THE
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS

This Dover edition, first published in 1965, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, as follows:

This edition also contains as an appendix to Part X an essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled “Professor Child and the Ballad,” reprinted in toto from Vol. XXI, No. 4, 1906 [New Series Vol. XIV, No. 4] of the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.

Rev. Professor Skeat has done me the great service of collating Wynken de Worde’s text of The Gest of Robin Hood, the manuscript of Robin Hood and the Monk and of Robin Hood and the Potter, and all the Robin Hood broadsides in the Pepys collection. Mr Macmath has collated the fragments of the earlier copy of The Gest which are preserved in the Advocates’ Library, and, as always, has been most ready to respond to every call for aid. I would also gratefully acknowledge assistance received from Mr W. Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Rev. Edmund Venables, Precentor of Lincoln; Dr Furnivall; and, in America, from Mr W. W. Newell, Miss Perine and Mrs Dulany.

Mr Macmath has helped me in many ways in the preparation of this Sixth Part, and, as before, has been prodigal of time and pains. I am under particular obligations to Mr Robert Bruce Armstrong, of Edinburgh, for his communications concerning the ballad-folk of the Scottish border, and to Dr Wilhelm Wollner, of the University of Leipsic, and Mr George Lyman Kittredge, my colleague in Harvard College, for contributions (indicated by the initials of their names) which will be found in the Additions and Corrections. Dr Wollner will continue his services. Mr John Karłowicz, of Warsaw, purposes to review in ‘Wisła’ all the English ballads which have Polish affinities, and Professor Alexander Vesselofsky has allowed me to hope for his assistance; so that there is a gratifying prospect that the points of contact between the English and the Slavic popular ballads will in the end be amply brought out. Thanks are due and are proffered, for favors of various kinds, to Lieutenant-Colonel Lumsden, of London, Lieutenant-Colonel Prideaux, of Calcutta, Professor Skeat, Miss Isabel Florence Hapgood, Professor Vinogradof, of Moscow, Professor George Stephens, Mr Axel Olrik, of Copenhagen (to whom the completion of Svend Grundtvig’s great work has been entrusted), Mr James Barclay Murdoch, of Glasgow, Dr F. J. Furnivall, Professor C. R. Lanman, Mr P. Z. Round, and Mr W. W. Newell.

A. Percy Papers, Miss Fisher’s MS., No 5, 1780.

B. ‘Johnny Cock,’ Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, Bristol, 1814, [John Fry], p. 53.

C. ‘Johnny Cock,’ Pieces of Ancient Poetry, etc., p. 51.

D. ‘Johnie of Cockerslee,’ Kinloch’s annotated copy of his Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 38 bis.

E. ‘Johnie o Cocklesmuir,’ Kinloch MSS, VII, 29; Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 36.

F. ‘Johnie of Breadislee,’ Scott’s Minstrelsy, I, 59, 1802.

G. ‘Johnnie Brad,’ Harris MS., fol. 25.

H. ‘Johnnie o Cocklesmuir,’ Buchan’s MSS, I, 82; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 77, Percy Society, vol. xvii.

I. ‘Johnie of Braidisbank,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 23.

J. Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 181.

K. Finlay’s Scottish Ballads, I, xxxi: one stanza.

L. Harris MS., fol. 25 b: one stanza.

M. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, II, 335, New York, 1882, supplemented by Mrs Aitken: one stanza.

The first notice in print of this precious specimen of the unspoiled traditional ballad is in Ritson’s Scotish Song, 1794, I, xxxvi, note 25: the Rev. Mr Boyd, the translator of Dante, had a faint recollection of three ballads, one of which was called ‘Johny Cox.’ Before this, 1780, a lady of Carlisle had sent a copy to Doctor Percy, A. Scott, 1802, was the first to publish the ballad, selecting “the stanzas of greatest merit” from several copies which were in his hands. John Fry gave two valuable fragments, C, B (which he did not separate), in his Pieces of Ancient Poetry, 1814, from a manuscript “appearing to be the text-book of some illiterate drummer.”^[1] I have been able to add only three versions to those which were already before the world, A, D, G; and of these D is in part the same as E, previously printed by Kinloch.

Pinkerton, Select Scotish Ballads, II, xxxix, 1783, has preserved a stanza, which he assigns to a supposititious ballad of ‘Bertram the Archer:’^[2]

This stanza agrees with J 6, and with A 18, H 19 in part, and is very likely to belong here; but it might be a movable passage, or commonplace.

All the versions are in accord as to the primary points of the story. A gallant young fellow, who pays no regard to the game-laws, goes out, despite his mother’s entreaties, to ding the dun deer down. He kills a deer, and feasts himself and his dogs so freely on it that 2they all fall asleep. An old palmer, a silly auld, stane-auld carl, observes him, and carries word to seven foresters [fifteen B, three (?) C]. They beset Johnie and wound him; he kills all but one, and leaves that one, badly hurt, to carry tidings of the rest. Johnie sends a bird to his mother to bid her fetch him away, F 19, 20, cf. B 13; a bird warns his mother that Johnie tarries long, H 21 (one of Buchan’s parrots). The boy in A 20, 21 is evidently a corruption of bird. Information is given the mother in a different way in L. B-G must be adjudged to be incomplete; I-M are mere fragments. H has a false and silly conclusion, 22–24, in imitation of Robin Hood and of Adam Bell. Mrs Harris had heard another version besides G (of which she gives only one stanza, L), in which “Johnie is slain and thrown owre a milk-white steed; news is sent to Johnie’s mother, who flies to her son.” It is the one forester who is not quite killed that is thrown over his steed to carry tidings home, F 18, G 11. D 19, E 17, and Mrs Harris’s second version are, as to this point, evidently corrupted.

The hero’s name is Johnny Cock, B 2, C 1; Johny Cox, Rev. Mr Boyd; John o Cockis (Johny Cockis?), H 17; Johny o Cockley’s Well, A 14; o Cockerslee, D 14; of Cockielaw, in one of the versions used by Scott for F; o Cocklesmuir, E 13, H 15. Again, Johnie Brad, G 1, L; Johnie o Breadislee, F 14; Braidislee, J 2.

The hunting-ground, or the place where Johnie is discovered, is up in Braidhouplee, down in Bradyslee, A 6, high up in Bradyslee, low down in Bradyslee, A 12; Braidscaur Hill, D 6, Braidisbanks, D 12, I 1; Bride’s Braidmuir, H 2, 5; Broadspear Hill, E 2, 5; Durrisdeer only in F 4. The seven foresters are of Pickeram Side, A 3, 19; of Hislinton, F 9. B 1¹ reads, Fifteen foresters in the braid alow; which seems to require emendation, perhaps simply to Braid alow, perhaps to Braidislee.

With regard to the localities in A, Percy notes that Pickeram Side is in Northumbria, and that there is a Cockley Tower in Erringside, near Brady’s Cragg, and a Brady’s Cragg near Chollerford Bridge. There is a Cockley, alias Cocklaw, in Erringside, near Chollerton, in the south division of Tynedale Ward, parish of St John Lee. The Erring is a small stream which enters the Tyne between Chollerton and Chollerford. Again, Cocklaw Walls appears in the map of the Ordnance Survey, a little to the north and east of Cockley in Erringside, and Cocklaw Walls may represent the Cockley’s Well of the ballad. (Percy notes that Cockley’s Well is said to be near Bewcastle, Cumberland.) I have not found Brady’s Cragg or Pickeram Side in the Ordnance Survey maps, nor indeed any of the compounds of Braidy or Braid anywhere.

There is a Braid a little to the south of Edinburgh, Braid Hills and Braid Burn; and Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. 17, says that there is tradition for this region having been the hunting-ground.

Scott’s copy, F, lays the scene in Dumfriesshire, and there is other tradition to the same effect.^[3]

Percy was struck with the occurrence of the wolf in A 17, found also in B 10, C 5. He considered, no doubt, that the mention of the wolf was a token of the high antiquity of the ballad. “Wolues that wyryeth men, wommen and children” are spoken of in Piers Plowman, C, Passus, X, v. 226, Skeat, 1886, I, 240, and the C text is assigned to about 1393. Holinshed (1577), I, 378, says that though the island is void of wolves south of the Tweed, yet the Scots cannot boast the like, since they have grievous wolves.

F is translated by Schubart, p. 187; Wolff, 3Halle der Völker, I, 41, Hausschatz, p. 224; Doenniges, p. 10; Gerhard, p. 51; R. von Bismarck, Deutsches Museum, 1858, I, 897; Cesare Cantù, Documenti alla Storia Universale, V, 806; in Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1838, p. 127 b; by Loève-Veimars, p. 296. Grundtvig, p. 269, No 41, translates a compound of F, I, E (Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 36), and B; Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 18, a mixture of F and others.

A

Communicated to Percy by Miss Fisher, of Carlisle, 1780, No 5 of MS.

B

Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, Bristol, 1814, p. 53.

Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, Bristol, 1814, p. 51.

D

Kinloch’s annotated copy of his Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 38 bis: a West-Country version.

E

Kinloch’s MSS, VII, 29: from recitation in the North Country.

F

Scott’s Minstrelsy, I, 59, 1802; made up from several different copies. Nithsdale.

G

Harris MS., fol. 25: from Mrs Harris’s recitation.

H

Buchan’s MSS, I, 82; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 77, Percy Society, vol. xvii.

I

Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 23.

Chambers’s Scottish Ballads, p. 181, stanzas 13, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 26: from the recitation of a lady resident at Peebles.

