Twitter account?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
We do, and I don't know who. I don't know
who does it. I assume you're listening. I just wanted
to say thanks, so we've arrived. If you want to
follow them, follow them at out Ridiculous on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I really just do the Instagram thing. You can follow
me at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
You can follow me at Ben Bollen. You can also
meet the best part of this show, your fellow listeners
on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. Big thanks as always
to a super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, I've got to
look up saints and see which which one you might
identify with. I'll get back to you over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks
to Gabe Lucier, our research assistant associate, whatever you want
to call him. He is the stuff, a genuine gem.
That guy, Gabe is an absolute gift. We have some
things coming up for you, so stay tuned. We might
have some special guests in the mix. We might have
(28:25):
the return of Christopher Hasiotis. That's right, and in the meantime,
we would love it very much if you would say
nice things about the show on iTunes or your podcast
platform of choice.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Now they'll they'll say that you're supposed to call it
Apple podcasts now, but don't let them fool.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You can call it every on. You know what we need. Yeah,
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
The fellow ridiculous historians. What is your favorite fairy tale?
(00:05):
They're also dark? Yeah, the real ones, right, the original ones.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, the red Shoes. You know about that one cutting
the feet off. It's like I've heard that referenced in
a movie recently. But Rapunzel, Uh, the prince I believe
falls into a briar patch and is blinded, and it's
you know, all kinds of horrible things happen to that guy.
I think we've talked about this, Ben, But my exposure
to a lot of the dark versions of these fairy
(00:29):
tales came from an anime series that played on Nick
Junior back in the day that was, I believe just
called Grim's fairy Tales, and it had a version of
Rapunzel where all of that horrific stuff happened.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Oh yeah, And like so many other kids growing up
in the anglosphere, we are familiar with all types of
fairy tales. When we started to ask ourselves back in
twenty nineteen whether there was some sort of grain of
truth to this great game of telephone. So in today's
classic episode, we're going to ask whether or not a
(01:07):
lady really used her hair as a ladder h.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, I don't know that counts very Let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Ridiculous history is a production of iHeartRadio. Man. There are
(01:48):
so many Catholic saints. Did you know there's a Saint
Noel and a Saint Benjamin?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Ben? I am not kidding you.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
What is the saint of?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I don't have his his patron saint information here, but
I do know that he was a Jesuit saint, and
I thought it was I thought it was cool. Sometimes
for my friends I search out saints with similar names,
which is not how you decide which you know saint
is your saint. Yes, I just thought it was neat
(02:19):
that there was a Benjamin and a noble.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Both of whom were martyred. Correct? Who were marty Do
you have to be martyred to become a saint? Is
that like a requirement?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I want to say no, but I am not myself Catholic.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
No, no, nor am I. But I did learn something
very interesting today. There are several flavors of martyr. Did
you know this? Yes, there's the proto martyr, who is
like the first martyr in a given region. Then there's
the great martyr, which is like a martyr who was
martyred under the most nasty of circumstances, like involving torture
and you know, consternation. You know, Jesus would have been
(02:53):
a great martyr, you know that kind of treatment. And
that brings us to today's story, which is about fairy tales.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, for anyone curious about the Saint Benjamin, it is
a deacon. He's a deacon and a martyr as well
in Persia, and he died from merciless torture.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So a great martyr perhaps, perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
But hopefully we're not torturing our super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I just want to give a shout out to Proto Martyr.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Fantastic band so good.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I was listening to them today. Yeah, kind of sound
like Nick Cave meets wire sure and a little bit
of like television kind of thrown in there. Really really cool.
I highly recommend checking them out as well. Good rat Casey,
Good rat Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
So if you are a fan of this show, odds
are that you, like us, are fascinated by fairy tales.
I did a lot of research in a different life
into the origin of fairy tales, which't I'm sure everybody
knows the origins of fairy tales are much more dark
and grizzly than the Disney adaptations that you see today.
