"Prunella" is an Italian fairy tale, originally known as Prezzemolina. Andrew Lang included it in The Grey Fairy Book. It is Aarne-Thompson type 310, the Maiden in the Tower.

Italo Calvino noted that variants were found over all of Italy. The captor who demands his captive perform impossible tasks, and the person, usually the captor's child, who helps with them, is a very common fairy tale theme—Nix Nought Nothing, The Battle of the Birds, The Grateful Prince, or The Master Maid—but this tale unusually makes the captive a girl and the person the captor's son.

A girl goes to school, and every day, she picks a plum from a tree along the way. She is called "Prunella" because of this. But the tree belongs to a wicked witch and one day she catches the girl. Prunella grows up as her captive.

One day, the witch sends her with a basket to the well, with orders to bring it back filled with water. The water seeps out every time, and Prunella cries. A handsome young man asks her what her trouble is, and tells her that he is Bensiabel, the witch's son; if she kisses him, he will fill the basket. She refuses because he is a witch's son, but he fills the basket with water anyway. The witch then sets her to make bread from unmilled wheat while she is gone. Prunella, knowing it is impossible, tries for a time, and then cries. Bensiabel appears. She again refuses to kiss a witch's son, but he makes the bread for her.

Finally, the witch sends her over the mountains to get a casket from her sister, knowing her sister is an even more cruel witch, who will starve her to death. Bensiabel tells her and offers to save her if she kisses him; she refuses. He gives her oil, bread, rope, and a broom, and tells her to oil the gate's hinges at his aunt's house, give a fierce dog the bread, give the rope to a woman trying to lower the bucket into the well by her hair, and give the broom to a woman trying to clean the hearth with her tongue. Then she should take the casket from the cupboard and leave at once. She does this. As she leaves, the witch calls to all of them to kill her, but they refuse because of what Prunella had given them.

The witch becomes enraged when Prunella returns. She orders Prunella to tell her in the night which cock crows, whenever one does. Prunella still refuses to kiss Bensiabel, but he tells her each time the yellow and the black cock does. When the third one crows, Bensiabel hesitates because he still hopes to get Prunella to kiss him, and Prunella begs him to save her. He springs on the witch, and she falls down the stairs and dies. Prunella is touched by his goodness and agrees to marry him, and they live happily ever after.

The tale originally appeared as Prezzemolina in 1879, collected from Mantua by Isaia Visentini. The stolen plant was originally parsley (prezzemolo in Italian), as in Rapunzel, but Andrew Lang changed it to a plum and the heroine's name to Prunella. Lang did not name a source for the story.

Author Ruth Manning-Sanders adapted the tale in her work A Book of Witches, wherein the witch's son's name was given as "Benvenuto".