You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to giveyourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in theland of Fancy; you who think that life hath nought to do with innocentlaughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you. Clap to theleaves and go no farther than this, for I tell you plainly that if yougo farther you will be scandalized by seeing good, sober folks of realhistory so frisk and caper in gay colors and motley that you wouldnot know them but for the names tagged to them. Here is a stout, lustyfellow with a quick temper, yet none so ill for all that, who goes bythe name of Henry II. Here is a fair, gentle lady before whom all theothers bow and call her Queen Eleanor. Here is a fat rogue of a fellow,dressed up in rich robes of a clerical kind, that all the good folk callmy Lord Bishop of Hereford. Here is a certain fellow with a sour temperand a grim look—the worshipful, the Sheriff of Nottingham. And here,above all, is a great, tall, merry fellow that roams the greenwood andjoins in homely sports, and sits beside the Sheriff at merry feast,which same beareth the name of the proudest of the Plantagenets—Richardof the Lion's Heart. Beside these are a whole host of knights, priests,nobles, burghers, yeomen, pages, ladies, lasses, landlords, beggars,peddlers, and what not, all living the merriest of merry lives, and allbound by nothing but a few odd strands of certain old ballads (snippedand clipped and tied together again in a score of knots) which drawthese jocund fellows here and there, singing as they go.
Here you will find a hundred dull, sober, jogging places, all trickedout with flowers and what not, till no one would know them in theirfanciful dress. And here is a country bearing a well-known name, whereinno chill mists press upon our spirits, and no rain falls but what rollsoff our backs like April showers off the backs of sleek drakes; whereflowers bloom forever and birds are always singing; where every fellowhath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale and beer and wine(such as muddle no wits) flow like water in a brook.
This country is not Fairyland. What is it? 'Tis the land of Fancy, andis of that pleasant kind that, when you tire of it—whisk!—you clapthe leaves of this book together and 'tis gone, and you are ready foreveryday life, with no harm done.
And now I lift the curtain that hangs between here and No-man's-land.Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand.