Page:Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript. Ballads and Romances.djvu/29



THE PREFACE, and the General Introduction by Mr. Hales, will appear with the Glossary and Indexes, after the whole MS. is printed.

The Introductions in this volume are all by Mr. Hales, except that to Mary Aumbree—which is reprinted from Percy's Reliques and those to Merline and King Arthur's Death, with that on " Arthur," which are by Mr. Furnivall. To the " Arthur " is prefixed a valuable statement of the evidence for that hero's historic existence, for which the Editors are indebted to Mr. C. H. Pearson, Fellow of Oriel, author of The Early and Middle Ages of England. The Introductions are intended to afford a reader coming fresh to each poem such information about it as he would wish to get together for himself in order to understand the belongings of it.

The text of the poems has been left as it stands in the MS., with the exception of 1. the few corrections marked by [ ], or noticed in the notes signed F., and 2. the expansions of contractions in italics. The Editors resolved at first, without any hesitation, not to attempt to make the best text possible out of