Here are 77 story-telling ballads and narrative poems, that will make the heart beat faster and the pulse-bound. They offer a feast of good things - romances, hero-tales, fairy legends, and adventures of knights and lovely damsels. They sing of proud and wicked folk, of gentle and loyal ones, of laidley worms, witches, mermaids with golden combs, and maidens, glad ones and fearless lovers, moss-troopers, border-rievers, and kings in disguise. All their doings are related in the stirring, leaping, joyous - or tat times martial and mournful-ballad measure. The ancient ballads are here presented exactly as when in days of old they were sung by minstrels and recited by gaffers and gummers.