r in the pot, and her blood in bottles, and makes the
unconscious child eat and drink her ancestress! The cock or the robin
redbreast warns her in vain, and she is swallowed. (_Melusine_, May 5,
1887.)]

[Footnote 43: A. M. de la Fontaine, a Usez, le ii. Nov. 1661.]

[Footnote 44: Tylor, _Prim. Cult._ i. 338.]

[Footnote 45: Brough Smyth, _Natives of Victoria_, i. p. 432.]

[Footnote 46: Grimm, Note on 5.]

[Footnote 47: Max Mueller's _Selected Essays_, i. 565.]

LA BARBE BLEUE.

_Blue Beard._

The story of Blue Beard, as told by Perrault, is, of all his collection,
the most apt to move pity and terror. It has also least of the
supernatural. Here are no talking beasts, no fairies, nor ogres. Only
the enchanted key is _fee_, or _wakan_ as the Algonkins say, that is,
possesses magical properties. In all else the story is a drama of daily
and even of contemporary life, for Blue Beard has the gilded coaches and
embroidered furniture of the seventeenth century, and his wife's
brothers hold commissions in the dragoons and musketeers. The story
relies for its interest on the curiosity of the wife (the moral motive),
on the vision of the slain women, and on the suspense of waiting while
Sister Anne watches from the tower. These simple materials, admirably
handled, make up the terrible story of _Blue Beard_.

Attempts have been made to find for _Blue Beard_ an historical
foundation. M. Collin de Plancy mentions a theory that the hero was a
seigneur of the house of Beaumanoir (_OEuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault_,
p. 40, Paris, 1826). Others have fancied that Blue Beard was a popular
version of the deeds of Gilles de Retz, the too celebrated monster of
mediaeval history, or of a more or less mythical Breton prince of the
sixth century, Cormorus or Comorre, who married Sainte Trophime or
Triphime, and killed her, as he had killed his other wives, when she was
about to become a mother. She was restored to life by St. Gildas[48]. If
there is a trace of the _Blue Beard_ story in the legend of the Saint,
it does not follow that the legend is the source of the story. The
_Maerchen_ of _Peau d'Ane_ has been absorbed into the legend of Sainte
Dipne or Dympne, and the names of saints, like the names of gods and
heroes in older faiths, had the power of attracting _Maerchen_ into their
cycle.

_Blue Beard_ is essentially popular and traditional. The elements are
found in countries where Gilles de Retz and Comorre and Sainte