Skip to main content

Reading Notes: Lang's European Fairy Tales II, Part A


"Blue Beard" tells the story of a rich man who has several houses, fine furniture, and silver and gold. However, he has a blue beard that makes his ugly. One of his neighbor's has two beautiful daughters and he wishes to marry one of them, but they are both disgusted by the thought. They also do not want to marry him because he has been married several times before and nobody knows what has happened to his past wives. He bring his neighbor, her daughters, and a few other girls to one of his country homes for the week. They party, hunt, fish, dance, eat, and stay up all night.

The younger daughter begins to think that the man may be a gentleman. They return home and get married; a month later, Blue Beard tells his wife that he has to go on a country journey for at least six weeks. He gives her keys to his apartments, wardrobes, and caskets that hold his valuable possessions. He also gives her a key to a closet, but tells her that she cannot enter it. Her friends come to see the house; the entire time, she is impatient to open the closet door. She goes down to the closet door, and pauses before she opens it. It is dark inside, but she eventually sees the floor is covered with blood and the bodies of women- Blue Beard's wives. The wife become frightened and drops the key.

She locks the room and returns upstairs, but notices the key is covered with blood. She tries to clean it off, but it stays. Blue Beard returns home that night, saying he received a letter that the trip he was on would not help him. He asks her for the keys back, and she returns them shaking. Blue Beard asks why the closet key is not with the rest, and she says she must have left it on the table. She brings him the key and he asks why there's blood on it. He guesses what happened and tells his wife she must die too.

She asks for some time to prayer before dying; Blue Beard gives her half a quarter of an hour. She calls to her sister, Anne, to check if her brothers are on their way over, and if they are, to tell them to hurry. Anne looks from a tower, but only sees the sun and grass. She keeps asking Anne is anyone is coming while Blue Beard keeps calling for his wife to come down. Eventually, Anne sees two horsemen coming. Blue Beard yells loudly and his wife and comes, sobbing. He tells her she still must die. He holds her up by her hair with one hand and holds his sword with the other. As he is about to cut off her head, she asks for a moment to collect herself. As he is about to strike, there is a knock at the gate and the two horsemen enter. He knows they are his wife's brothers and tries to escape, but they attack him and kill him. The wife became the mistress of the estate; she uses the fortune to marry her sister to a young man she loved and to marry herself to a man who made her forget about Blue Beard.
Bluebeard by Edmund Evans

This story is part of the Lang's European Fairy Tales II unit. Story source: The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1889).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Notes: Nursery Rhymes, Part B

In the "Jingles" section of the Nursery Rhymes unit, there are several well-known tales. The first is "Hey Diddle Diddle."  HEY! diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laugh'd To see the sport, While the dish ran after the spoon. The next is "Tweedledum and Tweedledee." TWEEDLE-DUM and Tweedle-dee Resolved to have a battle For Tweedle-dum said Tweedle-dee Had spoiled his nice new rattle. Just then flew by a monstrous crow As big as a tar-barrel, Which frightened both the heroes so They quite forgot their quarrel. Another is "Rub-a-dub-dub." RUB a dub dub, Three men in a tub: And who do you think they be? The butcher, the baker, The candlestick-maker; Turn 'em out, knaves all three! As I said in the other reading post about the Nursery Rhymes unit, I think it would be difficult to write my own jingles inspired by these. They are all fairly short and follow a similar rhyme scheme. Th...

Week 11 Story: How Flower Stole Sunlight

Long ago, when only plants lived on earth, Redwoods were the only ones who had sunlight. All the other plants wanted sunlight too, but Redwoods were taller than everyone else. They stole the sunlight before it could reached any of the other plants.  The other plants lived in darkness and fear but Redwoods refused to share sunlight with anyone else.  The other plants decided to hold a council to discuss the growing worry they had about living in darkness. Meanwhile, Redwoods held their own council in the light. They set up guards to protect themselves from having other plants try to come take sunlight from them.  But Flower had taken root near where the Redwoods were having their meeting before the guards set up. While the Redwoods had their meeting, a small bit of sunlight crept towards Flower. Flower hid a little bit of sunlight in its petals and slowly started moving back towards the other plants' meeting.  Before Flower could escape, however, the Redwoods no...

Reading Notes: Adam and Eve, Part B

The stories "They Die a First Time" and "Suicide and the Salvation" take place after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit in the garden and have been punished by God. Both stories are written from a third person perspective. In my story, I could write from one the character's perspectives. In the stories, it is difficult to understand what Adam and Eve are thinking when it comes to their actions; telling a story from their perspective would be give some insight into why they do what they do. Telling the story from God's perspective would also be interesting. Like the reader, God watches Adam and Eve, but telling the story from his point of view might make the audience feel closer to the story. There are many recurring themes throughout these two stories. The first that stood out to me was death. There are several instances in which Adam and Eve die, come close to dying, look like they are dying, or think they are dying. The fear of dying is also very preva...