_Maître Chat; ou, le Chat Botté._--This capital story is said by Mr.
Dunlop and Mr. Keightley to be taken from a collection of stories by
Giovan Francesco Straparola, printed at Venice in 1550-54, under the
titles of _Tredici Piacevole Notte_, and translated into French "with
considerable embellishments" in 1585. That the first story of the
Eleventh Night is derived from the same source as Perrault's there
can be little doubt; but I am not by any means prepared to admit that
Perrault was indebted to that or any other printed collection for this
or any one of those eight stories which it is clear were well known
in France as _Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye_. Straparola, who seems to
have borrowed largely from Morlini, and collected stories wherever
he could find them, drew upon the traditions of Brittany as well as
on the fabliaux of Provence. It is indeed notorious that the Italian
novelists were indebted almost entirely to the Trouvères or Troubadours
of Languedoc, whilst they themselves admit that the plots of their
romances were of Armorican origin.
In Britanie of old time
These lays were wrought, so saith this rhyme.
Says the old translator of the _Lai le Fraine_, the author of which
Mr. Dunlop acknowledges "must have been better informed than any modern
writer" (_History of Fiction_, 8vo, 1845, p. 196). In the second
edition of the Countess D'Aulnoy's _Fairy Tales_, I took an opportunity
of vindicating that lady from the charge so hastily preferred against
her both by Mr. Dunlop and Mr. Keightley, and I now contest as strongly
the accuracy of the opinions of the same writers respecting the tales
of Charles Perrault. Neither in the story of Straparola, first of
the Eleventh Night, nor in the _Gagliuso_ of Signor Basile (whose
_Pentamerone_, published in 1672, is also roundly asserted to have
been the "origin" of the French _Contes des Fées_[55]), do we find
_Puss in Boots_. What would _Le Maître Chat_ be, were he not also _Le
Chat Botté_? Nor is there an Ogre--that especial characteristic of a
legend of Brittany--nor consequently the delicious scene between him
and Puss, which so dramatically winds up the French story. The same
unmistakeable indications of its being a veritable _Histoire du Temps
Passé_, militate against the belief alluded to by M. de Plancy, that
the Marquis de Carabas was intended as a portrait of some particular
nobleman of the time of Louis XIV.; and therefore that the usurpation
of the castle and property of the ogre might be an allusion to the
indelicate seizure by D'Aubigné of the domains of a Protestant, an
exile in consequence of the religious persecutions at the close of the
seventeenth century, "In which case," he adds, "the Cat would be Madame
de Maintenon!" What a pity so ingenious an idea should be destitute of
foundation. It is more probable that the wits of the day compared the
illustrious individuals to the Marquis de Carabas and his Cat.
I have kept the old English title of _Puss in Boots_, though it is
not literally that of the original. It would have been an indictable
offence to have altered it.
The tricks of the cat to catch the rats are described almost in the
words of Lafontaine, in his fable of _Le Chat et le Vieux Rat_, in
which Maître Mitis, "l'Alexandre des chats," a second Rodillard, "se
pend la tête en bas" and "s'enfarine" for the same purpose.