Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest assertions which are only fables.  To these you will reply that I, your maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically.  You will say also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns the sixth and the seventh.  And you will add that the matter of the fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that was in youth Dame Philippa’s most dear associate.  For the rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me.

I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history.  Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of hell, the blood in these men was not all human.  These men might not tread equally with human beings:  their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor.  And the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and entitled The Red Cuckold, which composes the final portion of this history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this blood.

Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of your purchase-money.  To these you will reply, with Plutarch, Non mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium.  Secondly you will say that, of necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably when the resources of his shop amount to only a few