Triphime
were never known. The leading idea, of curiosity punished, of the box or
door which may not be opened, and of the prohibition infringed with evil
results, is of world-wide distribution. In many countries this notion
inspires the myths of the origin of Death[49]. In German _Maerchen_ there
are several parallels, more or less close, to _Blue Beard_ (Grimm 3, 40,
46). In _Our Lady's Child_ (3) the Virgin entrusts a little girl with
keys of thirteen doors, of which she may only open twelve. Behind each
door she found an apostle, behind the thirteenth the Trinity, in a glory
of flame, like Zeus when he consumed Semele. The girl's finger became
golden with the light, as Blue Beard's key was dyed with the blood. The
child was banished from heaven, and her later adventures are on the
lines of the falsely accused wife, like those of the _Belle au Bois
Dormant_, with the Virgin for mother-in-law and with a repentance for a
moral conclusion. In the _Robber Bridegroom_ there is a girl betrothed
to a woman-slayer; she detects and denounces him, pretending, as in the
old English tale, she is describing a dream. 'Like the old tale, my
Lord, it is not so, nor 'twas not so; but indeed God forbid that it
should be so[50].' Except for the 'larder' of the Robber, and of Mr. Fox
in the English variant, these stories do not closely resemble _Blue
Beard_. In Grimm's _Fitcher's Bird_ (46) the resemblance is closer. A
man, apparently a beggar, carries off the eldest of three sisters to a
magnificent house, and leaves her with the keys, an egg, and the
prohibition to open a certain door. She opens it, finds a block, an axe,
a basin of blood, and the egg falling into the blood refuses to be
cleansed. The man slays her, her second sister shares her fate, the
third leaves the egg behind when she visits the secret room, and
miraculously restores her sisters to life by reuniting their limbs. The
same idea occurs in the Kaffir tale of the Ox (Callaway, _Nursery Tales
of the Zulus_, p. 230). The rest of the story, with the escape from the
monster, has no connection with _Blue Beard_, except that the wretch is
put to death. Indeed, it would have been highly inconvenient for Blue
Beard's surviving bride if the dead ladies had been resuscitated. Her
legal position would have been ambiguous, and she could not have
inherited the gold coaches and embroidered furniture. Grimm originally
published another German form of _Blue Beard_ (62 in first edition