Note 18 — INTRODUCTION

I hoped that the Campbell MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, might yield some further notes on these eight folk-tales; but a search, instituted in 1888 through the kindness of Mr. Clark, the librarian, proved ineffectual. Of all unlikely places in the world for a professional story-teller, London seems the unlikeliest; the heroine, it may be remembered, of Mr. Hardy’s Hand of Ethelberta prides herself on the absolute novelty of the notion. What is almost more surprising is that two folklorists like Campbell and Dasent should have struck so precious a vein, and not followed it up. Whatever the source of these stories, Gypsy, Irish, or English, they were distinctly valuable, and their value was enhanced by the meagreness forty years ago of the folk-tales collected in England.18 But it is quite possible that one or other of the two brothers may still be living (he need not be seventy). At least any folklorist could probably find this out at the Potteries, Notting Hill, on Mitcham Common, or in some other of the Gypsyries in or round London.