at from Rastell's press, and the one licensed to Walley,[1] if not
printed by him, is not at all improbable. The _C. Mery Talys_ were
subsequently and successively the property of Sampson Awdley and John
Charlwood, to the latter of whom they were licensed on the 15th January,
1582. All trace of editions by Walley, Awdley, or Charlwood, has
disappeared, although doubtless all three printed the work.

Of the MERY TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERES, which forms the second portion of
the present volume, only two impressions are known. One of these,
supposed to be the original, was printed by Thomas Berthelet, without
date (about 1535), in 4to.; it contains 114 anecdotes. The other, from
the press of Henry Wykes, bears the date 1567, and is in the duodecimo
form; it produces with tolerable exactness the text of Berthelet, and
has twenty-six new stories. Besides these, at least one other impression
formerly existed: for, in 1576-7, Henry Bynneman paid to the Stationers'
Company fourpence "and a copie" for "a booke entituled mery tales,
wittye questions, and quycke answers."[2] No copy of Bynneman's edition
has hitherto been discovered; a copy of that of 1567 was in the Harleian
library. At the sale of the White-Knights collection in 1819, Mr. George
Daniel of Canonbury gave nineteen guineas for the exemplar of
Berthelet's undated 4to, which had previously been in the Roxburghe
library, and which at the dispersion of the latter in 1812, had fetched
the moderate sum of 5_l._ 15_s._ 6_d._

The reader who is conversant with this class of literature will easily
recognise in the following pages many stories familiar to him either in
the same, or in very slightly different, shapes; a few, which form part
of the _Mery Tales and Quick Answers_, were included in a collection
published many years since under the title of _Tales of the Minstrels_.
No. 42 of the _Mery Tales and Quick Answers_ was perhaps at one time
rather popular as a theme for a joke. There is an Elizabethan ballad
commencing, "ty the mare, tom-boy, ty the mare," by William Keth, which
the editor thought, before he had had an opportunity of examining it,
might be on the same subject; but he finds that it has nothing whatever
to do with the matter.[3] It may also be noticed that the story related
of the king who, to revenge himself on God, forbade His name to be
mentioned, or His worship to be celebrated throughout his dominions, is
said by Montaigne, in one of his essays, to hav