Recitation with dramatic energy by men whose business it was to travel from one great house to another and delight the people by the way, was usual among us from the first. The scop invented and the glee-man recited heroic legends and other tales to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. These were followed by the minstrels and other tellers of tales written for the people. They frequented fairs and merrymakings, spreading the knowledge not only of tales in prose or ballad form, but of appeals also to public sympathy from social reformers.
    As late as the year 1822, Allan Cunningham, in publishing a collection of "Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry," spoke from his own recollection of itinerant story-tellers who were welcomed in the houses of the peasantry and earned a living by their craft.