The bulk of the collection has been made by myself, greatly through the kindness of many correspondents, to whom I cannot be sufficiently grateful. In every case I have acknowledged my indebtedness, which, besides being an act of justice, is a guarantee of the genuineness of the collection. I have appended to this preface a list of the collectors, together with the counties to which the games belong; but I must particularly thank the Rev. W. Gregor, Mr. S. O. Addy, and Miss Fowler, who very generously placed collections at my disposal, which had been prepared before they knew of my project; also Miss Burne, Miss L. E. Broadwood, and others, for kindly obtaining variants and tunes I should not otherwise have received. To the many versions now printed for the first time I have added either a complete transcript of, where necessary, or a reference to, where that was sufficient, printed versions of games to be found in the well-known collections of Halliwell and Chambers, the publications of the Folk-lore and Dialect Societies, Jamieson’s, Nares’, and Halliwell’s Dictionaries, and other printed sources of information. When quoting from a printed authority, I have as far as possible given the exact words, and have always given the reference. I had hoped to have covered in my collection the whole field of games as played by children in the United Kingdom, but it will be seen that many counties in each country are still unrepresented; and I shall be greatly indebted for any games from other places, which would help to make this collection more complete. The tunes of the games have been taken down, as sung by the children, either by myself or correspondents (except where otherwise stated), and are unaltered.