Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/478

396 blue beard is not named. Bluebeard is also the popular name of a man whose beard o;rows strongly, as in Hamburg (Schütze, Hoist. Idiot. 1. 112); and here in Cassel, a deformed, halt-mad apprentice lad is for the same cause tolerably well knowa by the name. There is also (like the Norse Blatand, Blacktooth) a Blackbeard, referable in the first instance to some illness, such as leprosy which can only be cured by bathing in the blood of innocent maidens, hence the inconceivable horror. See Der arme Heinrich, p. 173.

We add also a Dutch story from oral tradition which belongs to this place. A shoemaker had three daughters. Once on a time when he had gone out, a great lord came in a splendid carriage, and took one of the girls away with him, who never returned. Then he took away the second in exactly the same way, and lastly the third, who likewise went with him, believing she was about to make her fortune. On the way, when night fell, he asked her,

"No," she answered, "why should I repent? I am always safe when with you; "nevertheless she was secretly alarmed. They came into a great forest, and she asked if they would soon reach the end of their journey. "Yes," he replied, "Dost thou see that light in the distance, there stands my castle." Then they arrived there and everything was most beautiful. Next day he said to her, "I must go away, but I will only be absent two days; here are the keys of the entire castle, and thou mayst see of what kind of treasures thou art the mistress." When he had set out on his journey, she went through the whole house and found everything so beautiful that she was perfectly satisfied. At length she came to a cellar wherein sat an old woman scraping intestines. "Well, little mother, what may you be doing?" said the girl. "I am scraping intestines, my child; to-morrow, I will scrape yours for you." Thereupon the girl was so terrified that she let the key which she was holding in her hand fall into a basin full of blood, which it was not easy to wash off again. "Now," said the old woman, "Your death is certain, because my lord will see by that key that you have been in this chamber, into which no one is permitted to enter except himself and me." Then the old