Excerpt from Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry, Vol. 1 of 2 In former times, and within my own remembrance, old men wandered from house to house, chanting ballads, re citing portions of the old romances, and curious stories of real or fictitious adventure. I have listened to these oral novelists at our farmers' hearths, when they pleased many an audience, and, like the minstrel of 01 won their food and their raiment, of which they were worthy. The stories were varied, according to the taste or talent of the reciter: every year brought a change in the plot or the succession. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.