LEGENDS AND ROMANCES ILLUSTRATING SHAKESPEARE AND OTHER EARLY ENGLISH WRITERS TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED TWO PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS 1. On Pigmies 2. On Fairies BY JOSEPH RITSON LONDON FRANK & WILLIAM KERSLAKE, BOOKSELLERS ROW 1875 THE subject of Fairy Mythology is one which of late years has attracted a good deal of attention both here and on the Continent. German scholarship has added much to our knowledge of this peculiarly interesting branch of folk-lore, and their labours have, in some cases, found English translators. A recent writer in the Quarterly Review was, I believe, the first to put in print, what many must have felt, that, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," the fairies were the most important persons of the drama. Two scarce books are here amalgamated, and made accessible to the student. Ritson's Fairy Tales, 1831, contains matter not in Halliwell's |