K

Finlay’s Scottish Ballads, I, xxxi.

L

Harris MS., fol. 25 b.

M

Froude’s Life of Carlyle, 1795–1875, II, 335, New York, 1882, completed by a communication of Mr Macmath: as sung by Carlyle’s mother.

A.

‘The Seven Forsters at Pickeram Side’ is a title supplied by Percy.

6². I wun is added by Percy, at the end.

7³, 17³. one water.

15¹. Oh.

19⁴. bord words, or bood words.

B follows C in Fry without a break. Words distinguished by ’ ’ in B, C are emendations or additions of Fry. 4, 5 come between 12 and 13.

1¹. braid alow.

10¹. the word.

10⁵. would have.

11². hearted.

13³. bows.

4³. Out-shot.

D.

“There is a West-Country version of this ballad, under the title of Johnie of Cockerslee, 12differing very little from the present. The variations in the reading I have marked at their respective places.” Kinloch. Assuming that Kinloch has given all the variations (which include six entire stanzas), the West-Country version is reproduced by combining these readings with so much of the other copy, Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 38, as did not vary.

15³. Kinloch neglected to alter Cocklesmuir here.

E.

6³. lying is struck through, probably to improve the metre. Kinloch made two slight changes in printing.

H.

5¹. Mony ane. (?)

9¹. Johnnie lap: probably an error of the copyist.

9², 18². wound: cf. 20².

21⁴. bidding.

Dixon has changed stane-auld to silly-auld in 11¹, 12¹, 20³; Cockis to Cockl’s in 17⁴; and has Scotticised the spelling.

I.

Motherwell notes a stanza as wanting after 3, some stanzas as wanting after 4, 5.

J.

“The version of the ballad here given is partly copied from those printed in the Border Minstrelsy and in the publications of Messrs Kinloch and Motherwell, and is partly taken from the recitation of a lady resident at Peebles and from a manuscript copy submitted to me by Mr Kinloch. The twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-sixth, and twenty-seventh stanzas are here printed for the first time.” Chambers. The 14th stanza had been printed by Scott, F 12; the 23d, repeated here (6), by Pinkerton; the 27th is D 20. The first half of the 12th is D 13^1,2, and the remainder Chambers’s own: compare his 11 and F 11, from which it seems to have been made.

L.

“I have heard another version, where Johnnie is slain and thrown ‘owre a milk-white steed.’ News is sent to Johnnie’s mother, who flies to her son; But aye at ilka ae mile’s end, etc.”

M.

“While she [Carlyle’s mother] was at Craigenputtock, I made her train me to two song-tunes; and we often sang them together, and tried them often again in coming down into Annandale.” The last half of the stanza is cited. Letter of T. Carlyle, May 18, 1834, in Froude’s Life, 1795–1835, II, 335.

“Mrs Aitken, sister of T. Carlyle, sent me [January 15, 1884] the first two lines to complete the stanza of this Johny Cock, but can call up no more of the ballad.” Letter of Mr Macmath.

Sloane MS., 2593, fol. 14 b, British Museum.

Printed by Ritson, Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 48, and by Thomas Wright, Songs and Carols (selected from the Sloane MS.), No X, London, 1836, and again in his edition of the whole MS. for the Warton Club, 1856, p. 42. The manuscript is put at about 1450.

Wright remarks on the similarity of the name Gandelyn to Gamelyn in the tale assigned to the Cook in some manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, and on the resemblance of the tale of Gamelyn to Robin Hood story. But he could hardly have wished to give the impression that Robin in this ballad is Robin Hood. This he no more is than John in the ballad which precedes is Little John; though Gandelyn is as true to his master as Little 13John is, and is pronounced to be by the king, in ‘Robin Hood and the Monk.’ Ritson gave the ballad the title of ‘Robin Lyth,’ looking on the ‘lyth’ of the burden as the hero’s surname; derived perhaps from the village of Lythe, two or three miles to the north of Whitby. A cave on the north side of the promontory of Flamborough, called Robin Lyth’s Hole (popularly regarded as the stronghold of a pirate), may have been, Ritson thinks, one of the skulking-places of the Robin who fell by the shaft of Wrennok. “Robin Hood,” he adds, “had several such in those and other parts; and, indeed, it is not very improbable that our hero had been formerly in the suite of that gallant robber, and, on his master’s death, had set up for himself.” Thought is free.

Translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, page 44, No. 6.

Written continuously, without division of stanzas or verses. The burden, put after 1, stands at the head of the ballad.

And for & always.

1⁴. gynge.

4³. I now.

4⁵. Robyn wanting.

5¹. went.

7⁶. Ti I.

9³. & xx.

10². hir.

12³. ȝewe.

12⁴. seyd.

14³. þ^u myȝt.

17⁴. Gandelyyn: knawe.

Last line: bowdyn.

a. Two fragments, stanzas 113⁴–128², 161²–170, of an edition by John Byddell, London, 1536: Library of the University of Cambridge.^[4]

b. A fragment, stanzas 53³–111³, by a printer not identified: formerly in the possession of J. Payne Collier.^[5]

c. ‘Adambel, Clym of the cloughe, and Wyllyam of cloudesle,’ William Copeland, London [1548–68]: British Museum, C. 21, c. 64.^[6]

d. ‘Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudesle,’ James Roberts, London, 1605: Bodleian Library, C. 39, Art. Selden.

e. Another edition with the same title-page: Bodleian Library, Malone, 299.

f. ‘Adam Bell, Clime of the Cloug[he], and William off Cloudeslee,’ Percy MS., p. 390: British Museum. Hales and Furnivall, III, 76.

‘Adam Bell’ is licensed to John Kynge in the Stationers’ Registers, 19 July, 1557–9 July, 1558: Arber, I, 79. Again, among copies which were Sampson Awdeley’s, to John Charlewood, 15 January, 1582; and, among copies which were John Charlwoode’s, to James Robertes, 31 May, 1594: Arber, II, 405, 651. Seven reprints of the seventeenth century, later than d, are noted in Mr W. C. Hazlitt’s Handbook, p. 35.

The larger part of a has been reprinted by Mr F. S. Ellis, in his catalogue of the library of Mr Henry Huth, I, 128 f, 1880.^[7] b was used by Mr W. C. Hazlitt for his edition of the ballad in Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, II, 131.^[8] c was reprinted 15by Percy in his Reliques, 1765, I, 129, with corrections from f; and by Ritson, Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, 1791, p. 5, with the necessary emendations of Copland’s somewhat faulty text. d is followed by a Second Part, described by Ritson, in temperate terms, as “a very inferior and servile production.” It is here given (with much reluctance) in an Appendix.

Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudesly, outlawed for breach of the game-laws, swear brotherhood, and betake themselves to Inglewood, a forest adjacent to Carlisle. William is a wedded man, and one day tells his brethren that he means to go to Carlisle to see his wife and children. Adam would not advise this, lest he should be taken by the justice. William goes to Carlisle, nevertheless, knocks at his window, and is admitted by Alice, his wife, who tells him with a sigh that the place has been beset for him a half year and more. While they make good cheer, an old woman, whom William had kept seven years for charity, slips out, and informs the justice that William is come to town.^[9] The justice and the sheriff come presently with a great rout to take William. Man and wife defend the house till it is set on fire. William lets his wife and children down with sheets, and shoots on till his bowstring is burnt, then runs into the thick of his foes with sword and buckler, but is felled by doors and windows thrown on him, and so taken. The sheriff orders the gates of Carlisle to be shut close, and sets up a gallows to hang William. A boy, friendly to the family, gets out at a crevice in the wall, and carries word to Adam and Clim, who instantly set out for the rescue.

Adam and Clim find the gates shut so fast that there is no chance of getting in without a stratagem. Adam has a fair written letter in his pocket: they will make the porter think that they have the king’s seal. They beat on the gate till the porter comes, and demand to be let in as messengers from the king to the justice. The porter demurs, but they browbeat him with the king’s seal; he opens the gate; they wring his neck and take his keys. First bending their bows and looking to the strings, they make for the market-place, where they find Cloudesly lying in a cart, on the point to be hanged. William sees them, and takes hope. Adam makes the sheriff his mark, Clim the justice; both fall, deadly wounded; the citizens fly; the outlaws loose Cloudesly’s ropes. William wrings an axe from the hand of an officer, and smites on every side; Adam and Clim shoot till their arrows are gone, then draw their swords. Horns are blown, and the bells rung backwards; the mayor of Carlisle comes with a large force, and the fight is hotter than ever. But all for naught, for the outlaws get to the gates, and are soon in Inglewood, under their trysty-tree.

Alice had come to Inglewood to make known to Adam and Clim what had befallen her husband, but naturally had not found them, since they were already gone to William’s rescue. A woman is heard weeping, and Cloudesly, taking a turn to see what this may mean, comes upon his wife and three boys. Very sad she is, but the sight of her husband makes all well. Three harts are killed for supper, and William gives Alice the best for standing so boldly by him. The outlaws determine to go to the king to get a charter of peace. William takes his eldest son with him, leaving Alice and the two younger at a nunnery. The three brethren make their way to the king’s presence, without leave of porter or announcement by usher, kneel down and hold up their hands, and ask grace for having slain the king’s deer. The king inquires their names, and when he hears who they are says they shall all be hanged, and orders them into arrest. Adam Bell once more asks grace, since they have come to the king of their free will, or else that they may go, with such weapons as they have, when they 16will ask no grace in a hundred years. The king replies again that all three shall be hanged. Hereupon the queen reminds the king that when she was wedded he had promised to grant the first boon she should ask; she had hitherto asked nothing, but now begs the three yeomen’s lives. The king must needs consent.

Immediately thereafter comes information that the outlaws had slain the justice and the sheriff, the mayor of Carlisle, all the constables and catchpolls, the sergeants of the law, forty foresters, and many more. This makes the king so sad that he can eat no more; but he wishes to see these fellows shoot that have wrought all this woe. The king’s archers and the queen’s go to the butts with the three yeomen, and the outlaws hit everything that is set up. Cloudesly holds the butts too wide for a good archer, and the three set up two hazel rods, twenty score paces apart; he is a good archer, says Cloudesly, that cleaves one of these. The king says no man can do it; but Cloudesly cleaves the wand. The king declares him the best archer he ever saw. William says he will do a greater mastery: he will lay an apple on his son’s head (a boy of seven), and split it in two at six score paces. The king bids him make haste so to do: if he fail, he shall be hanged; and if he touch the boy, the outlaws shall be hanged, all three. Cloudesly ties the child to a stake, turning its face from him, sets an apple on its head, and, begging the people to remain quiet, cleaves the apple in two. The king gives Cloudesly eighteen pence a day as his bowman, and makes him chief rider over the North Country. The queen adds twelve pence, makes him a gentleman of cloth and fee and his two brothers yeomen of her chamber, gives the boy a place in her wine-cellar, and appoints Alice her chief gentlewoman and governess of her nursery. The yeomen express their thanks, go to Rome [to some bishop, in the later copy] to be absolved of their sins, live the rest of their lives with the king, and die good men, all three.

The rescue of Robin Hood by Little John and Much in No 117, sts 61–82, has a general resemblance to the rescue of Cloudesly by Adam and Clim in this ballad, st. 52 ff. The rescue of Will Stutly has also some slight similarity: cf. No 141, sts 26–33, and 70, 79–81, of ‘Adam Bell.’

The shooting of an apple from a boy’s head, sts 151–62, is, as is well known, a trait in several German and Norse traditions, and these particular feats, as well as everything resembling them, have been a subject of eager discussion in connection with the apocryphal history of William Tell.

The Icelandic saga of Dietrich of Bern, compiled, according to the prologue, from Low German tales and ballads, narrates that young Egil, a brother of Weland the Smith, came to Nidung’s court with the fame of being the best bowman in the world. Nidung, to prove his skill, required Egil [on pain of death] to shoot an apple from the head of his son, a child of three years, only one trial being permitted. Egil split the apple in the middle. Though allowed but one chance, Egil had provided himself with three arrows. When asked why, he answered the king that the two others were meant for him, if he had hit the boy with the first. Saga Ðiðriks Konungs af Bern, ed. Unger, c. 75, p. 90 f; Peringskiöld, Wilkina Saga, c. 27, p. 63 f; Raszmann, Die Deutsche Heldensage, II, 247 f; the Swedish rifacimento, Sagan om Didrik af Bern, ed. Hyltén-Cavallius, c. 73, p. 54. The Icelandic saga was composed about 1250.

Saxo, writing about 1200, relates nearly the same incidents of Toko, a man in the service of King Harold Bluetooth († c. 985). Toko, while drinking with comrades, had bragged that he was good enough bowman to hit the smallest apple on top of a stick at the first shot. This boast was carried to the king, who exacted a fulfilment of it on pain of death; but the apple was to be set on the head of Toko’s son. The father exhorted the boy to stand perfectly still, and, to make this easier, turned the child’s face from the direction of the shot; then, laying out three arrows from his quiver, executed the required feat. When the king asked why he had taken three arrows, Toko replied, To wreak the miss of the first with 17the points of the others. Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, Book x, ed. Holder, p. 329 f.

The White Book of Obwalden, written about 1470, informs us that Tell, a good archer, having refused to bow to Gesler’s hat, was ordered by the landvogt to shoot an apple from the head of one of his children. Unable to resist, Tell laid-by a second arrow, shot the apple from the child’s head, and being asked why he had reserved the other arrow, replied that if the first had missed he would have shot Gesler or one of his men with the second.^[10]

This story is introduced into a piece of verse on the origin of the Swiss confederacy, of nearly the same date as the prose document. In this the landvogt says to Tell that if he does not hit with the first shot, it will cost him his life; the distance is one hundred and twenty paces, as in the English ballad, and Tell says simply that he would have shot the landvogt if he had hit his son.^[11] (Tell uses a cross-bow, not the long-bow, as the English.)

Henning Wulf, a considerable person in Holstein, who had headed an unsuccessful outbreak against Christian the First of Denmark, was captured and brought before the king. The king, knowing Henning to be an incomparable archer, ordered him to shoot an apple from the head of his only son, a child: if he succeeded, he was to go free. The exploit was happily accomplished. But Henning had put a second arrow into his mouth, and the king asked the object. The second arrow was for the king, had the boy been hit. Henning Wulf was outlawed. The story, which is put at 1472, is the subject of a painting preserved in a church.^[12]

The Norwegian king, Haraldr Harðráðr († 1066), who has a grudge against Hemingr, son of Áslákr, undertakes to put him to proof in shooting, swimming, and snow-shoe sliding. They go to a wood, and both execute extraordinary feats with bow and lance; but Hemingr is much superior to the king. The king orders Hemingr to shoot a nut from his brother Björn’s head, on pain of death for missing. Hemingr would rather die than venture such a shot; but his brother offers himself freely, and undertakes to stand still. Then let the king stand by Björn, says Hemingr, and see whether I hit. But the king prefers to stand by Hemingr, and appoints somebody else to the other position. Hemingr crosses himself, calls God to witness that the king is responsible, throws his lance, and strikes the nut from his brother’s head, doing him no harm. Hemings Ðáttr, Flateyjarbók, III, 405 f (1370–80); Müller, Sagabibliothek, III, 356 ff. This story was probably derived from an old song, and is preserved in Norwegian and Färöe ballads: ‘Harald kongin og Hemingen unge,’ Landstad, Norske Folkeviser, No 15, A, B, pp. 177–188; ‘Geyti Áslaksson,’ Hammershaimb, Færöiske Kvæder, No 17, A-C, II, 149–163. In Norwegian A, 5–10, the shot is exacted under pain of imprisonment. Hemingen insists that the king shall take a place near his brother [son], whom he exhorts to stand erect and bold; one half of the nut falls, the other is left on the head; the king asks what was to have been done with a second arrow which Hemingen had secreted, and is answered as in the previous cases.^[13] The first and last 18of these incidents are wanting in B (19–22). In the Färöe ballad, A, 53–62, the king tells Geyti (whom he also calls Hemingur) that he must shoot a nut from his brother’s head. Geyti asks the king to go to the wood with him to see the result, invokes God and St Olav, hits the nut without touching his brother. It is not till the next day that the king asks Geyti why he had two arrows with him in the wood.

The same story, pleasingly varied for the occasion, is found in the saga of the Norwegian king Ólafr Tryggvason († 1000). The king hears that Eindriði, a handsome, rich, and amiable young man, is unconverted. Eindriði is a good swimmer, bowman, and dirk-thrower. Ólafr, a proficient in all such exercises, proposes to try masteries with him in the feats which he has repute for, on the terms that if Eindriði is beaten he shall be baptized, but if victor shall hold such faith as he will. The first trial is in swimming, and in this Ólafr shows unequivocal superiority. The next day they shoot at a target, and the advantage, after two essays, is rather with Eindriði. The king compliments Eindriði; but the issue between them is not yet decided. This fine young fellow’s salvation is at stake, and expedients which one might otherwise scruple at are justifiable. Ólafr knows that Eindriði tenderly loves a pretty child, four or five years old, his sister’s son. This boy shall be our target, says the king. A chessman (the king-piece) on his head shall be the mark, to be shot off without hurting the boy. Eindriði must needs submit, but means to have revenge if the child comes to harm. The king orders a cloth to be passed round the boy’s head, each end of which is to be held firmly by a man, so as to prevent any stirring when the whiz of the arrow is heard. Ólafr signs both himself and the point of his arrow with the cross, and shoots; the arrow takes off the chessman, passing between it and the head, grazing the crown and drawing some little blood. The king bids Eindriði take his turn; but Eindriði’s mother and sister beg him with tears to desist, and he, though ready to take the risk, yields to their entreaties, and leaves the victory with Ólafr. On the third day there is a match at a game with dirks. For a time no one can say which does the better; but in the end Ólafr performs feats so marvellous as in Eindriði’s conviction to demonstrate the assistance of a deity: wherefore he consents to be baptized. Saga Ólafs Tryggvasonar, Fornmanna Sögur, II, 259–74, c. 235; Flateyjarbók, I, 456–64, cc. 359–64.

Punker, a warlock of Rorbach (a town not far from Heidelberg), had obtained from the devil, as the regular recompense for his having thrice pierced the crucifix, the power of making three unerring shots daily, and had so been able to pick off in detail all but one of the garrison of a besieged town. To put his skill to proof, a certain nobleman ordered him to shoot a piece of money from his own son’s head. Punker wished to be excused, for he feared that the devil might play him false; but being induced to make the trial, knocked the coin from the boy’s cap, doing him no damage. Before shooting, he had stuck another arrow into his collar, and asked why, replied that if the devil had betrayed him, and he had killed the child, he would have sent the other bolt through the body of the person who had obliged him to undertake the performance. Malleus Maleficarum, Pars II, Quæstio I, c. xvi.^[14] The date of the transaction is put at about 1420.

The last three forms of this tradition have the unimportant variations of brother and brother, or uncle and nephew, for father and son, and of nut, chessman, or coin for apple.

The story is German-Scandinavian, and not remarkably extended.^[15] The seven versions 19agree in two points: the shot is compulsory; the archer meditates revenge in case he harms the person on whose head the mark is placed.^[16] These features are wanting in the English ballad. William of Cloudesly offers of his own free motion to shoot an apple from his son’s head, and this after the king had declared him the best archer he had ever seen, for splitting a hazel-rod at twenty score paces; so that the act was done purely for glory. To be sure, the king threatens him with death if he does not achieve what he has undertaken, as death is also threatened in four of the seven German-Scandinavian stories for refusal to try the shot or for missing; but the threats in sts 154 f of the English ballad are a revival of the vow in sts 119 f. Justice has been balked by the unconditional boon granted the queen; aggravating and exasperating circumstances have come to light since this unadvised grace was conceded, and a hope is presented for a pretext under which the king may still hang the outlaws, all three. The shooting of the apple from the boy’s head, isolated from any particular connection, is perhaps all of the German-Scandinavian story that was known to the English ballad-maker, and all minor resemblances may well be fortuitous.^[17]

If the shooting of an apple by somebody from somebody’s head is to be regarded as the kernel of the story, its area may then be considerably extended.

Castrén heard the following story among the Finns in Russian Karelia. Robbers had carried a man off over a lake. The son of the captive, a boy of twelve, followed along the other side of the lake, threatening to shoot them if they did not let his father go. These threats, for a time, only procured worse treatment for the prisoner; but at last the boy was told that his father should be released if he could shoot an arrow across the water and split an apple laid on his father’s head. This the boy did, and his father was liberated. Castrén’s Reiseerinnerungen aus den Jahren 1838–44, ed. Schiefner, p. 89 f.

A Persian poet introduces into a work composed about 1175 this anecdote.^[18] A distinguished king was very fond of a beautiful slave, so much so that he was never easy unless he was in some way engaged with him. When the king amused himself with shooting, this slave would tremble with fear, for the king would make his mark of an apple placed on his favorite’s head, split the apple, and in so doing make the slave sick with alarm.

J. Grimm had seen a manuscript of travels in Turkey, in the Cassel library, with a picture of an archer aiming at an apple on a child’s head. Deutsche Mythologie, I, 317, note, ed. 1875.

With regard to the Persian story, Benfey observes that it must be admitted as possible that the shooting of an apple from the head of a beloved person may have been pitched upon in various localities, independently, as the mark of supreme skill in archery, but that this is not likely, and that the history of tradition requires us rather to presume that the conception was original in one instance 20only, and borrowed in the remainder; in which case the borrowing would be by the West from the East, and not the other way. We can come to no decision, however, he adds, until the source of the Persian story, or some older form of it, shall have been discovered. (Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1861, p. 680.) The cautiousness of the imperial scholar is worthy of all imitation. The Persian saga, as it is sometimes called, is, in the perhaps mutilated form in which we have it, an inconsistent and inept anecdote; the German-Scandinavian saga is a complete and rational story. In this story it is fundamental that the archer executes a successful shot under circumstances highly agitating to the nerves; he risks the life of a beloved object, and in the majority of versions his own life is at stake besides. That the act must be done under compulsion is the simplest corollary. If the archer is cool enough to volunteer the shot, then the chief difficulty in making it is removed. This is a fault in the English ballad, where the father is unconcerned, and all the feeling is shown by the spectators. Cloudesly had already split a hazel-rod at twenty score paces; what was it for him to hit an apple at six score?^[19]

But we are still far from covering the range of stories which have been treated as having some significant relation to that of Egil. Any shot at an apple, any shot at an object on a child’s person (provided the case be not a fact and recent), has been thought worth quoting, as a probable sprout from the same root. For examples: In an Esthonian popular tale, one Sharpeye hits an apple which a man a long way off is holding by his mouth. In a Servian poem, the hero, Milosch, sends an arrow through a ring, and hits a golden apple on the point of a lance. Bellerophon’s sons, Hippolochus and Isandrus, disputing which should be king of the Lycians, it was proposed that the question should be settled by seeing which could shoot through a ring placed on the breast of a child lying on his back. Laodamia, sister of the competitors, offered her son Sarpedon for the trial, and the uncles, to show their appreciation of such handsome behavior, resigned their claims in favor of Sarpedon. The shot, we may understand, did not come off.^[20]

With regard to all this series of stories, and others which have been advanced as allied, more will be required to make out a substantial relationship than their having in common a shot at some object in contiguity with a living human body, be the object an apple, or whatever else. The idea of thus enhancing the merit or interest of a shot is not so ingenious that one instance must be held to be original, and all others derivative. The archer Alcon, according to Servius,^[21] was wont to shoot through rings placed on men’s heads. Sir John Malcolm (Kaye’s Life, II, 400) was told that at Mocha, when the dates were ripe, a stone, standing up some three inches, would be put on the head of a child, at which two or three of the best marksmen would fire, with ball, at thirty-one yards distance. A case was reported, about fifty years ago, of a man in Pennsylvania shooting a very small apple from the head of another man.^[22] A linen-weaver was judicially punished at Spires, some thirty years ago, for shooting a sheet of paper from his son’s hand, and afterwards a potato (“also einen Erdapfel,” Rochholz!) from the boy’s head.^[23] The keel-boat men of the Mississippi, in their playfulness, would cut the pipe out of a companion’s hat-band at a long distance. “If they quarreled among themselves, and then made friends, their test that they bore no malice was to shoot some small object from each other’s heads,” such as 21an apple. Such feats have of late been common on the American stage.

Whatever may be thought of the linen-weaver at Spires, it will scarcely be maintained that the Mississippi keel-boat men shot at apples in imitation of William Tell. As to the selection of an apple, it seems enough to say that an apple makes a convenient mark, is familiar to temperate climates, and at hand at almost any part of the year.^[24] But the chief point of all to be borne in mind is, that whether the Mississippi boatmen took their cue, directly or indirectly, from William Tell, they do not become mythical personages by virtue of their repeating his shot. None the more does William of Cloudesly. A story long current in Europe, a mythical story if you please, could certainly be taken up by an English ballad-maker without prejudice to the substantial and simply romantic character of his hero.^[25]

The late Mr Joseph Hunter unhesitatingly declared Adam Bell “a genuine personage of history,” and considered that he had had “the good fortune to recover from a very authentic source of information some particulars of this hero of our popular minstrelsy which show distinctly the time at which he lived.”

“King Henry the Fourth, by letters enrolled in the Exchequer, in Trinity Term, in the seventh year of his reign [1406], and bearing date the 14th day of April, granted to one Adam Bell an annuity of 4l. 10s. issuing out of the fee-farm of Clipston, in the forest of Sherwood, together with the profits and advantages of the vesture and herbage of the garden called the Halgarth, in which the manor-house of Clipston is situated.

“Now, as Sherwood is noted for its connection with archery, and may be regarded also as the patria of much of the ballad poetry of England, and the name of Adam Bell is a peculiar one, this might be almost of itself sufficient to show that the ballad had a foundation in veritable history. But we further find that this Adam Bell violated his allegiance by adhering to the Scots, the king’s enemies; whereupon this grant was virtually resumed, and the sheriff of Nottinghamshire accounted for the rents which would have been his. In the third year of King Henry the Fifth [1416], the account was rendered by Thomas Hercy, and in the fourth year by Simon Leak. The mention of his adhesion to the Scots leads us to the Scottish border, and will not leave a doubt in the mind of the most sceptical that we have here one of the persons, some of whose deeds (with some poetical license, perhaps) are come down to us in the words of one of our popular ballads.” (New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare, I, 245 f, 1845.)

Mr Hunter’s points are, that an Adam Bell had a grant from the proceeds of a farm in the forest of Sherwood, that Adam Bell is a peculiar name, and that his Adam Bell adhered to the king’s enemies. To be sure, Adam Bell’s retreat in the ballad is not Sherwood, in Nottinghamshire, but Englishwood, or Inglewood, in Cumberland (an old hunting-ground of King Arthur’s, according to several romances), a forest sixteen miles in length, 22reaching from Carlisle to Penrith.^[26] But it would be captious to insist upon this. Robin Hood has no connection in extant ballads with the Cumberland forest, but Wyntoun’s Scottish Chronicle, c. 1420, makes him to have frequented Inglewood as well as Barnsdale.^[27] The historical Adam Bell was granted an annuity, and forfeited it for adhering to the king’s enemies, the Scots; the Adam Bell of the ballad was outlawed for breaking the game-laws, and in consequence came into conflict with the king’s officers, but never adhered to the king’s enemies, first or last, received the king’s pardon, was made yeoman of the queen’s chamber, dwelt with the king, and died a good man. Neither is there anything peculiar in the name Adam Bell. Bell was as well known a name on the borders^[28] as Armstrong or Graham. There is record of an Adam Armstrong and an Adam Graham; there is a Yorkshire Adam Bell mentioned in the Parliamentary Writs (II, 508, 8 and 17 Edward II,) a hundred years before Hunter’s annuitant; a contemporary Adam Bell, of Dunbar, is named in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland under the years 1414, 1420 (IV, 198, 325); and the name occurs repeatedly at a later date in the Registers of the Great Seal of Scotland.

The placability of the king in this ballad is repeated in the Gest of Robin Hood, and is also exhibited in the Tale of Gamelyn, where Gamelyn is made justice of all the free forest, as William is here made chief rider over all the North Country. The king, besides, forgives all Gamelyn’s eight young men, and puts them in good office. The king of the outlaws, in the tale, had previously made his peace without any difficulty. Vv 888–94, 687–89.

Translated, after Percy’s Reliques, by Bodmer, II, 78; by Fouqué, Büsching, Erzählungen, u. s. w., des Mittelalters, I, 1; the third Fit, by Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Altenglands, No 70.

Deficiencies in a, b are supplied from c unless it is otherwise noted.

a.

120¹. deed.

b.

87¹. an oute horne. The emendation is Prof. Skeat’s.

99^1,2. and sayd begins the second line.

100³. supplied from d, e.

c.

5³. singele.

11¹. be your.

13². In woulde.

16². spende.

17¹, 107¹. whent.

18³. fore.

22¹. shop-wyndow.

22⁴. great full great.

23³. Gy.

26¹. welgood.

30³. Alece.

33². all gon.

34^3,4. and sayde begins the fourth line.

44². there Alyce.

44⁴. geuend.

46⁴. Allreadye.

48⁴. in reaffte [?].

51¹. Cyerlel.

52¹. Carelell.

53³. shut: wonderous.

54¹, 56¹, 64³, 76¹, 85³, 102¹, 107¹. Then.

54³. Lee.

54⁴. come nowe.

55³. seales.

56³. a wanting.

56⁴. faste wanting.

57⁴. come ryght.

58². me for we.

59¹. commeth none.

59². Be: vpon.

61³. went.

62¹. he saide.

62³. full shortlye.

63¹. are we.

63³. know.

64⁴, 79², 106⁴, 108¹. When.

65¹. a wanting.

65⁴. hys keys.

66², 67³, 76³. brother.

66⁴. hundred.

68¹. They bent theyr bowes. Then, good yew from e, f.

68³. in mery.

68⁴. in wanting.

69³. And they: squyers.

70². bounde wanting.

71². Cloudesle.

71³. good wanting: yeman, and ye always, as, 88³, 90³, 93³, 94¹.

72¹. Cloudesli.

73². the hange.

73³. that wanting: brtehren, or, breehren.

74², 82¹, 84¹, 100¹, 103⁴. brethen.

74². stande wanting.

74³. marked.

74⁵. to chaunce.

75¹. good wanting.

75². will.

76¹. Then spake.

76³. Brother.

77¹. shyrfe.

77². an wanting.

78¹. thre arrowes.

78⁴. there sedes.

79². fell downe.

81². out of.

81⁴. he taryed all to.

82². togyder wanting.

82⁴. shall you.

83¹. shot.

83³. sede.

84¹. The: together.

85². preced to.

86³. mas myd.

87². they wanting.

88⁴. For of theyr lyues they stode in great.

90². brust.

90³. euyll.

90⁶. That.

91¹. y^t y^e.

91². to fast.

91⁴. at wanting.

92^2,3. Transposed: Yf you do, etc., Myne offce.

92⁴. do we.

93¹. theyr keys.

94². lyghtly as left.

94³. The lough an.

94⁴. fere.

95¹, 98¹. Englyshe.

95². Under the: trusty, and 98².

95³. There wanting.

95⁴. full great.

96¹. God me help.

96³. nowe wanting.

97². drynke.

97³. fet of.

97⁴. And wanting: I wyll.

98³. They thaught: woman wepe.

98⁴. mought.

99¹. the fayre; and sayde begins the next line.

99². I sawe.

100². Or with.

100³. wanting.

100⁴. put out.

102². Under thus trusti.

31102⁴. had se.

106¹, 109¹. Alce.

106³. by me.

107¹. theyr wanting.

107^2,3. Transposed: And thanked, etc., Wyth such.

108². without any.

109¹. Alce shalbe at our.

110³. you breng.

111¹. these good yemen.

111². myght hye.

111³. pallace.

114³. you.

115². without any.

115³. become.

116¹. the kyng.

116³, 117¹. The.

117¹. beseche the.

118¹. be your nams: then, and 119¹.

122². you graunt.

123³. hundreth.

124³. then sayd.

126¹. you wanting.

127². These: ye.

127⁴. all thre.

128¹. town.

137¹. hauy graunted.

153¹. apele.

162². myght se.

162⁴. sholdest wanting.

164¹. .xvii.

164³. when.

165¹. the a.

166³. estate.

167². her sore.

167⁴. To gouerne.

168¹. thanketh.

168². To some bysshop wyl we wend.

169¹. begone: there good.

170⁴. they wanting.

a bout, a gayne, a monge, a none, a byde, a lyue, ther at, etc., are joined.

d, e, f. The readings of all three are the same unless divergence is noted.

1¹. f. in the.

1³. whereas men hunt east.

2¹. raise.

2². d. sights haue oft. e. sights haue not oft. f. has oft.

2³. three yeomen.

2⁴. as wanting.

3². Another.

4². thre wanting. d, e. euery chone. f. eueryeche one.

4³. brethren on a.

4⁴. English wood.

5². And wanting: mirth.

5³. e. were wanting.

6³. brethren, and generally. e. on a.

7¹. There to: Alice.

7². f. with wanting.

8¹. e, f. we go. d. Carlell, and generally. e, f. Carlile, and generally.

8³. If that: doe you.

8⁴. life is.

9³. Trust you then that. d, f. tane. e. taken.

11¹. Alice he said.

11². My wife and children three.

11³. owne husband. f. thy.

12². e, f. very sore.

12⁴. d, f. halfe a. e. Full halfe a.

13¹. e. I am.

13². d, f. in I. e. in we.

14¹. d. fet.

14². d. true and.

14³. e. what she.

15¹. d. in the.

15². little before.

16¹. rose and forth she goes.

16². e. might.

16³. not wanting.

16⁴. e. yeeres. f. not 7 yeere.

17¹. into.

17³. night she said is come to towne.

18¹. e. Thereat.

18². e. was wanting. f. And wanting.

18³. e. dame wanting.

18⁴. ere.

19². d, e. as wanting. d, e, f. saine.

20¹. raised.

20². that wanting.

20³. e. And thronging fast vnto the house.

20⁴. As fast as. e. gan.

21¹. the good yeoman.

21². Round wanting.

21³. d. of the folke. e. of folke. f. of the folkes.

21⁴. thetherward: fast for they.

22¹. back for shot.

22³. e. bothe wanting. e, f. second the wanting.

22⁴. e, f. And with them. e. a great rout. f. a full great.

23¹. then cryed.

23³. e, f. second my wanting. f. sweet husband.

24². e. second hys wanting.

24³. the for hys. f. He went.

24⁴. f. the surest.

25¹. Alice like a louer true.

25². f. Tooke a.

25³. d, f. Said he shall die that commeth. e. Said he shall dye.

26¹. right good.

26². of a.

26⁴. burst.

27⁴. had beene neere the.

28². d. second thy wanting. e. thine arrowes. f. the bow and arrowes.

29². d, e. Sith no better it will be.

29³. burne: saith. f. burne there.

29⁴. and his.

30¹. f. The for they: and often.

30². d, e. vp wanting. f. fledd on.

30³. then, and generally. e, f. said faire.

30⁴. e. we here shall. f. here wee shall.

31¹. a for hys.

31². second on wanting. d. was on.

31³. And there: he did let downe.

31⁴. His wife and children.

32¹. f. Haue you here.

32². d, f. second my wanting.

32^1,2. e. wanting.

32³. f. Gods loue.

33². d, f. agoe. e. go.

33³. the wanting. about for vpon.

33⁴. f. burnt.

34¹. fell vppon.

34^3,4. and sayde begins the fourth line.

35¹. e, f. had I.

35². runne.

35³. e. amongst. d, f. my.

35⁴. So: burne.

36¹. buckler then.

36². f. amongst.

36³. people thickest were.

37¹. man abide. e, f. strokes.

37². e. run.

37³. f. Then the: att him. e. doore.

37⁴. that yeoman. f. And then the.

38¹. both wanting.

38². in a.

38³. d, e. then said. d, f. hye wanting.

3239². e. gallowes thou shalt haue.

39³. d. al wanting.

40¹. There. f. helpe yett.

40³. f. a 100^d men.

41¹. arose.

41². f. can he.

41³. d. them to: full wanting. e, f. to shut close.

42³. d, e. he set vp. f. There he new a paire of gallowes he sett vpp.

42⁴. f. Hard by the.

43². meant.

44¹. the wanting. f. The litle.

44³. f. seene William.

44⁴. e. gaue.

45¹. at a creuice of.

45². wood he ran (ron, runn). f. And wanting.

45³. e. he met. e, f. wighty yeomen.

46¹. e, f. said the.

46². e, f. You.

46³. e, f. tane. e. doomd.

46⁴. d. Already. e, f. And ready to be hangd.

47². saw.

47³. d, e. might haue tarried heere with vs. f. He had better haue tarryed with vs.

47⁴. e. as wanting.

48¹. haue dwelled.

48². these for the. f. shaddoowes greene.

48³. haue wanting: at rest.

48⁴. d, f. of all.

49². he had.

50¹. e. we go. d. wighty yeomen. e, f. iolly yeomen.

50². longer.

51¹. f. bold yeomen.

51². f. All in a mor[n]inge of May.

51⁴. f. And wanting.

52¹. f. to wanting.

52². f. All in a morning.

52³. vnto.

53³. wonderous. d, f. be shut. e. are shut. f. ffast for well.

53⁴. therein.

54⁴. come. e. the king.

