Note 227 — 29 THE BOY AND THE MANTLE

Wolf at first speaks of the lai as being made over into the fabliau, in regular court style, ganz nach höfischer Weise, about the middle of the 13th century; then goes on to say that even if the author of the fabliau followed another version of the story, he must have known the jongleur's poem, because he has repeated some of the introductory lines of the lai. This excellent scholar happened, for once, not to observe that the first fourteen lines of the lai, excepting the fourth, which is questionable, are in a longer metre than the rest of the poem, in eights and sevens, not sixes, and the first three of the lai, which agree with the first three of the fabliau, in the eight-syllable verse of the latter; so that it was not the author of the fabliau that borrowed. Warnatsch (who has also made this last remark) has noted other agreements between lai and fabliau, p. 61. Both of these acknowledge their derivation from an earlier dit, estoire, not having which we shall find it hard to determine by which and from what the borrowing was done.