(04:01):
Our subject today concerns of fairy tale. It's very well known,
popularized perhaps by Disney's Tangled film, and that is the
story of Rapunzel, the trope of a princess locked in
a tower who's got a ton of long hair.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's so cool, Ben, because a lot of these stories
that you're talking about that had very grizzly roots had
even grizzlier roots before Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm got their
hands on them and kind of sanitize them, clean them
up a little bit, because oftentimes the story that led
to the story was just unbearably grizzly, as we're going
(04:40):
to get into today. And then when you get to
stuff like Tangled, another step removed from the Grim Brothers,
it's even further sanitized. With Rapunzel. It turns out that
the origins of the story of the aforementioned long haired
princess locked in a tower goes back to pay times. Yeah, yeah,
(05:01):
you're pagan Rome.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
It goes back to several different places, for sure. A
lot of fairy tales kind of borrow things from a
lot of earlier, similar, pre existing stories. That's why the
Princess locked in a Tower is a trope that occurs
in more than one place. But this story does have
a real life incident that happens in Pagan Rome. It
(05:25):
concerns someone who became known as Saint Barbara. According to
the legend, Barbara was the daughter of a wealthy man
living in the third century in a place called Nicomedia,
which is part of modern day Turkey. Her father was
super protective and was very, very concerned that the evil
(05:48):
influences of the outside world would corrupt his daughter lead
to her ruination and debauchment. So he locked her in
a tower, and this gave Barbara a lot of time
to think so over her period of isolation, according to
the story, let me amend that this is a legend,
(06:09):
she what she became convinced that the pagan gods of
Rome weren't all they were cracked.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Up to be. Yeah, ben I actually saw a version
of the story where a Catholic priest crept in through
the window and like schooled her on Catholicism. Because my
question is if all she knew was the pagan ways.
How she can all of a sudden have her a
grasp of Christianity.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Right, that's a great plot hole to point out the
story where she encounters an agent of the Christian God
rather than just realizing the Christian God says that the
priest was a Catholic and snuck into her chamber get this,
disguised as a doctor, and that he kept coming and
over time he taught her the Catholic faith and eventually
(06:57):
baptized her.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
That's right. There are other versions of the story that
don't mention the priest at all that implied that she
was just sort of immaculately gifted with the understanding of
the Trinity. And this goes back to this idea of
her window arrangement in that tower, right, m.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Hmmm, Yes, because the story says that originally her father
locked her in a tower that had two windows, but
when she converted to Christianity, regardless of how she did it,
she installed a third window in the tower to symbolize
not a stunning plot twist, the Holy Trinity.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, because all that time up there alone, she kind
of figured out masonry too.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Right, Yeah, and how to make windows, uh, huh yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, with like what tools exactly. There's another version of
the story where while her father was away, he had
workmen that were doing some improvements on the land, or
maybe even installing the windows in the first place, and
that she asked them to put in a third window.
And then when the father returned and saw this third window,
he questioned, he said, daughter, what gives she and she
(08:04):
cops to her new found faith.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
At which point he yeah, she said, father, I am
a Christian now, at which point he drew a sword
to kill her immediately. But she used the power of
prayer and created an opening in the wall and then teleported. Essentially,
she was magically transported or I guess in this case
you would say miraculously transported to a mountain gorge and
(08:30):
two shepherds saw her arrive.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, so let's let's take a step back if if
you're okay with this, Ben, let's pick up the kind
of more grizzly version, the grim version of the Rapunzel
story that many people may be unfamiliar with. Do you
remember a show that was broadcast on Nickelodeon in the
mid nineties early nineties even that was called Grim's Fairy
(08:53):
tale classics. Yes, so it was a Japanese produced anime SI.
I think they were like twelve episodes, and I think
it was distributed in America by ham Saban of Power
Rangers Fame. And the thing I most remember is that
the versions of the stories in this cartoon were the
(09:14):
pretty weird, messed up versions. In the grim version of
the Rapunzel story, it starts with a married couple. The
wife is pregnant and she demands some lettuces from this garden,
this fenced in garden that belongs to it enchantress. Other
versions say that she's like a medicine woman that has
the power to use herbs to heal or to her
(09:36):
or evil witch exactly, and so she finally convinces her
husband to go in and get her this. It's rampion.
This is one thing, and also Rapunzel another name for
this kind of root vegetable. You can make a salad
out of the leaves. And the witch eventually catches him
because he goes back and she agrees not to murder
him on site. But in that classic fairy tale trope,
(10:00):
he has to surrender his firstborn child that was the
cause of all of this. In the first place right well.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
In her defense, she also, in addition to spirit his life, says,
I'll give you all the herbs you want.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
So there's there's another plus.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
But the irony is that the wife only is craving
these herbs because are the vegetables, because she's pregnant, right,
And that's a big part of the story too.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
So he agrees, and fast forward to the time that
the child is born, a girl named Rapunzel of the
evil witch, by the way many versions of the story,
is named Dame Gothel. How Gothic is that super and
Dame Gothel, upon the child's birth, takes her to raise
his her own and she actually gives her the name Rapunzel.
