Puss-in-Boots by Reginald Wright Kauffman

A Ballad Arrangement for Children

Though the “Boots” came later and the “Puss” assumed various forms, this story is of ancient, probably Oriental, origin. A Magyar version has a fox for its central figure. The cat first appears (1554) in the Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola’s Piacevole Notte (“Pleasant Nights”); but it was the French author Charles Perrault who, in Maitre Chat (“Master Cat,” 1697), introduced the boots and the trick that ends the Ogre. To this day, “Carabas” is a name given in France to any impostor.

Reginald Wright Kauffman, 1922