Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/203

Rh any of them, but will at once pass on to other versions. The nearest I have found in any foreign collection is a Swabian tale related by Meier and entitled "King Bluebeard." It may be worth while to abstract this at some length. It runs thus:—A man who has three sons and two daughters lives in a wood. A splendid carriage drives one day to the door; and a gentleman stepping out asks the man for his younger daughter as wife. The maiden objects; but her brothers overcome her reluctance, and give her a whistle, telling her in case of need to blow on it and they will come to her help. She accordingly marries the stranger, who is called King Bluebeard; and her sister accompanies her to his castle. One day her husband goes away on a journey, leaving her his keys, but forbidding her for her life to open the door to which the little golden key belongs. For the first three days her sister keeps her from disobeying; but on the fourth the temptation is too strong: she opens the door, to find the chamber within full of the corpses of Bluebeard's former wives. The key falls into their blood; nor, however much she rub, can she clean the bloodstains off it. By them her husband on his return discovers her disobedience; and he orders her to prepare for death. Her sister bethinks her of the whistle and blows upon it thrice. Bluebeard growing impatient comes upstairs after his victim. Meantime the sister is watching for her brothers; and a dialogue takes place between the sisters as in Perrault's tale. At last the brothers arrive and burst into the house just as Bluebeard is breaking open the door of his wife's room. They slay him, seize his treasure and destroy the castle. This version is at once seen to be practically identical with that of Perrault; and indeed Grimm expresses the opinion that it is derived from the French. The centre of the story is the wife's disobedience,