Stories originally told about the French (5)
I believe the answer is:
tales
'stories' is the definition.
('tale' can be a synonym of 'story')
'originally told about the french' is the wordplay.
'originally' suggests taking the first letters.
'the french' becomes 'les' (plural form of 'the' in French).
The initial letters of 'told about' is 'ta'.
'ta'+'les'='TALES'
(Other definitions for tales that I've seen before include "Stale kind of stories" , "provided for defective juries" , "Lies" , "Relations" , "Stories, yarns" .)