(10:47):
And Rapunzel grows up to be a real looker. She
is the most beautiful child in the world, with long
golden hair. But as soon as she turns twelve, the
witch or enchantress locks her up inside a tower in
the middle of nowhere in the woods. There are no stairs,
there's no door, there's just one room and one window,
(11:07):
and the way that the witch visits her is by
using her hair as rope. So that's where we get
the famous line Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair so
that I might climb thy golden stair, or just to
shout out to prefaf's the more popular modern version. Casey,
we were talking about this off airic. You guys think
(11:28):
we could play a clip of that line without getting
sued perfect perfect, So that's that's not the original line
is thy golden stairs.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And that's of course the Beastie Boys from the incredible
album Paul's Boutique.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And this is how Rapunzel's life is set to be.
For the rest of her life. As you can imagine,
she's bored in this tower. She muses herself any number
of ways, combing her incredibly long.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Hair, possibly learning about masonry.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Possibly learning masries, singing to herself, building windows, whatever. But
singing is the key.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Singing is the key because the handsome prince, of course,
has got to be a handsome prince. Here's this mellifluous
singing and comes a calling, and then she lets down
the hair. He doesn't even know. I don't know. It's
unclear to me. How does he get up there in
the first place. He doesn't know how to ask for
the hair.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
He stalks her.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Oh wait, a minute, he does know because he's overheard
the witch doing it. He stalked her at this point. Yeah,
that's not creepy at all. He keeps coming back to
listening to singing. It's like, what's going on, I'm so interesting.
Presumably he even impersonates the voice of the witch to
get her to let down the hair in the first place,
and then all of a sudden he appears to her
and she's like, whoa, who's this JABBRONI coming in through
(12:50):
my window? Trying to pretend to be my grandmama, because
at this point she thinks the witch is like her family.
She doesn't remember her parents, and they get it on right.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Eventually, he continues to visit her. The number of visits
depends on the version you read, and eventually the prince
ask Rapunzel to make an honest man of him, and
they agree to get married, and they say, okay, next
step is that we have to figure out how to
get you the heck out of here. So they say, look,
(13:21):
we know when Dame Gothel the enchantress or evil witch
comes by, So every time the witch comes by, I'll
be out aside, out of mind, but I'll visit you
in the night, and when I visit you, I will
bring you a piece of silk, and I won't bring
it all at one So just visit night after night,
bring you a piece of silk, and then you will
naturally make a ladder out of it, because she has
(13:43):
also acquired that particular skill or craft. But something goes wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, you know, as things are wont to do in
the fairy tale world. The witch overhears this plan, and
while the prince is away, she goes up there, confronts
her Punzel, lobs off her hair with a butcher's knife
for like a par of scissors or whatever, depending on
this the version, and then sends her away into the wilderness.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yes, in the first edition of the Grim Fairy Tales version,
she says to the witch, without knowing exactly what she's saying,
that her dress is growing tighter around her waist, which
is an allusion to pregnancy. That's right, and the and
the witch catches on. And then in the second edition,
she cuts off Punzel's hair throws her out in the woods.
(14:35):
The prince comes calling that night, and the evil witch
lets down the hair that she has cut off. He
climbs up. You know, we can imagine he's looking forward
to spending some time with his fiancee, and to his
utter and abject horror, he meets the witch instead of
(14:55):
her Punzel, and she says, you're never going to see
that girl again. She throws him from the tower, which
I think in most versions of the story, he ends
up hitting a thornbush and he goes blind.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, they poke his eyes out. And that's the thing, dude.
In that anime version I was telling you about, it
does that. It has that happen, and it's sort of
like it is not like bloody or like you know, scarred,
weird gouged out eyes or anything, but he's kind of
got like red, patchy kind of scratch marks all over
his eyes and they're sort of like closed, you know.
And then he also wanders the wilderness and eventually here's
(15:31):
that singing that he liked so so well and realizes
that it's Rapunzel and she has given birth to twin boys,
I believe according to the Grim version, and then she
cries tears of joy into his eye holes and he
is cured and the sight is restored to him. So,
you know, as much trials and tribulation as they go
(15:53):
through it does ultimately end up with them all living together.
He takes her back to his kingdom because he can
see now and find his way back, and they all happily.
Ever after, there's.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
A Roguain moment in some versions of the story too,
because he touched. When he can see again, he touches
her head and her hair magically grows back, just like
Zup Yep Yep and the evil Witch. When she throws
the guy out of the tower, she ends up dropping
Rapunzel's hair somehow, and it leaves her trapped in the tower.
