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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.
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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,
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I would gladly persuade myself that I have, at least, rendered what many regard as frivolous, and others as very abstruse and very
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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
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Lancashire Folk Lore.