Excerpt from The Magic Mantle: And Other Stories Part I. of this little romance is confessedly an elaboration of the incidents in the old ballad, The Boy and the Mantle. The author has, however, furnished a setting, chosen the time of the action, and made a few changes and additions, chief of which is the role assigned to Merlin, of whom the ballad makes mention whatever. In the metrical version the elfin boy is the central figure; in the present story Merlin is the protagonist. The elfin is but the servant of the magician, at whose instance he comes to aid in the performance of an imperative but disagreeable duty. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.