Two common European folktales concern the wounding of the heroine's lover or husband by an enemy. The climax of the action in both cases deals with the healing of his wounds by the heroine and their happy reunion. The first of these, The Maiden in the Tower (Type 310), is usually known as Rapunzel from the name of the heroine in the Grimm version. The tale was apparently a favorite in Italy as early as the seventeenth century, since Basile uses it with slight variations twice in his Pentamerone. Whether because of the influence of Basile or because of the Mediterranean origin of the story, it has its greatest popularity in Italy and adjacent countries. A French literary version of the early eighteenth century doubtless aided in spreading it to northern Europe. It has appeared in German collections since 1790. It does not seem to be known in Russia or among any of the Finno-Ugric peoples, and except for a Massachusetts version originating in the Cape Verde Islands, it has not gone outside of Europe.

The tale begins with a motif which we have frequently met in other folktales: in order to appease a witch whom he has offended, a man promises her his child when it is born. The witch keeps the girl imprisoned in a windowless tower which the witch enters by using her long hair as a ladder. The king's son observes this and does likewise. The witch eventually discovers the deceit and cuts off the girl's hair and abandons her in a desert. When the prince comes he saves himself by jumping from the tower and is blinded. After various adventures the heroine finds him. Her tears falling on his eyes heal his blindness and they are happily reunited.

The confinement of the maiden in the tower, reminiscent of the futile imprisonment of Danaë, also usually forms a part of the story of The Prince as Bird (Type 432). In its best known European form the tale concerns a prince who takes on the form of a bird in order to fly to a beautiful maiden who lives in a tower. When in her presence he becomes a man. When her stepmother (or sister) discovers the mysterious lover, she wounds him, either [p. 103] by cutting him with a knife, piercing him with a thorn, or strewing glass on the window ledge where he lights when he arrives as a bird. The heroine now sets out to find her lover and minister unto his wounds. On the way she overhears animals (or sometimes witches) talking and learns from them how to heal him. By following their directions she succeeds.

The tale of the bird-lover appears several times in medieval literature, notably in Marie de France's Yonec. Details vary somewhat in the medieval stories from those in the modern folktale but it seems likely that they belong to the same tradition. [111] The story was probably current in Italy in the Renaissance: it appears in Basile's Pentamerone and it is especially popular in the Mediterranean countries today. Madame d'Aulnoy published the tale in France in 1702 and apparently from her version it has become popular in Scandinavia. On the other hand, there are interesting gaps in the tradition; it has apparently not been collected in Germany or the rest of northwest Europe, the British Isles, or the western Slavic countries. There are, however, five known Russian versions, and two particularly well-told variants from India. An African tale from the Hausa of the Western Sudan is an obvious borrowing of this story from India. The tale has never been thoroughly studied, and the relationship of the versions in India and in Europe is such that the question of its origin is extremely puzzling.