But this, you know, how, we're talking about the amalgamated
(16:24):
origin of what we call modern fairy tales. We do
know that Rapunzel itself has, at least the Grimm's version
does have a more recent than Roman times influence. A
story called Petro Sinela or Parsley written by a guy
named Giambattista Basile in his collection of fairy Tales in
(16:48):
sixteen thirty four. Interesting, and it's kind of the same,
but it's a little more r rated because the encounters
between the prince and Rapunzel are much more explicit. Yeah,
it's a little little more graphic, little more late night
skinimax got a time, Yeah, indeed, And in the grim version,
(17:09):
the sex is simply implied by the baby bump, by
the tightening waist. So back to Saint Barbara. Did she
have hair long enough to let someone climb up a
tower using it? Could someone climb up a tower using
anyone's hair? In Saint Barbara's case, the hair is not
(17:31):
not as important, it's not really at all. Yeah, it's
just like you assume she has shared, presumably had a cut,
a pay cut.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So when we last left Barbara, her father, who in
this version story is named Diascorus, pursues his daughter somehow
finds this magic mountain gorge uh, and then he's like,
where is she? Where is she? And the first share says,
(18:00):
I don't know, don't talk to me. But the second
betrays her, and for doing this, this shepherd gets turned
to stone and all the sheep and his flock are
turned to locust. And because of this betrayal, Dioscorus does
find his daughter and he decides what no, not to
kill her himself.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's right, well, at least at that moment, but yeah,
he felt like she deserved, you know, her day in
kangaroo court.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Right, which means that she was dragged before the prefect
of the province, a guy named Martin Aus.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, and this is where it really starts to get ugly.
The court, I guess you could call it, beat her
mercilessly and beat her with pieces of raw hide on
her back. They rubbed her wounds with what you'd call
a fur cloth, I guess, just to kind of exacerbate
(18:56):
the pain. And at night she, according to this legend
or story, she prayed to what's referred to in this
article from OCA dot org as the Heavenly Bridegroom and
Jesus the Savior. And according to the story of this martyrdom,
(19:17):
she her wounds were spontaneously healed. And then when they
found her healed, they beat her and brutalized her even more.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, they started to use torches to burn her, or
attempt to. Those torches went out when they were getting
close to her body, and they kept trying to torture.
She kept healing through the power of prayer. OCA, by
the way, is the Orthodox Church in America website, which
is a great resource for stories of saints. Eventually, they say, well, look,
(19:53):
she's not going to renounce her Christian faith. She's obviously,
for some reason, healing very quickly, so they eventually decide
that they are going to kill her. In one version
of the story, they say, okay, well, let's see you
heal from a beheading. In another version, the torture continues
(20:16):
to where her body's raked, wounded with hooks, she's led
naked through the city as people mock her. Then she
is eventually beheaded by her father.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Yeah, yeah, And you know, and this version of the
story that we're reading is from this religious site, so
it's kind of presented as fact. It's clearly one version
of the story that incorporates some of these mystical religious
elements and an added element of come up. And her
father and the prefect were apparently struck by lightning brought
(20:51):
on by the wrath of God and instantly killed.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
What goes around comes around, right. This story continued because,
as is the case with so many saints, relics of
her body remained, and in the sixth century, the relics
of this great martyr Barbara, because as you said, and O,
(21:15):
there are different types of martyrs, the relics of the
saint were transferred to Constantinople and then they stayed there
for six hundred years before they were transferred to Kiev
by a daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexius Komenos, who
was also named Barbara. And that is where these relics
(21:36):
rest today, at Kiev's Saint Vladimir Cathedral, where an Akathis
to the Saint is served each Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And here's the thing. The Orthodox Church is largely what
holds this martyrdom in such high esteem. Because of some
of the scarcity of real historical records about this she
actually was taken off the list of martyrs and saints
in nineteen sixty nine by the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
It's true, It's absolutely true. But there's pretty compelling evidence
that this story, this Princess in a tower trope did lend,
did lend some inspiration to the story that we now
know as Rapunzel. And of course, if you have seen Tangled,
a lot of this stuff was cut out of this story.
(22:27):
And have you seen Tangled?
Speaker 2 (22:29):
No, I have not.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I have not, But I'm gonna go out on a
limb and say there probably wasn't a beheading.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
No, I'm pretty sure not. But again, even in that
I was pretty traumatized by that anime version where the
prince gets his eyes gouged out by thorns, even that
being the sort of more sanitized version. And it makes sense.
