Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/11

 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

in which we live is remarkable, as in other points of view, so in this, that old habits and customs, old laws and sayings, old beliefs and superstitions, which have held their ground in the universal mind from the remotest antiquity, are fast fading away and perishing. We of the nineteenth century may congratulate ourselves on their disappearance; we may lament it, but the fact remains the same; and I for one will frankly acknowledge that I regret much which we are losing, that I would not have these vestiges of the past altogether effaced. It were pity that they should utterly pass away, and leave no trace behind. My heart as well as my imagination is too closely bound up with the sayings and doings which gave zest to the life of my forefathers, and so I became a Folk-Lore student before Folk-Lore came into vogue as a pursuit. And, as befitted a genuine North-countryman, my researches were chiefly made in the district between the Tweed and the Humber. Accordingly, when, on the 14th of May, 1861, I was called upon as President of the Durham Athenæum to deliver a lecture in my native city, I chose for my subject the Folk-Lore of that part of England, and through the kindness of a few friends, resident in the North, if not