The people of the middle ages, who took their word _fable_ from the Latin _fabula_, which they appear to have understood as a mere term for any short narration, included under it the stories told by the mimi and jougleurs; but, in the fondness of the middle ages for diminutives, by which they intended to express familiarity and attachment, applied to them more particularly the Latin _fabella_, which in the old French became _fablel_, or, more usually, _fabliau_. The fabliaux of the jougleurs form a most important class of the comic literature of the middle ages. They must have been wonderfully numerous, for a very large quantity of them still remain, and these are only the small portion of what once existed, which have escaped perishing like the others by the accident of being written in manuscripts which have had the fortune to survive; while manuscripts containing others have no doubt perished, and it is probable that many were only preserved orally, and never written down at all.[40] The recital of these fabliaux appears to have been the favourite employment of the jougleurs, and they became so popular that the mediæval preachers turned them into short stories in Latin prose, and made use of them as illustrations in their sermons. Many collections of these short Latin stories are found in manuscripts which had served as note-books to the preachers,[41] and out of them was originally compiled that celebrated mediæval book called the "Gesta Romanorum." [40] Many of the Fabliaux have been printed, but the two principal collections, and to which I shall chiefly refer in the text, are those of Barbazan, re-edited and much enlarged by Méon, 4 vols. 8vo., 1808, and of Méon, 2 vols. 8vo., 1823. [41] A collection of these short Latin stories was edited by the author of the present work, in a volume printed for the Percy Society in 1842.