Blue Beard (La Barbe Bleue), from the contes of Charles Perrault (1697). The chevalier Raoul is a merciless tyrant, with a blue beard. His young wife is entrusted with all the keys of the castle, with strict injunctions on pain of death not to open one special room. During the absence of her lord the "forbidden fruit" is too tempting to be resisted, the door is opened, and the young wife finds the floor covered with the dead bodies of her husband's former wives. She drops the key in her terror, and can by no means obliterate from it the stain of blood. Blue Beard, on his return, commands her to prepare for death, but by the timely arrival of her brothers her life is saved and Blue Beard put to death.
Dr. C. Taylor thinks Blue Beard is a type of the castle-lords in the days of knight-errantry. Some say Henry VIII. (the noted wife-killer) was the "academy figure." Others think it was Giles de Retz, marquis de Laval, marshal of France in 1429, who (according to Mézeray) murdered six of his seven wives, and was ultimately strangled in 1440.
Another solution is that Blue Beard was count Conomar´, and the young wife Triphy´na, daughter of count Guerech. Count Conomar was lieutenant of Brittany in the reign of Childebert. M. Hippolyte Violeau assures us that in 1850, during the repairs of the chapel of St. Nicolas de Bieuzy, some ancient frescoes were discovered with scenes from the life of St. Triphyna: (1) The marriage; (2) the husband taking leave of his young wife and entrusting to her a key; (3) a room with an open door, through which are seen the corpses of seven women hanging; (4) the husband threatening his wife, while another female [sister Anne] is looking out of a window above; (5) the husband has placed a halter round the neck of his victim, but the friends, accompanied by St. Gildas, abbot of Rhuys in Brittany, arrive just in time to rescue the future saint.— Pélerinages de Bretagne.
Blue Knight (The), sir Persaunt of India, called by Tennyson "Morning Star" or "Phosphorus." He was one of the four brothers who kept the passages of Castle Perilous, and was overthrown by sir Gareth.—Sir T. Malory, History of Prince Arthur, i. 131 (1470); Tennyson, Idylls ("Gareth and Lynette").
It is evidently a blunder in Tennyson to call the Blue Knight "Morning Star," and the Green Knight "Evening Star." The reverse is correct, and in the old romance the combat with the Green Knight was at day-break, and with the Blue Knight at sunset.
Blue-Skin, Joseph Blake, an English burglar, so called from his complexion. He was executed in 1723.
Bluff (Bachelor), celibate philosopher upon social, domestic, and cognate themes.
"Give me," he says emphatically, "in our
household, color and cheeriness—not cold art,