55¹. wryten wanting.

55². e. Now wanting. f. wiselye marke.

56¹. d, f. at the. f. gates.

56². f. hard and.

56³. d, e. a wanting. f. marueiled who was theratt.

56⁴. faste wanting. e, f. gates.

57¹. nowe wanting. f. Who be.

57². f. makes.

57³. e. said they then. f. quoth Clim.

57⁴. come right.

58⁴. the for our.

59¹. none in.

59². e. of a.

59³. Till that. f. a wanting.

60¹. d. the for that. e. that good yeman wanting. f. spake good Clim.

60⁴. d, f. thou shalt.

61¹. got wanting.

61³. d, e. porter wend (weend). f. had went wanting.

62¹. is my: he said.

62². d. ye shall. e, f. you shall.

62³. e, f. gates. d, e. full shortly. f. ryght wanting.

63¹. are we.

63². Whereof: are right.

63³. d. knowes. e, f. Christ he knowes assuredly.

63⁴. e. come wanting. f. gett out.

64^2,3,4. then, When, and nearly always.

65¹. a wanting.

65³. cast.

65⁴. d, f. his keyes.

66². e. we haue.

66³. in for to.

66⁴. d. hundred. e, f. That came this hundred.

67¹. we will.

67³. brother.

67⁴. That for Where he.

68¹. d. Then: their good. e, f. Then: their good yew.

68³. in for of.

69³. d, f. of squiers. e. squirers.

69⁴. e, f. That iudged William hanged.

70¹. e, f. hymselfe wanting. f. ready there in.

70⁴. d, e. Already. f. to hange.

71². he should. e. Cloudesle.

71³. good wanting.

71⁴. e. thereby make him a. f. And wanting.

72¹. a wanting.

72³. a graue.

73². I will thee hang.

73³. heard this.

74¹. eye. e. William.

74². two (tow) brethren: stande wanting.

74³. e. the corner: place wel prepard.

74⁴. d. good wanting: bent wanting. e, f. wanting.

74⁵. d, e. the justice to chase. f. the iustice to slaine.

75¹. good wanting.

75³. e. hands let free.

75⁴. d, e. might I.

76¹. Then spake.

76³. Brother: you.

76⁴. you.

77¹. And wanting.

78². d, e. they had.

78³. f. the shirrfe, the other the iustice.

78⁴. d, f. can.

79¹. e. stood them.

79³. fell wanting.

79⁴. d, e. deaths.

80¹. f. flye.

80². d, f. longer.

80³. e. Then.

81¹. d, f. start. e. stept.

81². out of.

81⁴. had wanting: all too. f. Hee thought.

82¹. e. brethren.

82². togyder wanting.

83¹. shot. e, f. in wanting.

83². full wanting.

83⁴. e. The. d, f. long did.

84¹. like for as.

85². d, f. pressed to.

85³. e. swords out anon.

86³. d, f. was mid. f. were mid.

86⁴. had wanting.

87¹. e. There was wanting. e, f. Carlile was.

87². they wanting. d. backwards.

88¹, 89¹, 90¹. mayor, maior.

88³. thre wanting.

88⁴. For of. d, f. they stood in great. e. they were in great.

89⁴. e. Within that stoure.

90². brast. d, f. he wanting.

90³. euill.

90⁴. f. ffull woe.

90⁵. f. Keepe well.

90⁶. That.

91². d, e. downe they. f. were downe.

91⁴. gotten out. e. of a.

92². heere I. e. My.

92³. d, f. you.

92⁴. doe you.

93¹. d, f. their keyes at. d. head.

93³. any.

94¹. e, f. be the.

33d. word.

94². lightly.

94³. f. wood.

95¹. d, e. English wood. f. merry greenwood.

95². the trustie.

95⁴. d. full great.

96¹. God me helpe.

96³. nowe wanting.

96⁴. d. manie. e. many. f. meanye.

97¹. d, f. sate. e. Then sat they.

97². d, e. drunke.

97³. fit of: yeomen for yonge men. f. A 2^d ffitt of the wightye.

97⁴. And wanting: I will.

98¹. English wood. d, f. sate.

98². d, e. trustie. f. the greenwoode.

98³. woman wepe. e, f. They.

98⁴. e, f. could act.

99¹. Sore then: there wanting. d, f. and sayd begins the next line.

99^1,2. e. And sayd Alas wanting.

99². saw.

99³. f. nowe wanting.

100¹. e. spoke.

100². Or with.

100³. d, e. To shew to them what him befell. f. To show them, etc.

101¹. aside.

101². f. He looked.

101³. second his wanting. e. He saw his.

102². Under. d. this trustie. e. a trusty. f. the trustye.

102⁴. d, f. shouldest had. e. shouldst had.

103⁴. d, e. brethren.

104⁴. e. It resteth.

105¹. the lawnd.

105². noble men all.

105⁴. f. that they cold see.

106². f. saith.

106³. Because: by me.

107¹. they went: theyr wanting.

107³. for their.

108², 115². without any leace (lease).

109¹. at our.

109². f. Att a.

110¹. My.

110². I haue.

111¹. good yeomen.

111². d, f. might hye. e. can hye.

111³. pallace.

111⁴. e, f. Where. d. neede. e, f. needs.

112¹. kings. f. But when.

112². f. & to.

113¹. proceeded presently.

113². they had.

113⁴. e, f. gan.

114¹. e, f. you.

114². e, f. to me.

114³. You: thus wanting.

114⁴. from for of.

115². f. Certes.

115³. the for our.

116¹. the for our. d, f. when. e. whan.

117¹. d, e. beseech thee. f. beseeche yee sure.

118¹. What be. e, f. the for our.

118³. e. They sayd wanting.

119¹. d, e. than wanting. f. then. e. the for our.

119². of wanting.

119³. f. Here I make a vow to God.

119⁴. You.

120³. f. officer[s] euery one.

121¹. e. Therefore.

122³. doo for be: come.

122⁴. from.

123². d. your wanting.

123³. d, e. hundreth: f. 100^d.

123⁴. d, e. of you. f. Of you wee will aske noe.

125⁴. You.

126¹. ye.

126⁴. f. itt shalbe.

127¹. f. good my.

127². These: ye.

127⁴. them all.

128¹. f. You: townes.

130². e. garmarcie. f. god a mercye.

130⁴. they shall.

131². d. they may comfort see. e. they might comfort see. f. some comfort they might see.

131³. e, f. the for our.

132¹. e. sittin. f. sitten.

132³. came two.

133³. e. our for your.

134¹. fareth.

135¹. e. slaine them. f. then said.

135². Anone that you.

135³. and wanting.

136¹. f. ffor wrath.

136³. then. f. rather then.

136⁴. of wanting.

137¹. f. y- wanting.

137². d. forethinketh.

138¹. d, f. king he.

138³. And there: thre wanting.

139². mayor.

139³. catchpoles.

139⁴. f. but one.

140¹. bayliffes.

140³. forresters.

140⁴. haue. f. haue the slawe.

141². e, f. Of all. f. coice the.

141³. d. Such.

142². hys wanting.

142³. d. table he said. e. table then said he. f. tables then sayd hee.

142⁴. e, f. I can.

143¹. then called.

143³. e, f. said he. f. To see.

143⁴. e. hath.

144¹. d, e. buskt: blithe. f. archers busket: blythe.

144². f. Soe did the queenes alsoe.

144³. d, e. thre wanting. f. weightye.

144⁴. f. They thought with them.

145². thre wanting.

145⁴. them wanting.

146². e, f. By him.

146³. d, e. a good. f. him not a good.

147¹. e. the for our. f. then wanting.

147². to me.

148¹. into the.

148². brethren.

148⁴. f. 400 paces.

149⁴. For no man can so doo.

150¹. f. syr wanting.

150². further.

151. d, f. our king. e, f. then wanting.

152³. tie him.

152⁴. e, f. see him.

154¹. hast thee. f. then wanting.

154³. f. dost: has.

155⁴. you hang.

156². d, e. I neuer will forsake. f. That I will neuer.

157³. him fro.

158³. out wanting. f. meaten.

159². e. were.

160¹. were there.

34160⁴. had neede of a. e, f. steddy.

162¹. claue.

162². myght see. d, f. As.

162³. Now God forbid then said.

162⁴. d, e. shouldst.

163¹. f. gaue: 8 pence.

163⁴. e. chiefe ranger.

164¹. xiii. e, f. Ile.

165¹. thee a.

165³. f. bretheren.

165⁴. are louely to.

166². e, f. he shall be.

166³. mans estate. e, f. coms, comes.

166⁴. d. aduanced I will him see. e, f. Better preferred.

167². d. sore for to. e. I long full sore to see. f. I long her sore.

167⁴. To.

168². d. To some bishop will we wend. e, f. To some bishop we will wend.

168⁴. at his.

169¹. e. the good.

169². they can. d. So fast.

169³. and liued.

169⁴. good yeomen.

170¹. f. liffe.

170³. f. with a.

170⁴. d, e. they wanting.

Insignificant variations of spelling are not noticed.

APPENDIX
 
THE SECOND PART OF ADAM BELL

August 16, 1586, there was entered to Edward White, in the Stationers’ Registers, ‘A ballad of William Clowdisley neuer printed before:’ Arber, II, 455. This was in all probability the present piece, afterwards printed with ‘Adam Bell’ as a Second Part. The Second Part of Adam Bell was entered to John Wright, September 24, 1608: Arber, III, 390. The ballad is a pure manufacture, with no root in tradition, and it is an absurd extravaganza besides. The copy in the Percy Folio, here collated with the earliest preserved printed copy, has often the better readings, but may have been corrected. a has such monstrosities as y-then, y-so.

a. ‘The Second Part of Adam Bell,’ London, James Roberts, 1605. b. ‘Younge Cloudeslee,’ Percy MS. p. 398; Hales and Furnivall, III, 102.

a. 1⁴. In mickle.

