When a small impression of these quaint old books issued from the Chiswick Press, many years ago, under the auspices of the late Mr. S. W. Singer, that gentleman merely designed the copies struck off for presentation to a select circle of literary friends who, like himself, felt a warm interest in every relic of the past which helped to illustrate Shakespeare and ancient English manners. He did not consequently feel under the necessity of furnishing notes, and he preserved not only the old orthography, but the old punctuation, and the most palpable errors of the press. His edition unfortunately laboured under one disadvantage: when he printed, in 1814, the Mery Tales and Quick Answers from Berthelet's edition, he imagined that this was the book to which Beatrice is made to allude in Much Ado About Nothing, and under this idea he christened the volume Shakespeare's Jest Book. He also thought he was safe in assuming that the edition by Berthelet was the only one extant. But Mr. Singer discovered, before his undertaking was a year old, that he had come to an erroneous conclusion on both these points: for an impression of the Mery Tales, &c. printed by Henry Wykes in 1567, and containing, with all the old matter, twenty-six additional stories, was brought under his notice, and about the same time a totally unknown work, bearing the very title mentioned by Beatrice, was accidentally rescued from oblivion by the Rev. J. J. Conybeare, who, it is said by Dunlop, picked up the treasure at a bookstall. This was no other than A C. Mery Talys.

The copy of C. Mery Talys thus casually brought to light, had been used by a binder of or about the time of its appearance as pasteboard to another book, and it was in this state when it fell in the way of Mr. Conybeare. As might have been expected, many of the leaves were damaged and mutilated; but (which rendered the matter still more curious) it happily chanced that more than one copy had been employed by the aforesaid binder in fashioning the aforesaid pasteboard, and the consequence was that a much larger fragment than would have been otherwise saved was formed by means of duplicate leaves. Still several gaps in the text remained, which it was found impossible to fill up, and as no other copy has since occurred, no better means exist now than existed fifty years ago of supplying the deficiencies. Where the hiatus consisted of a word or two only, and the missing portion could be furnished by conjecture, Mr. Singer took the liberty of adding what seemed to be wanting, in italics; his interpolations have been left as they stood. The old orthography and language, besides the charm of quaintness, appeared to the editor to possess a certain philological value, and he has rigidly adhered to it. In respect to the punctuation, the case was different; there were no reasons of any kind for its retention; it was very imperfect and capricious; and it has therefore been modernized throughout.

The C. Mery Talys, of which the copy above described has a fair pretention to the distinction of uniqueness, were first printed by John Rastell, without date but circa 1525, in folio, 24 leaves. Whether Rastell printed more than one edition is an open question. The book was not reprinted, so far as we know at present, till 1558, when John Walley or Waley paid two shillings to the Stationers' Company for his licence to produce this and other pieces. Walley reprinted a great number of books which had originally come from the press of Wynkyn de Worde and other early masters of the art, but it is not very likely that the C. Mery Talys made their appearance prior to 1525, and there is room to doubt whether even then the severe reflections on the scandalous lives of the Roman Catholic priesthood were not slightly premature. The almost total destruction of copies may be, after all, due, not to the excessive popularity of the publication, but to its early suppression by authority or otherwise. After the triumph of the Reformation, and until the death of Edward VI. however, although these tales still remained as unpalatable as ever to a certain party, there was nothing to hinder their circulation, and that there were intermediate impressions between that from Rastell's press, and the one licensed to Walley,[1] if not printed by him, is not at all improbable. The C. Mery Talys were subsequently and successively the property of Sampson Awdley and John Charlwood, to the latter of whom they were licensed on the 15th January, 1582. All trace of editions by Walley, Awdley, or Charlwood, has disappeared, although doubtless all three printed the work.

Of the Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres, which forms the second portion of the present volume, only two impressions are known. One of these, supposed to be the original, was printed by Thomas Berthelet, without date (about 1535), in 4to.; it contains 114 anecdotes. The other, from the press of Henry Wykes, bears the date 1567, and is in the duodecimo form; it produces with tolerable exactness the text of Berthelet, and has twenty-six new stories. Besides these, at least one other impression formerly existed: for, in 1576-7, Henry Bynneman paid to the Stationers' Company fourpence "and a copie" for "a booke entituled mery tales, wittye questions, and quycke answers."[2] No copy of Bynneman's edition has hitherto been discovered; a copy of that of 1567 was in the Harleian library. At the sale of the White-Knights collection in 1819, Mr. George Daniel of Canonbury gave nineteen guineas for the exemplar of Berthelet's undated 4to, which had previously been in the Roxburghe library, and which at the dispersion of the latter in 1812, had fetched the moderate sum of 5l. 15s. 6d.

