The “forbidden chamber” motif

Note: this text is extracted from Book V, chapter 26:

“And Śaktideva, remaining there alone, wandered from one magnificent part of the palace to another to delight his mind; and then he felt a curiosity to know why that daughter of the Vidyādhara had forbidden him to ascend the roof of the palace, and so he ascended that middle terrace of the palace; for men are generally inclined to do that which is forbidden. And when he had ascended it he saw three concealed pavilions, and he entered one of them, the door of which was open; and when he had entered it he saw a certain woman lying on a magnificently jewelled sofa, on which there was a mattress placed, whose body was hidden by a sheet...”

The forbidden chamber will at once remind the reader of Perrault’s La Barbe Bleue. The lake incident is exactly similar to one in Chapter LXXXI of this work and to that of Kandarpaketu in the Hitopadeśa. In Wirt Sikes’ British Goblins, p. 84, a draught from a forbidden well has the same effect. See Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 99- He refers to this story and gives many European equivalents. See also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 214. Many parallels will be found in the notes to Grimm’s Märchen, Nos. 3 and 4 6, to which Ralston refers in his exhaustive note.

—The “forbidden chamber” motif has already been ably discussed by Sidney Hartland (“The Forbidden Chamber,” Folk-Lore Journal, vol. iii, 1885, pp. 193-242), so that there is no need to go into any great detail here. One of the closest accounts to that in our text occurs in the third Kalandar’s tale (Nights, Burton, vol. i, p. 160). In this story Ajīb, son of Khazīb, is entrusted with the keys of a palace containing forty chambers all of which he can open except one, and he is warned that if he does, he and his beloved will be separated for ever. However, as usual, curiosity overcomes him, and as soon as he opens the door a wonderful perfume meets his nose which immediately sends him into a faint.

After a time he recovers and inspects the room, which is lit with lamps of gold diffusing a scent of musk and ambergris.

“Presently,” he says when relating the story,

“I espied a noble steed, black as the murks of night when murkiest, standing, ready saddled and bridled (and his saddle was of red gold) before two mangers, one of clear crystal wherein was husked sesame, and the other also of crystal containing water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marvelled and said to myself, ‘Doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous mystery’; and Satan cozened me, so I led him without the palace and mounted him; but he would not stir from his place. So I hammered his sides with my heels, but he moved not, and then I took the rein-whip and struck him withal. When he felt the blow, he neighed a neigh with a sound like deafening thunder, and opening a pair of wings flew up with me in the firmament of heaven far beyond the eyesight of man. After a full hour of flight he descended and alighted on a terrace roof and shaking me off his back lashed me on the face with his tail and gouged out my left eye, causing it roll along my cheek. Then he flew away.”

He then goes down from the terrace and finds himself among the ten one-eyed youths who had met with similar adventures themselves, and through whom Ajīb had originally started on his adventure.

Reference should be made to W. Kirby (who wrote some of the analogues in Burton’s edition of the Nights, vol. x, and Supp., vol. vi), “The Forbidden Doors of the Thousand and one Nights,” Folk-Lore Journal, vol. v, pp. 112-124; Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i, pp. 198-205; ditto, The Book of Sindibād, pp. 173, 174, 308, 309; J. A. Macculloch, Childhood of Fiction, pp. 306-324; and V. Chauvin, op. cit., v, p. 203. The whole subject has recently been discussed by P. Saintyves, Les Contes de Perrault, 1923, pp. 359-396, which contains a full bibliography. For the identification of Bluebeard with Gil de Rais and Comorre the Cursed see E. A. Vizetelly, Bluebeard, 1902, and cj. A. France, Les Sept Femmes de Barbe Bleu, 1909.—N.M.P.