Only a few years before the advent of Ambrose Merton, it was the sorrowful lament of Picken that he could find no legendary lore among our English peasantry. The rapid progress of education, according to him, had long ago banished our household traditions. Want of acquaintance with the shy and reserved character of John Bull probably proved a stumbling-block to our collector, for what a rich harvest has been reaped since his day! Our mythic treasures, however, are far from being exhausted; and if we wish to emulate our brethren of Deutschland, we must do yet more. The popular tales and legends which abound among our rural population, are still for the most part ungarnered. The folk-tales of the sister kingdoms have been ably chronicled in the pages of Croker and Chambers, but our own have been almost entirely neglected. So much indeed is this the case, that we have had recourse to Germany in order to recruit our exhausted nursery literature; and readers of _all_ sizes devour with avidity the charming versions of the Messieurs Taylor, few of them suspecting that stories of like character form the sole imaginative lore of their uneducated countrymen. Some years ago while in the country I made a practice of noting down the more curious traditionary stories which came under my notice; and, with the kind permission of the Editor, will transfer a few portions of my researches to the columns of "N. & Q.," in the hope of inducing some of your rural correspondents to embark in a similar design. I am aware that certain antiquaries of the old _régime_ still entertain doubts as to the utility of these collections. As vestiges, however, of primitive fiction, they will interest the philosophical inquirer; while their value as contributions to ethnological and philological science has been recognised by all writers on the subject. Premising that these tales, however puerile, are not associated with any such idea by the people among whom they were gathered, permit me to introduce your readers to "Thoughtful Moll," in whom they will trace a remarkable resemblance to _Die kluge Else_ of Grimm. It is from Oxfordshire, and affords no bad specimen of the facetious class of fables which often enliven the winter's evening hearth-talk. I have endeavoured to preserve the narrators' style and dialect.