Blue Beard. By Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. (Chatto and Win- dus.
9s.)—Mr. Vizetelly begins his Introduction with an account of Charles Perrault's fairy stories. He finds the sources from which " Riquet with the Tuft," and " Griseldis," and others may have come ; but where, he asks, did he get "Blue Beard"? It is the common belief, adopted also by historians of note, that there was a real original of this personage, and that this original belonged to Brittany. There are three claimants, so to speak, for the distinction. To two of these, " Comorre the Cursed" and "Gilles de Kale," Mr. Vizetelly has devoted not a little laborious research. Comorro is a somewhat shadowy personage. What is recorded of him does not rest upon anything like contemporary authority. It is not so with Gilles de Rale, Marshal of France, whose career belongs to the first half of the fifteenth century. He was a great lord and a great soldier. He possessed many castles and forts, and he fought side by side with Joan of Arc ; indeed, he is said to have saved her life on one occasion when she was wounded. But he seems to have been a monster of preter- natural wickedness. The chief difficulty in identifying him with the villain of the fairy tale seems to be that his crimes had not to do with the removing of wives, but with the murder of children, whom he and his satellites kidnapped for purposes of black magic. All these things are duly established by legal evidence. But do we not know from legal evidence that some time about 1670 a cock was burnt alive for the crime of laying an egg ? Anyhow this volume has much interest, though of a ghastly kind.
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