“Ah, miserable woman,” he cried, “what have you done? I must leave you, and you shall never see me more!” and he made as if to quit the room. His wife rose from her bed, and strove to detain him, but he struck at her with his fist. The blood trickled out and made three spots on his shirt.
“Behold these spots,” cried the young wife; “they shall never disappear until I find you.”
“And I swear to you,” cried her husband, “that you will never find me until you have worn out three pairs of iron shoes in doing so.”
With these words he ran off at such speed that the poor wife could not follow him, and, fainting, she sank to the ground.
Some time after her husband had left her the young wife had three pairs of iron shoes made and went in search of him. After she had travelled about the world for nearly ten years the last pair of shoes began to show signs of wear, when she found herself one day at a castle where the servants were hanging out the clothes to dry, and she heard one of the laundresses say:
“Do you see this shirt? I declare it is enchanted, for although I have washed it again and again I cannot rub out these three spots of blood which you see upon it.”
When the wanderer heard this she approached the 143 laundress and said to her: “Let me try, I pray you. I think I can wash the shirt clean.”
They gave her the shirt, she washed it, and the spots disappeared. So grateful was the laundress that she bade the stranger go to the castle and ask for a meal and a bed. These were willingly granted her, and at night she was placed in a small apartment next to that occupied by the lord of the castle. From what she had seen she was sure that her husband was the lord himself, so when she heard the master of the house enter the room next door she knocked upon the boards which separated it from her own. Her husband, for he it was, replied from the other side; then, entering her room, he recognized his wife, and they were happily united after the years of painful separation. To the wife’s great joy her husband was now completely restored to his proper form, and nothing occurred to mar their happiness for the rest of their lives.
The Bride of Satan
Weird and terrible as are many of the darksome legends of Brittany, it may be doubted if any are more awe-inspiring than that which we are now about to relate. “Those who are affianced three times without marrying shall burn in hell,” says an old Breton proverb, and it is probably this aphorism which has given the Bretons such a strong belief in the sacred nature of a betrothal. The fantastic ballad from which this story is taken is written in the dialect of Léon, and the words are put into the mouth of a maiden of that country. Twice had she been betrothed. On the last occasion she had worn a robe of the finest stuff, embroidered with twelve brilliant stars and having the figures of the sun and 144 moon painted upon it, like the lady in Madame d’Aulnoy’s story of Finette Cendron (Cinderella). On the occasion when she went to meet her third fiancé in church she almost fainted as she turned with her maidens into the little road leading up to the building, for there before her was a great lord clad in steel cap-à-pie, wearing on his head a casque of gold, his shoulders covered by a blood-coloured mantle. Strange lights flashed from his eyes, which glittered under his casque like meteors. By his side stood a huge black steed, which ever and again struck the ground impatiently with his hoofs, throwing up sparks of fire.