The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands

Copyright © 2008 by Theo Meder

Bluebeard insured his wife for a lot of money. After that, he tickled her under her feet for so long that she died.

His second wife was insured for a high amount of money again. After she died, he threw her in the cellar.

With his third wife he did exactly the same.

All together he had seven wives, and he burned their corpses in a round iron stove for heating.

However, he got caught when he attempted to bum the seventh woman in the stove. He immediately committed suicide by hanging himself.

This very short and peculiar Bluebeard tale is a version of ATU 312, Maiden-Killer (Bluebeard). The story was told to collector A. A. Jaarsma on August 18, 1966, by the Frisian storyteller, mole catcher, and smallholder Anders Bijma (1890--1977). It was not unusual for Bijma to-deliberately-tell his own deviant versions of well-known stories (see Venbrux and Meder, 1999). The story, here translated from Frisian, has not been published before (archives and Folktale Database, Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam).