THE REAL BLUE BEARD.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2486, 21 June 1909, Page 4

THE REAL BLUE BEARD.

Blue Beard was a real character named Giles de Laval, Marshal de Retz, a soldier of France, at the close of the fourteenth and about the beginning of the fifteenth century. He was a man of great wealth, but squandered his estates in dissipation, and then, to recruit his resources, resorted to alchemy. He had several assistants in the search for the philosopher’s stone, and the diabolical rites employed by the searchers demanded the blood and hearts of young children. Boys and girls of the neighbourhood were, tfn one pretext or another, enticed into his power, and then put to death under circumstances of great cruelty. Finally the disappearances of children became so numerous that the authorities of the province and of the kingdom took steps to investigate. Suspicion was fixed on Laval; he was arrested ind persuaded or frjghtened into confession. , Although, according to his confession, most Df the bodies had been burned, the remains nf forty-six children were found at one of his castles and eighty-two at another. He was convicted and executed in 1440. The jtosy of bluebeard was written by Perrault in the reign of Louis XIV., and the name was derived from the intensely blue-black beard of Laval, which gave him among the sountry people the nickname of " Blue Beard."