[Footnote 3: Alluding to the Duchess of Somerset's red hair.] [Footnote 4: Anna Regina.] [Footnote 5: Lady Masham.] [Footnote 6: Lady Masham's maiden name.] D. JARDINE. FOLK LORE. The pages of "N. & Q." have given the most varied and valuable contributions to the "folk lore" of Britain; your contributors have unquestionably saved many a scrap from oblivion, illustrated many an obscure allusion, recorded many an old custom, and generally, by the interesting nature of their notes (throwing, as they do, the newest and strongest light on the darkest and most out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the house and field life, and general turn of thought of the great mass of the people), paved the way for a higher estimate being formed by literary men, and the general reading public, of the real worth and present available use of this hitherto despised branch of inquiry; and stimulating to some extended and systematic garnering-up of those precious fragments that still exist in unguessed abundance (sown broad-cast, as they are, from Land's End to John o'Groat's), though fast perishing. I am confident that there is no county or district in Great Britain that would not yield, to a careful, diligent, and qualified seeker, a rich and valuable harvest; and where quaint memorials of the people might not be unearthed, to be gathered together and stored up, ready to the moulding hand of some coming Macaulay, who may there find illustrations to make clear, and clues to guide the searcher in the darkest and most entangled mazes of history. Pardon, sir, for this most prosy and long-winded preface. I have been induced to address you by observing what is being done in other countries, by a desire to point out an example, and stimulate to its emulation that able and tried body of inquirers in this country, who, for love of the subject, have _already_ collected such valuable stores. In the _Morning Chronicle_ of Monday, the 23rd of February, 1852 (No. 26,571. p. 6.), under the heading _Denmark_, is the following:--