Gargantua. It was, of course, quite right to make a list of these, to draw
up, as it were, a chart of them, but the conclusion is not justified. The
name, instead of being earlier, is really later, and is a witness, not to
the origin, but to the success and rapid popularity of his novel. No one
has ever yet produced a written passage or any ancient testimony to prove
the existence of the name before Rabelais. To place such a tradition on a
sure basis, positive traces must be forthcoming; and they cannot be adduced
even for the most celebrated of these monuments, since he mentions himself
the great menhir near Poitiers, which he christened by the name of
Passelourdin. That there is something in the theory is possible. Perrault
found the subjects of his stories in the tales told by mothers and nurses.
He fixed them finally by writing them down. Floating about vaguely as they
were, he seized them, worked them up, gave them shape, and yet of scarcely
any of them is there to be found before his time a single trace. So we
must resign ourselves to know just as little of what Gargantua and
Pantagruel were before the sixteenth century.

In a book of a contemporary of Rabelais, the Legende de Pierre Faifeu by
the Angevin, Charles de Bourdigne, the first edition of which dates from
1526 and the second 1531--both so rare and so forgotten that the work is
only known since the eighteenth century by the reprint of Custelier--in the
introductory ballad which recommends this book to readers, occur these
lines in the list of popular books which Faifeu would desire to replace:

'Laissez ester Caillette le folastre,
Les quatre filz Aymon vestuz de bleu,
Gargantua qui a cheveux de plastre.'

He has not 'cheveux de plastre' in Rabelais. If the rhyme had not
suggested the phrase--and the exigencies of the strict form of the ballade