A second form of legend in France during the Middle Ages was epic poetry, partly historical and partly legend with themes covering the formation of France, war, kingship, and important battles.
This genre was known as chansons de geste which is Old French for "songs of heroic deeds."
It is also called the epics of the "Matter of France": Another folkloric medium in the Middle Ages were fables, mock epics and animal folk tales, notably: François Rabelais, 1494–1553, wrote: French fairy tales are particularly known by their literary rather than their folk, oral variants.
Perrault derived almost all his tales from folk sources, but rewrote them for the upper-class audience, removing rustic elements.
[1] Collection of folk tales as such only began about 1860, but was fruitful for the next decades.