A comic or farcical composition, from the noun 'a funny or waggish fellow.' Our use of droll as an adjective means 'intentionally facetious, amusing,' and as a verb 'to jest.' In Cornwall, a droll-teller can be considered a modern version of a Welsh bard. Droll-tellers wandered from village to village trading telling of standard stories around a blazing hearth for his meals and lodging for the evening. The droll-teller relied on his prodigious memory as did the Welsh bards. Often, the listeners knew the tales just as well, so improvisation was undertaken by the droll with caution. The droll, like the tinker, brought news from outside the parish; but his tools were his memory of hundreds of stories and his mouth to tell them, plus a dash of theater to really bring it off.