Extract

& just when our maiden had got
good & used to her isolation,
stopped daily expecting to be rescued,
had come almost to love her tower,
along comes This Prince
with absolutely
all the wrong answers.

The Poet: Liz Lochhead (1947-)

Liz Lochhead was born in Motherwell, Scotland in 1947. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1960s before working as an art teacher. She has built a formidable reputation as a dramatist and poet and is currently one of Scotland's most successful playwrights.

The Poem

In 'Rapunzstiltskin', Liz Lochhead plays with the Grimm brothers' stories of Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin to make a comic fable of sexual politics and power relationships between men and women. Like other women writers of her generation (such as Angela Carter and Carol Ann Duffy) Lochhead found that fairytales and legends are a source of deeply held stereotypes (old hags, wise old men, damsels in distress and knights in shining armour) and that they were ripe for a modern re-telling. This poem is one that needs to be heard by a collective audience, and it achieves its effects from a shared understanding between poet and audience.

The Story of Rapunzel

In the Grimm brothers' story, Rapunzel is the first-born child of a couple who lives next door to a horrible old witch. While she is pregnant the mother craves the radishes (Rapunzel in German) in her neighbour's garden and sends her husband out to steal them for her. He is caught in the act by the witch, who says that they can eat as many of her radishes as they like, on condition that they hand the baby over to her when it is born. So it goes, and the witch locks the girl up in a doorless tower and over many years encourages her to grow her hair very long so that the witch can climb up and down it like a ladder. A handsome knight passing through the forest notices this and climbs up and falls in love with Rapunzel, vowing to free her. The witch discovers his visits, and one day cuts off Rapunzel's hair as he is climbing up, causing him to fall into a thorn bush and be blinded. The witch dies, and Rapunzel escapes. As she walks this way and that in the forest she comes across her blind champion. Her tears fall on his eyes and restore his sight; and they are reunited to live happily ever after.

The Story of Rumpelstiltskin

A miller boasts to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king locks her overnight in a cellar filled with straw, promising that if she manages to perform the miracle he will marry her, but if not she will be killed. Of course, she is unable to do what he has asked. She weeps uncontrollably, until in the middle of the night a strange little twisted man lets himself in and offers to weave the straw into gold in exchange for whatever she can give him. She gives him her ring, and in the morning the king is delighted with the pile of spun gold, so much so that he wants more. The following night the events are repeated in a larger cellar of the castle with even more straw. But on the third night, in a still larger cellar, the miller's daughter has nothing more to give, and is forced to offer her first-born child in exchange for Rumpelstiltskin's help. The gold is spun, the king marries the miller's daughter, and she gives birth to a child, having forgotten all about the twisted little man and her promise. Sure enough, he soon turns up and demands his reward. She is devastated and offers him anything except her child, but he will not be bought off. Eventually he offers her a way out, saying that he will return on the next three nights and if she can guess his name then she will be allowed to keep the baby. She guesses wrongly on the first two nights, but on the last night she gets it right thanks to her soldiers who have been scouring the country for the little man. When she tells him his name he is so bitterly disappointed that he stamps his foot into the floor and splits himself in two, never to be seen again.

What Liz Lochhead Said

Liz Lochhead - Passwords 1998