wives and hid their bodies in a locked room. Perrault's
tale was first printed in his _Histoires et contes du temps passe_
(1697). The essentials of the story--Bluebeard's prohibition to his wife
to open a certain door during his absence, her disobedience, her
discovery of a gruesome secret, and her timely rescue from death--are to
be found in other folklore stories, none of which, however, has attained
the fame of _Bluebeard_. A close parallel exists in an Esthonian legend
of a husband who had already killed eleven wives, and was prevented from
killing the twelfth, who had opened a secret room, by a gooseherd, the
friend of her childhood. In "The Feather Bird" of Grimm's _Hausmarchen_,
three sisters are the victims, the third being rescued by her brothers.
Bluebeard, though Perrault does not state the number of his crimes, is
generally credited with the murder of seven wives. His history belongs
to the common stock of folklore, and has even been ingeniously fitted
with a mythical interpretation. In France the Bluebeard legend has its
local habitation in Brittany, but whether the existing traditions
connecting him with Gilles de Rais (q.v.) or Comorre the Cursed, a
Breton chief of the 6th century, were anterior to Perrault's time, we
have no means of determining. The identification of Bluebeard with
Gilles de Rais, the _bete d'extermination_ of Michelet's forcible
language, persists locally in the neighbourhood of the various castles
of the baron, especially at Machecoul and Tiffauges, the chief scenes of
his infamous crimes. Gilles de Rais, however, had only one wife, who
survived him, and his victims were in the majority of cases young boys.
The traditional connexion may arise simply from the not improbable
association of two monstrous tales. The less widespread identification
of Bluebeard with Comorre is supported by a series of frescoes dating
only a few years later than the publication of Perrault's story, in a
chapel at St Nicolas de Bieuzy dedicated to St Tryphine, in which the
tale of Bluebeard is depicted as the story of the saint, who in history
was the wife of Comorre. Comorre or Conomor had his original
headquarters at Carhaix, in Finistere. He extended his authority by
marriage with the widow of Iona, chief of Domnonia, and attempted the
life of his stepson Judwal, who fled to the Frankish court. About 547 or
548 he obtained in marriage, through the intercession of St Gildas,
Tryphine, daughter of Weroc, coun