And now a few words as to the history and design of the following work. When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the late Mr. W.J. Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation, promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham," furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was peculiarly qualified to perform. As time passed on, however, the infirmities of old age doubtless rendered the purposed work less and less attractive to him, and his death, after a long, useful, and honourable career, left it still undone. What particular plan he had sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt that had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And, since he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of comparative folk-lore.
More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is displaced by a more worthy one.
Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840, with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps); and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the "Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882).
It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand, was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be found in the chapters entitled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they form, indeed, but a small portion.
My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources, many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers, the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was assisted by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary," and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons.
W.A.C.
*.* While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was passing through the press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has had unavoidably to defer its publication till now.
W.A.C.
GLASGOW, March, 1888.