Bluebeard, the hero of a well-known nursery tale, so named from the colour of his beard. The story is widely known in Western Europe, but the form in which it has become familiar in England is not an independent version, but a free translation of that given by Perrault in his famous Contes (1697). In this story Bluebeard is a seigneur of great wealth, who marries the daughter of a neighbour in the country, and a month after the wedding goes from home on a journey, leaving his wife the keys of his castle, but forbidding her to enter one room. She cannot resist her curiosity, opens the door to find the bodies of all Bluebeard's former wives, and at once sees the fate to which she herself is doomed. Bluebeard on his return discovers, from a spot of blood upon the key, which would not be cleaned off, that his wife had broken his command, and tells her that she must die. She begs for a short respite to commend herself to God, sends her sister Anne to the top of the tower to look round if any help is near, and finally is just on the point of having her head cut off, when her two brothers burst in and despatch Bluebeard.
Nothing is more common in folk-tales than stories of forbidden rooms, the entrance into which is at once followed by severe punishment. In the eastern stories, according to Mr Clouston, the room does not usually contain anything very horrifying, unlike most of the western examples of which the story of Bluebeard is a type. A very close parallel to the classical form of the story is offered by a Swabian tale in Grimm's collection; so close, indeed, that in later editions than the first, Grimm omitted it as probably a direct loan from the French. Greek, Tuscan, Icelandic, Estonian, Gaelic, and Basque versions of the story occur, with varying circumstances of detail, but the main situations identical. Bluebeard is usually a monster or ogre, and lives fittingly in the gloom of forest or cavern—the only really essential detail that has dropped out of the typical story. In one group the monster is the devil, and the forbidden door closes the entrance to hell. In many stories the heroine is the youngest of three or more sisters who have been less lucky, and sometimes, as in one of Camp- bell's Gaelic variants, she is able to restore them to life. In Campbell's other version, as in the Basque story, it is the heroine herself who cuts off the monster's head.
In the face of such a wide geographical range and self-evident antiquity it is as idle to look for an historical 'Bluebeard' in Gilles de Laval, sire de Rais, who was executed in 1440 for his atrocious cruelties, as it would be to find him in our own Henry VIII., who was so unfortunate with his wives. Literary use has been made of the story by Tieck in his Phantasus, and by Grétry in his opera of Raoul. See an excellent study on 'The Forbidden Chamber,' by E. Sidney Hartland, in vol. iii. of The Folklore Journal (1885); and Andrew Lang's edition of Perrault's Contes (1887).