We encounter the story of _Floris and Blauncheflur_ earliest in France, and the French seem to have been the first to make the story a subject for poetic treatment. The story appears in French, besides in two songs celebrating episodes in this tale of true love, in two distinct versions. The earliest of these versions, which we may designate as I., had its origin, it seems, about 1160.[I-14] (Cf. F. Steinmeyer, H Z, xxi, 319.) Certain it is that a French version of #A# must have existed about 1170, to serve as a basis for one of the German (the low Rhenish) versions, Floyris und Blanscheflur. This French version, #I#, seems to represent fairly well the #A# general form of the story. As so often in the case of other romances, the _jongleurs_ tried to bring this foreign importation into the cycle of French story by connecting in bonds of kinship, its characters with the names celebrated in French epic. Blauncheflur is represented as being the mother of Bertha of the big foot, the wife of Pepin, father of Charlemagne.[I-15]
Du Méril (E. du Méril, Floire et Blancheflor, Paris, 1876) in discussing the interrelations of the two French versions, characterizes one as a version for a select public, “_version aristocratique_,” and the second as a version for the entertainment of the masses, “_version populaire_.” The French II. version, the “_version populaire_,” is, according to Herzog, p. 4, the result of a sort of fusion of the #A# and #B# general forms of the story,[I-16] with which have been woven in various episodes which elsewhere are not known to either general form of the story, #A# or #B#. Herzog further on continues (p. 11), “Ich halte dafür dass dieselbe (the OF. II. version) ebenfalls aus Italien nach Frankreich hinübergewandert ist, wo ihr Bearbeiter den Inhalt des zweiten Kreises mit dem ihm geläufigen ersten Kreise so verschmolzen hat, dass dieser einige nur dem zweiten Sagenkreise angehörige Züge ganz verdrängte.”
The general style and manner of handling the story is quite different in the two French versions. The “_version aristocratique_” preserves the traits of an oriental romance, and Floire is represented as a love-sick youth. “_Sans li ne puis jou pas aprendre_” he replies when his father proposes to educate him alone. There is hardly a more sentimental passage in literature than the one in I. (212-266) describing the school-days of the children: