Let down thy hair

I saw the new Disney princess movie, Tangled, this past weekend. It was really cute. I loved it almost as much as The Princess and the Frog. Since Tangled is the story of Rapunzel, I was curious about the non-Disney fairy tale behind it. It seems that the Brothers Grimm wrote down a version. I say wrote down instead of created, because they recorded a bunch of fairy tales and then picked and chose their ideas of the best combinations of similar versions to publish.
(Eek! Bad tanget. Back to the doghouse with you.)

Ahem. Anyway, in the Disney version, Rapunzel's hair has magical healing powers, provoked by a song/incantation. In the Brothers Grimm version, the hair wasn't anything special besides that it was long. And in  fact, the ending was very different (I won't give away the Disney one because I hate spoilers).

Here's how Wikipedia explains it:

        Together they [Rapunzel & the prince] planned a means of escape, wherein he would come each night (thus avoiding the enchantress who visited her by day), and bring her silk, which Rapunzel would gradually weave into a ladder. Before the plan came to fruition, however, Rapunzel foolishly gave the prince away. In the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, Rapunzel innocently says that her dress is getting tight around her belly; in subsequent editions, she asks the witch (in a moment of forgetfulness) why it was easier for her to draw him up than her. In anger, Dame Gothel cut short Rapunzel's braided hair and cast her out into the wilderness to fend for herself. When the prince called that night, the enchantress let the severed braids down to haul him up. To his horror, he found himself staring at the witch instead of Rapunzel, who was nowhere to be found. When she told him in anger that he would never see Rapunzel again, he leapt from the tower in despair and was blinded by the thorns below. In another version, the witch pushes him and he falls on the thorns, thus becoming blind.
         For months he wandered through the wastelands of the country. One day, while Rapunzel sang as she fetched water, the prince heard Rapunzel's voice again, and they were reunited. When they fell into each others' arms, her tears immediately restored his sight. In another variation, it is said that Rapunzel eventually gave birth to two boys (in some variations, a girl and a boy). The prince leads her to his kingdom, where they lived happily ever after. In another version of the story, the ending reveals that the witch untied Rapunzel's braid after the prince leapt from the tower, but it slipped from her hands and landed below the tower. This left the witch trapped in the tower.

The original story came from the story of Rudaba in an ancient Iranian book called Shahnameh, written by Ferdowsi around 1000 AD. Some elements of the fairy tale might also have originally been based upon the legends about Saint Barbara, who was said to have been locked in a tower by her father.

I would like to read the actual Brothers Grimm version and the story or Rudaba sometime. =D