'Mais le cher motif de leur joye, Comme un conte de la Mère Oye, Se trouvant fabuleux et faux, Ils deviendront tous bien pénauts.'
[15] In her Moralité, Mlle. L'Heritier says,—
'Cent fois ma nourrice ou ma mie M'ont fait ce beau recit le soir pres des tisons, Je n'y fais qu'ajouter un peu de broderie.'
[16] The Fables d'animaux are probably even older than contes Diamonds and Toads. A Mouse and a Frog, as well as the Old Woman who survives as La Fée, take part in the tale as the Kaffirs tell it in The Story of Five Heads, in Theal's Kaffir Folk Lore, pp. 48, 49. The Kaffir story slides into a form of Beauty and the Beast. By some unexplained accident a story of Mlle. L'Heritier's L'Adroite Princesse slipped into editions of Perrault's Contes, in 1721, if not earlier, and holds its place even now.
[17] Histoires ou Contes du Tems Passé, avec des Moralités. A Paris. Chez Claude Barbin, sur le second peron de la Sainte-Chapelle; au Palais. Avec Privilége de sa Majesté, 1697. In 12o. 230 pp. Bibliothèque de M. Cousin, 9677. The frontispiece, by Clouzier, represents an old woman spinning, and telling tales to a man, a girl, a little boy, and a cat which, from its broad and intelligent grin, naturalists believe to be of the Cheshire breed. On a placard is written
CONTES
DEMA
MERE
LOYE.
A copy, modified, of the engraving is printed on the cover of M. Charles Deulin's Les Contes de Ma Mère L'Oye avant Perrault. (Paris, Dentu, 1879.) The design holds its own, with various slight alterations, in the English chap-books of Mother Goose's Tales, even in the present century. There is a vastly 'embroidered' reminiscence of Clouzier in the edition edited by M. Ch. Giraud, for Perrin of Lyon, 1865.