The reader who is conversant with this class of literature will easily recognise in the following pages many stories familiar to him either in the same, or in very slightly different, shapes; a few, which form part of the Mery Tales and Quick Answers, were included in a collection published many years since under the title of Tales of the Minstrels. No. 42 of the Mery Tales and Quick Answers was perhaps at one time rather popular as a theme for a joke. There is an Elizabethan ballad commencing, "ty the mare, tom-boy, ty the mare," by William Keth, which the editor thought, before he had had an opportunity of examining it, might be on the same subject; but he finds that it has nothing whatever to do with the matter.[3] It may also be noticed that the story related of the king who, to revenge himself on God, forbade His name to be mentioned, or His worship to be celebrated throughout his dominions, is said by Montaigne, in one of his essays, to have been current in his part of France, when he was a boy. The king was Alfonso xi of Castile. No. 68 of A C. Mery Talys, "Of the Friar that stole the Pudding," is merely an abridgment of the same story, which occurs in Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie, where it is told of the "Vickar of Bergamo." Many of the jests in these two pamphlets are also to be found in Scoggins Jests, licensed in 1565; a few occur in the Philosopher's Banquet, 1614; and one—that where the lady ties a string to her toe as a signal to her lover—is repeated at greater length in the "Cobler of Canterbury," edit. 1608, where it is called "the old wives' tale." It would be a curious point to ascertain whether the anecdotes common to these collections and to "Scoggin's Jests," do not refer to the same person; and whether Scoggin is not in fact the hero of many of the pranks attributed to the "Scholar of Oxford," the "Youngman," the "Gentleman," &c. in the following pages, which were in existence many years before the first publication of Scoggins Jests. It will hardly be contested at the present day, that "books of the people,"[4] like these now reprinted, with all their occasional coarseness and frequent dulness, are of extreme and peculiar value, as illustrations of early manners and habits of thought.

The editor has ventured to make certain emendations of the text, where they were absolutely necessary to make it intelligible; but these are always carefully noted at the foot of the page where they occur. A word or two, here and there, has been introduced between brackets to complete the sense; and a few notes have been given, since it was thought desirable to point out where a tale was common to several collections in various shapes or in the same shape, to indicate the source from which it was derived, and to elucidate obscure phrases or passages. But he has refrained from overloading the book with comment, from a feeling that, in the majority of cases, the class of readers, to which a publication such as this addresses itself, are fully as competent to clear up any apparent difficulties which may fall in their way, as himself.

The allusions to the C. Mery Talys and to its companion in old writers are sufficiently numerous.[5]

Bathe, in his Introduction to the Art of Musick, 1584, says: "But for the worthiness I thought it not to be doubted, seeing here are set forth a booke of a hundred mery tales, another of the bataile between the spider and the flie, &c." A few years later, Sir John Harington, in his Apologie(for the Metamorphosis of Ajax) 1596, writes: "Ralph Horsey, Knight, the best housekeeper in Dorsetshire, a good freeholder, a deputie Lieutenant. Oh, sir, you keep hauks and houndes, and hunting horses: it may be som madde fellowe will say, you must stand up to the chinne, for spending five hundred poundes, to catch hares, and Partridges, that might be taken for five poundes." Then comes this note in the margin: "according to the tale in the hundred Mery Tales." It is No. 57. In the Epilogue to the play of Wily Beguild, printed in 1606, but written during the reign of Elizabeth, there is a passage in which the C. Mery Talys are coupled with Scoggins Jests, and in his Wonderful yeare, 1603, Decker says: "I could fill a large volume, and call it the second part of the Hundred Merry Tales, only with such ridiculous stuff as this of the justice." From this extract, first quoted by Mr. Collier in his valuable History of the Drama, and from the manner in which Shakespeare, through the mouth of Beatrice, speaks of the Mery Talys, it is to be gathered that neither writer held this book of jests in very high estimation; and, as no vestiges are traceable of an edition of the work subsequent to 1582, it is possible that about that time the title had grown too stale to please the less educated reader, and the work had fallen into disrepute in higher quarters. The stories themselves, in some shape or other, however, have been reproduced in every jest-book from the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration, while many of them multiply themselves even to the present day in the form of chap books.

A C. Mery Talys was one of the popular tracts described by the pedantic Laneham, in his Letter from Kenilworth, 1575, as being in the Library of Captain Cox, of Coventry.[6]