Riquet with a Tuft

from the French Riquet à la Houppe, by Charles Perrault, borrowed from The Nights of Straparola, and imitated by Madame Villeneuve in her Beauty and the Beast. Riquet is the beau-ideal of ugliness, but had the power of endowing the person he loved best with wit and intelligence. He falls in love with a beautiful woman as stupid as Riquet is ugly, but possessing the power of endowing the person she loves best with beauty. The two marry and exchange gifts.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.