6¹. Some.

13⁴. canst thou.

20³. man’s y-meat.

21². he fro.

28². I drest.

35². That her purpose he had of sped.

35⁴. they read.

37⁴. amaze.

46¹. was yso.

64¹. ythen.

76². euery chone.

92¹. more subjects true.

93³. Which for Where.

b. 1⁴. In many.

5². will for well.

6¹. Soone.

6³. to thee.

13¹. sword for strong.

13⁴. thou canst.

18⁴. I must.

19¹. ffowle.

19⁴. was neuer.

20³. man’s meate.

21². him ffroe.

21³. dop the.

22³. slaine ffor thee & mee.

28². To see: well drest.

31¹. God speed.

31³. doe yee.

32¹. woman for Ione.

32². in wanting: to you.

35². of her purpose shee had sped.

35⁴. they did tread.

37³. a maze.

40³. The ffattest.

44³. mist Cisleys companye.

45². allured this.

46¹. soe.

52⁴. in my for now in.

57². That was both stiffe.

57⁴. Weer neere.

61¹. strong & stout.

66¹. William.

68². Itt was the best.

73². You shall be hanged.

73³. plott yee have.

76². euer-eche one.

78³. The craued.

79⁴. I tell you verry true.

86¹. Liuings.

92¹. subiects more true.

93³. Where.

97¹. Gramercy.

100⁴. Welcome shee shall bee soone.

104¹. is gone.

105⁴. cheefe estate.

106⁴. rooted.

107³. ffought for sought.

a. ‘A Gest of Robyn Hode,’ without printer’s name, date, or place; the eleventh and last piece in a volume in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. Reprinted by David Laing, 1827, with nine pieces from the press of Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, Edinburgh, 1508, and one other, by a printer unknown, under the title of The Knightly Tale of Golagrus and Gawane, and other Ancient Poems.

b. ‘A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode,’ etc., London, Wynken de Worde, n. d.: Library of the University of Cambridge.

c. Douce Fragment, No 16: Bodleian Library.

d. Douce Fragment, No 17: Bodleian Library.

e. Douce Fragment, No 16: Bodleian Library.^[29]

f. ‘A Mery Geste of Robyn Hoode,’ etc., London, Wyllyam Copland, n. d.: British Museum, C. 21. c.

g. ‘A Merry Iest of Robin Hood,’ etc., London, printed for Edward White, n. d.: Bodleian Library, Z. 3. Art. Seld., and Mr Henry Huth’s library.

The best qualified judges are not agreed as to the typographical origin of a: see Dickson, Introduction of the Art of Printing into Scotland, Aberdeen, 1885, pp 51 ff, 82 ff, 86 f. Mr Laing had become convinced before his death that he had been wrong in assigning 40this piece to the press of Chepman and Myllar. The date of b may be anywhere from 1492 to 1534, the year of W. de Worde’s death. Of c Ritson says, in his corrected preface to the Gest, 1832, I, 2: By the favor of the Reverend Dr Farmer, the editor had in his hands, and gave to Mr Douce, a few leaves of an old 4to black letter impression by the above Wynken de Worde, probably in 1489, and totally unknown to Ames and Herbert. No reason is given for this date.^[30] I am not aware that any opinion has been expressed as to the printer or the date of d, e. W. Copland’s edition, f, if his dates are fully ascertained, is not earlier than 1548. Ritson says that g is entered to Edward White in the Stationers’ books, 13 May, 1594. “A pastorall plesant commedie of Robin Hood & Little John, &c,” is entered to White on the 14th of May of that year, Arber, II, 649: this is more likely to have been a play of Robin Hood.

a, b, f, g, are deficient at 7¹, 339¹, and misprinted at 49, 50, repeating, it may be, the faults of a prior impression. a appears, by internal evidence, to be an older text than b.^[31] Some obsolete words of the earlier copies have been modernized in f, g,^[32], and deficient lines have been supplied. A considerable number of Middle-English forms remain^[33] after those successive renovations of reciters and printers, which are presumable in such cases. The Gest may have been compiled at a time when such forms had gone out of use, and these may be relics of the ballads from which this little epic was made up; or the whole poem may have been put together as early as 1400, or before. There are no firm grounds on which to base an opinion.

No notice of Robin Hood has been down to this time recovered earlier than that which was long ago pointed out by Percy as occurring in Piers Plowman, and this, according to Professor Skeat, cannot be older than about 1377.^[34] Sloth, in that poem, says in his shrift that he knows “rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf, erle of Chestre,”^[35] though but imperfectly acquainted with his paternoster: B, passus v, 401 f, Skeat, ed. 1886, I, 166. References to Robin Hood, or to his story, are not infrequent in the following century.

41In Wyntoun’s Chronicle of Scotland, put at about 1420, there is this passage, standing quite by itself, under the year 1283:

Disorderly persons undertook, it seems, to imitate Robin Hood and his men. In the year 1417, says Stowe, one, by his counterfeit name called Fryer Tucke, with many other malefactors, committed many robberies in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, whereupon the king sent out his writs for their apprehension: Annals, p. 352 b, ed. 1631.^[36] A petition to Parliament, in the year 1439, represents that one Piers Venables, of Derbyshire, rescued a prisoner, “and after that tyme, the same Piers Venables, havynge no liflode ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothinge, ... and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that contré, like as it hadde be Robyn-hode and his meyné:” Rotuli Parliamentorum, V, 16.^[37]

Bower, writing 1441–47, describes the lower orders of his time as entertaining themselves with ballads both merry and serious, about Robin Hood, Little John, and their mates, and preferring them to all others;^[38] and Major, or Mair, who was born not long after 1450, says in his book, printed in 1521, that Robin Hood ballads were in vogue over all Britain.^[39]

Sir John Paston, in 1473, writes of a servant whom he had kept to play Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and who was gone into Bernysdale: Fenn, Original Letters, etc., II, 134, cited by Ritson.

Gutch cites this allusion to Robin Hood ballads “from Mr Porkington, No 10, f. 152, written in the reign of Edward IV:”

And again, the name simply, from “a song on Woman, from MS. Lambeth, 306, fol. 135, of the fifteenth century”:

These passages show the popularity of Robin Hood ballads for a century or more 42before the time when the Gest was printed, a popularity which was fully established at the beginning of this period, and unquestionably extended back to a much earlier day. Of these ballads, there have come down to us in a comparatively ancient form the following: those from which the Gest (printed, perhaps, before 1500) was composed, being at least four, Robin Hood, the Knight and the Monk, Robin Hood, Little John and the Sheriff, Robin Hood and the King, and Robin Hood’s Death (a fragment); Robin Hood and the Monk, No 118, more properly Robin Hood rescued by Little John, MS. of about 1450, but not for that older than the ballads of the Gest; Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborn, No 119, Percy MS. c. 1650; Robin Hood’s Death, No 120, Percy MS. and late garlands; Robin Hood and the Potter, No 121, MS. of about 1500, later, perhaps, than any other of the group.^[40] Besides these there are thirty-two ballads, Nos 122–153. For twenty-two of these we have the texts of broadsides and garlands of the seventeenth century,^[41] four of the same being also found in the Percy MS.; eight occur in garlands, etc., of the last century, one of these same in the Percy MS., and another in an eighteenth-century MS.; one is derived from a suspicious nineteenth-century MS., and one from nineteenth-century tradition. About half a dozen of these thirty-two have in them something of the old popular quality; as many more not the least smatch of it. Fully a dozen are variations, sometimes wearisome, sometimes sickening, upon the theme ‘Robin Hood met with his match.’ A considerable part of the Robin Hood poetry looks like char-work done for the petty press, and should be judged as such. The earliest of these ballads, on the other hand, are among the best of all ballads, and perhaps none in English please so many and please so long.

That a considerable number of fine ballads of this cycle have been lost will appear all but certain when we remember that three of the very best are found each in only one manuscript.^[42]

Robin Hood is absolutely a creation of the ballad-muse. The earliest mention we have of him is as the subject of ballads. The only two early historians who speak of him as a ballad-hero, pretend to have no information about him except what they derive from ballads, and show that they have none other by the description they give of him; this description being in entire conformity with ballads in our possession, one of which is found in a MS. as old as the older of these two writers.

Robin Hood is a yeoman, outlawed for reasons not given but easily surmised, “courteous and free,” religious in sentiment, and above all reverent of the Virgin, for the love of whom he is respectful to all women. He lives by the king’s deer (though he loves no man in the world so much as his king) and by levies on the superfluity of the higher orders, secular and spiritual, bishops and archbishops, 43abbots, bold barons, and knights,^[43] but harms no husbandman or yeoman, and is friendly to poor men generally, imparting to them of what he takes from the rich. Courtesy, good temper, liberality, and manliness are his chief marks; for courtesy and good temper he is a popular Gawain. Yeoman as he is, he has a kind of royal dignity, a princely grace, and a gentleman-like refinement of humor. This is the Robin Hood of the Gest especially; the late ballads debase this primary conception in various ways and degrees.

