Contes de Peau d’Âne = Nursery tales.
[A name derived from a tale of Perrault, in which the heroine is so called.]
Pour un point (or, Faute d’un point) Martin perdit son âne = For want of a nail the shoe was lost (or, the miller lost his mare); Be careful of trifles.
[This is said of a person who loses something valuable through a trifle. The Abbey of Asello (Latin asellus = little ass) was taken from the Abbot Martin on account of his punctuation of a sentence over the gateway. Instead of: Porta patens esto, nulli claudaris honesto (Gate be open, and be closed to no honest man), he punctuated: Porta patens esto nulli, claudaris honesto (Gate, be open to none, be closed to an honest man). His successor corrected the mistake, and added: Uno pro puncto caruit Martinus Asello.]
Il fait l’âne pour avoir du son = He simulates stupidity to gain some material advantage.
Brider un âne par la queue = To do anything in exactly the wrong manner; To get hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Il n’y a point d’âne plus mal bâté que celui du commun = What is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.
[Walton, Compleat Angler, Part i. chap. ii.]
Ange