Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Reynard the Fox" in English language version.
The cunning fox is the main character of many European folktales about animals. [...] The plot of Russian folktales about a fox usually boils down to the fox duping everybody.
This is about the most renowned of all the German fables [...]. But though the story was [...] conveyed into France [...] there seems no doubt whatever that it is of German origin; and, according to probable conjecture, a certain Reinard of Lorraine, famous for his vulpine qualities in the ninth century, suggested the name to some unknown fabulist of the empire.
MR. JOSEPH JACOBS, in his learned introduction to The Most Delectable History of Reynard, the Fox, [1895] traces the literary origin of that world-renowned beast fable to the twelfth-century French versions, but, while admitting wholesale borrowing from Esop and other classical sources, points out that many incidents of the tale must have come from ancient northern folk-lore. [...] And, as the names of the characters [...] are of German origin, these folk-lore stories were most likely imported into France by the Germans. Mr. Jacobs would, in fact, localize the origin of the Reynard in Lorraine [...].
We shall content ourselves with extracting one passage from Grimm, important for the etymological grounds which it affords for supposing that stories of the Fox and Wolf were known to the Franks as early as the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.
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