Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is able to preserve his garments from all dampness.
When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death.
There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known. Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin, as far as concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St. Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his castle were swallowed up by the earth.
The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais.
The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes on to say, De Laval proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer.
Gilles de Laval, after an
engraving of the fifteenth century in the
Bibliothèque Nationale.