Our nursery legends and popular superstitions are fast becoming matters of history, except in the more remote and secluded portions of the country. The age of the steam engine, and the electric battery, and the many other practical adaptations of the triumphs of physical science, is apparently not the one in which such "waifs and strays" from the mythical lore of the dim and distant Past are very likely to be much sought after or honoured. But now that the light of modern investigation, and especially that ray furnished by recent discoveries in philological science, has been directed towards their deeper and more hidden mysteries, profound philosophical historians have begun to discover that from this apparently desolate literary region much reliable knowledge may be extracted, leading to conclusions of the most interesting and important kind, with reference to the early history of our race. The labours of the brothers Grimm, Dr. Adalbert Kuhn, Professor Max MÜller, the Rev. G. W. Cox, and others, have recently received considerable attention from philosophic enquirers into the origin and early development of the people from whom nearly all of the European, and some of the Asiatic, modern nationalities have sprung.

It is found that many of these imperfect, and sometimes grotesque, traditions, legends, and superstitions are, in reality, not the "despicable rubbish" which the "learned" have been in the habit of regarding them, but rather the crude ore, which, when skilfully smelted down, yields, abundantly, pure metal well worthy of the literary hammer of the most profound student in general history, ethnology, or the phenomena attendant upon psychological development.

Professor Henry Morley, in the chapter on Ethnology, in his "English Writers," after noticing "how immediately and easily particular words, common in their application, would become available for common use," and "how often images of the seen would become symbols of the unseen," truly says, "The world about us is not simply mirrored, but informed with a true soul, by all the tongues that syllable man's knowledge and his wants. The subtlest harmonies of life and nature may lie hidden in the very letters of the alphabet."

The subject has been but recently introduced, in a thoroughly popular form, to the English reader. Dasent's "Popular Tales from the Norse," and occasional papers by local writers, intensified and extended the interest taken in this species of research. The publication, in 1863, by Mr. Walter K. Kelly, of his "Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-Lore," however, may be said to have given a still greater impetus to popular investigation in this direction. This is largely to be attributed to the fact that he has summarised in a very pleasing manner much of the abstruse learning of the German philologists and mythologists to whom reference has already been made.

Whilst contemplating the publication of some "Supplementary Notes to the History of Preston and its Environs," the early chapters of which, of course, would necessarily deal with what is termed the "pre-historic period," Mr. Kelly's work came into my hands. I was induced to considerably enlarge my plan, in consequence of the value I immediately placed upon its contents, and of the suggestion in the following paragraph, which appears in its preface:

"In not a few instances I have been able to illustrate Dr. Kuhn's principles by examples of the folk-lore of Great Britain and Ireland, and would gladly have done so more copiously had matter for the purpose been more accessible. My efforts in that direction have made me painfully aware how much we are behind the Germans, not only as to our insight into the meaning of such relics of the past, but also as to our industry in collecting them. The latter defect is indeed a natural consequence of the former, and it is to be hoped that our local archÆologists will no longer be content to labour under either of them when once they have found what far-reaching knowledge may be extracted out of old wives' tales and notions. Only four years ago the editor of 'Notes and Queries' spoke hypothetically (in the preface to 'Choice Notes') of a time to come when the study of folk-lore (he was I believe the inventor of that very expressive and sterling word) should have risen from a pleasant pastime to the rank of a science. Already his anticipation has been realised, and henceforth every careful collector of a novel scrap of folk-lore, or of even a well-marked variety of an old type, may entertain a reasonable hope that he has in some degree subserved the purposes of the ethnologist and the philosophical historian."

In 1865-6 I published a series of the "Supplementary Notes" referred to, in the Preston Guardian newspaper. The general favour with which they were received, and the increasing interest I felt in the subject, induced me to continue my researches, with the view to the ultimate publication of the present volume. The original papers, as well as other essays afterwards published elsewhere, have not only been carefully revised, and, in some instances, rearranged, but the quantity of new matter added in each chapter is such as to render the work in every respect much more complete, and more worthy of being regarded as having, in some small degree, "subserved the purposes of the ethnologist and the philosophical historian." I would gladly persuade myself that I have, at least, rendered what many regard as frivolous, and others as very abstruse and very "dry reading," interesting, attractive, and instructive to the general reader. If I succeed in this respect, my chief object will have been accomplished.

The various authorities relied upon or quoted are sufficiently indicated in the body of the work to render a catalogue of them here unnecessary. I may add, however, that the principal portions of the papers contributed by my friend, Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, F.R.A.S., to the "Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society," have since been incorporated with a portion of the collection of the late Mr. Jno. Harland, F.S.A., and published in a volume by F. Warne and Co., entitled "Lancashire Folk Lore."

74, Halston Street, Hulme,
Manchester, April, 1872.