BLUEBEARD. A fictitious hero of the fa miliar tale which in the Eighteenth Century found its way into English from the French of Charles Perrault (c.1097). In this story, the Chevalier Raoul, whose surname is due to the color of his beard, had married seven wives. Six of these had mysteriously disappeared, and the seventh is represented as subjected to a singu lar test of obedience. Having occasion to go away, Raoul commits to Fatima the keys of his castle, and enjoins her that, though she may otherwise have free course, she must not open a certain chamber. Her curiosity is enhanced by her loneliness, and proves too strong for her. Opening the door, she beholds the charnel-house, where lie the bones of her predecessors. Her lcrd returns, discovers her disobedience by the blood upon the key. and tells her that in five minutes she must die. From the top of the castle, however, her sister Anne observes horse men approaching in the distance, who are the brothers of the ill-fated wife, and they arrive just in time to rescue their sister by slaying Bluebeard. Though Bluebeard is imaginary, there is thought to be a. historic prototype in Gilles. de Laval, Baron de Betz (1396-14401. TIe fought like the brave man he was against the English in their invasion of his country; but his intrepidity pales before his diabolical cruelties, and it is by these that he is remem bered. Because of some disloyalty to the Duke
of Brittany, he was burned alive near Nantes in 1440. That Laval is the original of Bluebeard is conjecture at best, and from the fact that the story is found with more or less variety of de tail in the folklore of different peoples, this doubt is enhanced.
Besides the French version of Perrault, there are tales of a similar kind in Straparola's notti (150), and in the Pentamerone of Gian Alesio Abbatutis. There is at Morbiltan an interesting pictorial representation in some frescoes of the Thirteenth Century, mentioned by Violeau in his Pelerinages de Bretagne. And it has been pointed out that. the resemblance is very close to the Arabian Nights' talc of the Third Calender. In his i'hantasus Tieck hits wrought the matter into a clever drama; GriAry has, in his Raoul (17S9), given it the setting of comic opera; Offenbach produced his opera bouffe, Borbc-Bleuc, in 1S66; and the younger Coleman brought out Blucbcard; or. Fe male Curiosity (1798). Consult: Wilson, Blue beard: A Covtributioa to History and Folklore (New York. 1899) ; Hartland. "The Forbidden Chamber," in Folklore Journal (London. 1885) : AbbC- Bossard. Gilles de Pais (lit Borbe-Bleue (Paris, 1886) : Perrault. Conics de am mere l'Oyc, tr. by Somber, ed. Iefevre (Paris, 1875).