have the correctness of many in my own collection confirmed by so reliable an authority. Without the assistance which this gentleman has given, the West Cornwall stories would. not have possessed the interest which will be found to belong to them. One word on the subject of arrangement. In the First Series are arranged all such stories as appear to belong to the most ancient inhabitants of these islands. It is true that many of them, as they are now told, assume a mediæval, or even a modern character. This is the natural result of the passage of a tradition or myth from one generation to another. The customs of the age in which the story is told are interpolated-for the purpose of rendering them intelligible to the listeners-and thus they are constantly changing their exterior form. I am, however, disposed to believe that the spirit of all the romances included in this series, shews them to have originated before the Christian era. The romances of the Second Series belong certainly to the historic period, though the dates of many of them are exceedingly problematical. All the stories given in these volumes are the genuine. household tales of the people. The only liberties which have been taken with them, has been to alter them from the vernacular—in which they were for the most part related-into modern language. This applies to every romance but one. "The Mermaid's Vengeance" is a combination of three stories, having no doubt a common origin, but varying considerably in their details. They were too much alike to bear repeating; consequently it was thought best to throw them into one tale, which should preserve the peculiarities of all. This has been done with much care; and even the songs given pre serve lines which are said by the fishermen-from whom the stories were obtained-to have been sung by the mermaids. The traditions which are told, the superstitions which are spoken of, and the customs which are described in these volumes, may be regarded as true types of the ancient Cornish mythology, and genuine examples of the manners and customs of a people who will not readily deviate from the rules taught them by their fathers. Romances such as these have floated down to us as wreck upon the ocean. We gather a fragment here and a fragment there, and at length, it may be, we learn something of the name and character of the vessel when it was freighted with life, and obtain a shadowy image of the people who have perished. Hoping to have been successful in saving a few interesting fragments of the unwritten records of a peculiar race, my labours are submitted to the world. The pleasure of recalling the past has fully repaid me for the labour of arranging the Traditions of Old Cornwall. GOONLAZE HOUSE, ST AGNES, September 23, 1864. ROBERT HUNT. THE GIANTS. "Of Titan's monstrous race Only some few disturb'd that happy place. Raw hides they wore for clothes, their drink was bloo Rocks were their dining-rooms, their prey their food, Caverns their lodging, and their bed their grove, Their cup some hollow trunk." -Havilan's "Architrenium," translated in Gough's POPULAR ROMANCES OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND. THE AGE OF THE GIANTS. "Eald enta geweorc Idlu stodon."-The Wanderer. Exeter Book. "The old works of giants Stood desolate."-THOMAS WRIGHT. N wandering over some of the uncultivated tracts which still maintain their wildness, austerely and sullenly, against the march of cultivation, we are certain of finding rude masses of rock which have some relation to the giants. The giant's hand, or the giant's chair, or, it may be, the giant's punch-bowl, excites your curiosity. What were the mental peculiarities of the people who fixed so permanently those names on fantastic rockmasses? What are the conditions-mental or otherwise necessary for the preservation of these ideas? are questions which I have often asked myself when wandering amidst the Tors of Dartmoor, and when seated upon the granite masses which spread themselves so strangely, yet so picturesquely, over Carn Brea and other rocky hills in Cornwall. When questions of this kind are continually recurring, the mind |