The Grim brothers were essentially historians, and they collected oral tradition
of all of these hundreds, I believe, of folk tales
(22:56):
they then used as inspiration for their Grim's fairy tales.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
And a lot of these older folk tales from an
academic perspective or a folklore perspective, are immensely and endlessly
fascinating because they provide a window into the realities of
the time. Because in the early versions of stories that
(23:23):
would later inspire this fairy tale or the Grim version
of the fairy tale, a lot more emphasis is put
on the idea of pregnancy and the use of plants
as medicinal aids for pregnant women or for people when
they give birth. And the problem is that this is
a very dangerous time in a woman's life, because it
(23:47):
still is. You know, it was such a dangerous time
because there were many many complications that could result in
injury or death to the mother or the child. So
this worry of having to trust someone who who is
doing things that seem inexplicable, that's right, or him supernatural?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Is a salient and immediate fear.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I mean it's often a sign of a witchcraft or
seen as such when a woman is close to nature
and understands how to harness some of these herbs in
ways that the average layperson does not, and that says
looked upon with suspicion. And it's almost that thing where
making a bargain with a woman like this, you're sort
of rolling the dice because you don't know if she
(24:28):
is there to heal or to harm, and you know
that she potentially has the power to do either, and
you have to trust her right to do that. So
it's sort of it's kind of personifying that inherent paranoia
that comes along with putting your faith in the hands
of another person who you're not really sure of their
motives I guess.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Right, yeah, or you don't trust right sure. And as
I believe I mentioned in an earlier episode, man, what
a what a terrible gig to be a healer back
in that time, because even if you did your best,
something went wrong, people would decide you were a witch.
There's one interesting thing that we should probably we have
(25:07):
to mention right to me, the most fascinating thing about
saints is that they're often called the patron saint of
one thing or another. And Barbara des might surprising people
to learn, is the patron saint of armorers, artillerymen, architects, mathematicians, miners,
and the Italian Navy, the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And if I'm not mistaken, that comes from the idea
in the story that her abusers were struck dead by lightning,
because when you're a minor, you're often subject to caven's
and even explosions from combustible minerals and things like that.
And the idea that Saint Barbara would protect you from
(25:48):
lightning or from those kind of pitfalls of that profession,
right yep.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Absolutely venerated by Catholics who face the danger of sudden
and violent death at work as well. And her name
is invoked against thunder and lightning and all accidents arising
from explosions of gunpowder. And interesting side note, the Spanish
word Santa Barbara then the corresponding word Santa Barbara signify
(26:15):
the powder magazine of a ship or a fortress, and
back in the day it used to be standard operating
procedure to have a statue of this saint at the
magazine to protect the structure from suddenly exploding. So there's
the more, you know, star flying over my head.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
In Santa Barbara, California, which is on the coast, has
a lot of oil and gas fields, and of course
Santa Barbara is Spanish for Saint Barbara.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Fascinating, And now we have to ask ourselves what other
secrets do modern fairy tales or modern versions of fairy
tales hold for us here in twenty nineteen. We'd like
to hear your story about your favorite fairy tale secrets.
I'd also like to before we close out the show,
give a shout out to a new follower I have
(27:04):
on Twitter that just made my day. I think, Casey Nolan,
I think you'll both enjoy this. Somebody made a Twitter
account called ridiculous History out of Context where they just
take quotes or interactions from us and post them without
explaining where they came from or what they pertain to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What we have a joke Twitter account?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
We do, and I don't know who. I don't know
who does it. I assume you're listening. I just wanted
to say thanks, so we've arrived. If you want to
follow them, follow them at out Ridiculous on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I really just do the Instagram thing. You can follow
me at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
You can follow me at Ben Bollen. You can also
meet the best part of this show, your fellow listeners
on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. Big thanks as always
to a super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, I've got to
look up saints and see which which one you might
identify with. I'll get back to you over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks
to Gabe Lucier, our research assistant associate, whatever you want
to call him. He is the stuff, a genuine gem.
That guy, Gabe is an absolute gift. We have some
things coming up for you, so stay tuned. We might
have some special guests in the mix. We might have
(28:25):
the return of Christopher Hasiotis. That's right, and in the meantime,
we would love it very much if you would say
nice things about the show on iTunes or your podcast
platform of choice.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Now they'll they'll say that you're supposed to call it
Apple podcasts now, but don't let them fool.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You can call it every on. You know what we need. Yeah,
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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