Preface to Fourth Edition
The welcome given to this story has cheered and touched me, but I am conscious that to win a reception so warm, such a book must have had readers who brought to it as much as they took away. To put oneself in a position of sympathy with incidents so rugged, passions so elementary, and thoughts so simple, required some effort in an age of various intellectual interests and complex social life. I have encountered only one exception to this attitude of acquiescence, and that has come from an Iceland friend, who, with many cordial expressions, objects to the classification of this story as a Saga, on the ground that it is not an historical romance. The Icelandic Sagas are historical, mythical, heroical, and chiefly based on ancient poetry. Some of them are of the nature of histories, others are founded on tradition, and a few are pure fictions. All of them are distinguished by an epical method of narration, from the romances of a later period which are rhetorical and of modern times which are dramatic. So I have called my story a Saga, merely because it follows the epic method, and I must not claim for it at any point the weighty responsibility of history, or serious obligations to the world of fact. But it matters not to me what Icelanders may call The Bondman, if they will honour me by reading it in the open-hearted spirit and with the free mind in which they are content to read of Grettir and of his fights with the Troll. I can ask no more and no better than this from any Icelander or any Manxman, and I offer my thanks for the cheerfulness with which many of both countries have accepted me in the humble character which is the only one I have dared to assume—that of the teller of a simple story.
H. C.
