Riquet with the Tuft
French literary fairy tale
"Riquet with the Tuft" (French: Riquet à la houppe), also known as "Ricky of the Tuft", is a French literary fairy tale first published by Catherine Bernard in 1696 in Ines de Cordoue. The more famous version is that of Charles Perrault in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.
Name
Three possible explanations of the name Riquet exist:
Perrault mischievously refers to the Riquetti family, whose name was Frenchified as Riquet. Pierre-Paul Riquet, protege of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, was the promoter of the Royal Canal in Languedoc.
Catherine Bernard, author of an earlier version which inspired Perrault, was from Normandy. Émile Littré, in his article “Riquet à la Houppe”, specifies: “Etymology: it is said that in Norman, riquet means counterfeit, hunchback”.
This nickname can also be interpreted as the diminutive of Henriquet, little Henri.
Plot
In the version by Charles Perrault, a fairy grants an ugly prince named Riquet (Ricky) the gift of intelligence and the ability to confer wit upon the one he loves the most. At birth, Prince Riquet has a small patch of hair on his head, leading to his nickname “of the tuft”.
Several years after Prince Riquet’s birth, a queen in a neighbouring kingdom gives birth to twin daughters.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Riquet with the Tuft” as french literary fairy tale. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as french literary fairy tale. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2436441. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1696 and 1697.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Riquet with the Tuft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.