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few of them were composed before the thirteenth, while the greater part seem to belong to the fourteenth, century. Such tales of knight-errantry, narratives of love adventures, and droll episodes, as we meet with in the following pages, succeeded to the legends, fables, and apologues preserved in the earliest MSS. which have come down to us, and kept a limited circle of readers amused, till better fare was provided for them by men of a higher stamp and of loftier literary pretensions.

W. C. H.

KENSINGTON, June, 1873.

PREFACE

TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

THIS little volume is taken from a work published some years ago in France by M. Le Grand, entitled "Fabliaux, or Tales of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." M. Le Grand's work is in five volumes; and as his object was not merely to furnish his countrymen with an entertaining collection of tales, but also to illustrate the manners and customs of the times in which they were written, it abounds with notes, remarks, and dissertations, which for the most part would be very far from interesting to an English reader.

M. Le Grand has taken much pains to prove that these stories are really originals, and that

whatever resemblances or imitations may be extant of them in the collection of Italian or other novelists, they are the genuine inventions of the French troubadours or minstrels, who flourished chiefly from the close of the eleventh to the opening of the fourteenth century.

Another great object with M. Le Grand was to controvert the prevalent notion of the superiority of the southern provinces of France over those to the north of the Loire in this branch of literature. With this dispute the English reader has also no concern, though M. Le Grand thinks it of so much consequence as to make it the subject of a dissertation which occupies the greatest part of one of his volumes.

The originality of a story, however indisputable, would not compensate for insipidity, absurdity, or want of interest; the translator, therefore, thought it best to pass by the greatest part of them, together with the notes, and thus to compress the work into a small volume, which has no pretensions to anything beyond entertainment.

In the first edition of this translation of M. Le

Grand's work the original title was preserved, namely that of "Tales of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." In the second impression the translator had reasons, which he there gave, for changing the title into that of "Norman Tales." But on consideration, that although M. Le Grand has proved the minstrels of Normandy to have had a principal concern in the invention of these tales, they were not the sole authors of them, he has in this edition corrected the error which he made, and given the book a more appropriate title.

The translator has had the satisfaction to see that the English stage has derived some benefit from this publication. Several dramatic pieces have either in part or wholly been made up from these tales. Among others, the "Three Hunchbacked Minstrels" has afforded the subject of an successful farce; and the musical one of "No Song no Supper," with very slight alterations, has been taken from the "Poor Scholar."

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