Volume Four brings Legend Land nearer to the great centres of modern
life. It comprises some of the old stories told of districts within
easy reach of such busy cities as London, Birmingham and Bristol.
In it you will find historic and pre-historic romance mingled. Some of
its tales are as old as any in our land, tales born of the very ancient
belief that saw in “Druid” stones a human origin. Other stories are
romances of much later date, of events almost within the memory of our
great-grandparents’ great-grandparents.
Here you will find two legends that come from Shakespeare’s land,
legends that must have been well known to that great lover and teller
of old tales. And in the legend of Herne the Hunter you will recognise
a story which Shakespeare himself told in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
And it was probably an old tale when he repeated it.
In “King Arthur’s Camelot” you meet with a very old legend of that
great hero of British historical romance; and in the story of “Wayland
Smith” you get an echo of the lore of the old Pagan gods which invading
Anglo-Saxon tribes brought to England soon after the Romans left it.
Manners and customs change; the old creeds die as the new ones arise,
yet--and it is very wonderful to realize it--some of the old stories
have survived every phase of the passing centuries’ intolerance of the
past, and are told to-day in a form not so very different from that in
which they were first narrated by our semi-savage ancestors, over their
camp fires in the heart of primeval English forests.
But civilization is “improving” away romance very rapidly. And it is
worth while to hang on fast to the last remaining shreds of those
other days when life, though ruder, had more time for simple dreams of
wonderful things.