In those older, simpler days, when reading was a rare accomplishment,
our many times great-grandparents would gather round the blazing fire of
kitchen or hall on the long, dark winter nights and pass away the hours
before bedtime in conversation and story-telling.
The old stories were told again and again. The children learned
them in their earliest years and passed them on to their children and
grandchildren in turn. And, as is natural, in all this telling the
stories changed little by little. New and more familiar characters were
introduced, or a story-teller with more vivid imagination than his
fellows would add a bit here and there to make a better tale of it.
But in origin most of these old legends date from the very dawn of
our history. In a primitive form they were probably told round the
camp-fires of that British army that went out to face invading Caesar.
Then with the spread of education they began to die. When many folk
could read and books grew cheap there was no longer the need to call
upon memory for the old-fashioned romances.
Yet there have always been those who loved the old tales best, and they
wrote them down before it was too late, so that they might be preserved
for ever. A few of them are retold briefly here.
All people should like the old stories; all nice people do. To them I
commend these tales of Legend Land, in the hope that they may grow to
love them and the countries about which they are written.