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 PREFACE

TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.

Translators were first induced to compile this little work by the eager relish with which a few of the tales were received by the young friends to whom they were narrated. In this feeling, however, the Translators do not hesitate to avow their own participation. Popular fictions and traditions are somewhat gone out of fashion ; yet most will own them to be associated with the brightest recollections of their youth. They are, like the Christmas Pantomime, ostensibly brought forth to tickle the palate of the young, but are often received with as keen an appetite by those of graver years.

There is, at least, a debt of gratitude due to these ancient friends and comforters. To follow tl^e words of the author, from whom the motto in the title-page is selected, " They have been the revivers of drowzy age at midnight ; old and young have with such tales chimed mattins till the cock crew in the morning*; batchelors and maides have compassed the Christmas fire-block till the curfew bell rang candle out ; the old shepheard and the young plow-boy after their daye's labor, have carold out the same to make them merrye with ; and who but they have made long nightes seem short, and heavy toyles easie f*

But the amusement of the hour was not the translators' only object The rich collection from which the following tales are selected, is very interesting in a literary point of view, as affording a new proof of the wide and early diffiision of these gay creations of the imagina- tion, apparently flowing from some great and mysterious fountain head, whence Calmuck, Russian, Celt^ Scandinavian, and German,- in