This is what Robin Hood is, and it is equally important to observe what he is not. He has no sort of political character, in the Gest or any other ballad. This takes the ground from under the feet of those who seek to assign him a place in history. Wyntoun, who gives four lines to Robin Hood, is quite precise. He is likely to have known of the adventure of King Edward and the outlaw, and he puts Robin under Edward I, at the arbitrary date of 1283, a hundred and forty years before his own time. Bower, without any kind of ceremony, avouches our hero to have been one of the proscribed followers of Simon de Montfort, and this assertion of Bower is adopted and maintained by a writer in the London and Westminster Review, 1840, XXXIII, 424.^[44] Major, who probably knew some ballad of Richard I and Robin Hood, offers a simple conjecture that Robin flourished about Richard’s time, “circa hæc tempora, ut auguror,” and this is the representation in Matthew Parker’s ‘True Tale,’ which many have repeated, not always with ut auguror; as Scott, with whom no one can quarrel, in the inexpressibly delightful Ivanhoe, and Thierry in his Conquête de l’Angleterre, Book xi, IV, 81 ff, ed. 1830, both of whom depict Robin Hood as the chief of a troop of Saxon bandits, Thierry making him an imitator of Hereward. Hunter, again, The Ballad-Hero, Robin Hood, p. 48, interprets the King Edward of the Gest as Edward II, and makes Robin Hood an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster in the fatal insurrection of 1322. No one of these theories has anything besides ballads for a basis except Hunter’s. Hunter has an account-book in which the name Robin Hood occurs; as to which see further on, under stanzas 414–450 of the Gest. Hereward the Saxon, Fulk Fitz Warine, Eustace the Monk, Wallace, all outlaws of one kind or another, are celebrated in romantic tales or poems, largely fabulous, which resemble in a general way, and sometimes in particulars, the traditional ballads about Robin Hood;^[45] but these outlaws are recognized by contemporary history.

The chief comrades of Robin Hood are: Robin Hood and the Monk, Little John, Scathlok (Scarlok, Scarlet), and Much; to these the Gest adds Gilbert of the White Hand and Reynold, 292 f. A friar is not a member of his company in the older ballads. A curtal, or cutted friar, called Friar Tuck in the title, but not in the ballad, has a fight with Robin Hood in No 123, and is perhaps to be regarded as having accepted Robin’s invitation to join his company; this, however, is not said. Friar Tuck is simply named as one of Robin’s troop in two broadsides, No 145, No 147, but plays no part in them. These two broadsides also name Maid Marian, who appears elsewhere only in a late and entirely insignificant ballad, No 150.^[46]

44Friar Tuck is a character in each of two Robin Hood plays, both of which we have, unluckily, only in a fragmentary state. One of these plays, dating as far back as 1475, presents scenes from Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborn, followed, without any link, by others from some ballad of a rescue of Robin Hood from the sheriff; to which extracts from still other ballads may have been annexed. In this play the friar has no special mark; he simply makes good use of his bow. The other play, printed by Copland with the Gest, not much before 1550, treats more at length the story of Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar, and then that of Robin Hood and the Potter, again, and naturally, without connection. The conclusion is wanting, and the play may have embraced still other ballads. The Friar in this is a loose and jovial fellow, and gave the hint for Scott’s Clerk of Copmanhurst.^[47]

The second of the Robin Hood plays is described in the title as “very proper to be played in May-games.” These games were in the sixteenth century, and, it would seem, before, often a medley of many things. They were not limited to the first day of May, or even to the month of May; they might occur in June as well. They were not uniform, and might include any kind of performance or spectacle which suited the popular taste. “I find,” says Stow, “that in the moneth of May, the citizens of London, of all estates, lightlie in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joyning together, had their several Mayinges, and did fetch in Maypoles, with divers warlike shewes, with good archers, morrice-dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long; and towards the evening they had stage-playes and bonefires in the streetes.”^[48] In the Diary of Henry Machyn we read that on the twenty-sixth of May, 1555, there was a goodly May-game at St Martins in the Field, with giant and hobby-horses, morris-dance and other minstrels; and on the third day of June following, a goodly May-game at Westminster, with giants and devils, and three morris-dancers, and many disguised, and the Lord and Lady of the May rode gorgeously, with divers minstrels playing. On the thirtieth of May, 1557, there was a goodly May-game in Fenchurch Street, in which the Nine Worthies rode, and they had speeches, and the morris-dance, and the Sowdan, and the Lord and Lady of the May, and more besides. And again, on the twenty-fourth of June, 1559, there was a May-game, with a giant, the Nine Worthies, with speeches, a goodly pageant with a queen, St George and the Dragon, the morris-dance, and afterwards Robin Hood and Little John, and Maid Marian and Friar Tuck, and they had speeches round about London. (Pp 89, 137, 201.)^[49]

In the rural districts the May-game was naturally a much simpler affair. The accounts of the chamberlains and churchwardens of Kingston upon Thames for Mayday, 23 Henry VII–28 Henry VIII, 1507–36, contain charges for the morris, the Lady, Little John, Robin Hood, and Maid Marian; the accounts for 21 Henry VII–1 Henry VIII relate to expenses for the Kyngham, and a king and queen are mentioned, presumably king and queen of May; under 24 Henry VII the “cost of the Kyngham and Robyn Hode are entered together.”^[50]

“A simple northern man” is made to say in Albion’s England, 1586:

Tollet’s painted window (which is assigned by Douce to about 1460–70, and, if rightly dated, furnishes the oldest known representation of a May-game with the morris) has, besides a fool, a piper and six dancers, a Maypole, a hobby-horse, a friar, and a lady, and the lady, being crowned, is to be taken as Queen of May.

What concerns us is the part borne by Robin Hood, John, and the Friar in these games, and Robin’s relation to Maid Marian. In Ellis’s edition of Brand’s Antiquities, I, 214, note h, we are told that Robin Hood is styled King of May in The Book of the Universal Kirk of Scotland. This is a mistake, and an important mistake. In April, 1577, the General Assembly requested the king to “discharge [prohibit] playes of Robin Hood, King of May, and sick others, on the Sabboth day.” In April, 1578, the fourth session, the king and council were supplicated to discharge “all kynd of insolent playis, as King of May, Robin Hood, and sick others, in the moneth of May, played either be bairnes at the schools, or others”; and the subject was returned to in the eighth session. We know from various sources that plays, founded on the ballads, were sometimes performed in the course of the games. We know that archers sometimes personated Robin Hood and his men in the May-game.^[52] The relation of Robin Hood, John, and the Friar to the May-game morris is obscure. “It plainly appears,” says Ritson, “that Robin Hood, Little John, the Friar, and Maid Marian were fitted out at the same time with the morris-dancers, and consequently, it would seem, united with them in one and the same exhibition,” meaning the morris. But he adds, with entire truth, in a note: “it must be confessed that no other direct authority has been met with for constituting Robin Hood and Little John integral characters of the morris-dance.”^[53] And further, with less truth so far as the Friar is concerned: “that Maid Marian and the Friar were almost constantly such is proved beyond the possibility of a doubt.” The Friar is found in Tollet’s window, which Douce speaks of, cautiously, as a representation of an English May-game and morris-dance. The only “direct authority,” so far as I am aware, for the Friar’s being a party in the morris-dance (unconnected with the May-game) is the late authority of Ben Jonson’s Masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies, 1621, cited by Tollet in his Memoir; where it is said that the absence of a Maid Marian and a friar is a surer mark than the lack of a hobby-horse that a certain company cannot be morris-dancers.^[54] The lady is an essential personage in the morris.^[55] How and when she came to receive the appellation of Maid Marian in the English 46morris is unknown. The earliest occurrence of the name seems to be in Barclay’s fourth Eclogue,^[56] “subjoined to the last edition of The Ship of Foles, but originally printed soon after 1500:” Ritson, I, lxxxvii, ed. 1832. Warton suggested a derivation from the French Marion, and the idea is extremely plausible. Robin and Marion were the subject of innumerable motets and pastourelles of the thirteenth century, and the hero and heroine of a very pretty and lively play, more properly comic opera, composed by Adam de la Halle not far from 1280. We know from a document of 1392 that this play was annually performed at Angers, at Whitsuntide, and we cannot doubt that it was a stock-piece in many places, as from its merits it deserved to be. There are as many proverbs about Robin and Marion as there are about Robin Hood, and the first verse of the play, derived from an earlier song, is still (or was fifty years ago) in the mouths of the peasant girls of Hainault.^[57] In the May-game of June, 1559, described by Machyn, after many other things, they had “Robin Hood and Little John,” and “Maid Marian and Friar Tuck,” some dramatic scene, pantomime, or pageant, probably two; but there is nothing of Maid Marian in the two (fragmentary) Robin Hood plays which are preserved, both of which, so far as they go, are based on ballads. Anthony Munday, towards the end of the sixteenth century, made a play, full of his own inventions, in which Robert, Earl of Huntington, being outlawed, takes refuge in Sherwood, with his chaste love Matilda, daughter of Lord Fitzwaters, and changes his name to Robin Hood, hers to Maid Marian.^[58] One S. G., a good deal later, wrote a very bad ballad about the Earl of Huntington and his lass, the only ballad in which Maid Marian is more than a name. Neglecting these perversions, Maid Marian is a personage in the May-game and morris who is not infrequently paired with a friar, and sometimes with Robin Hood, under what relation, in either case, we cannot precisely say. Percy had no occasion to speak of her as Robin’s concubine, and Douce none to call her Robin’s paramour.

That ballads about Robin Hood were familiar throughout England and Scotland we know from early testimony. Additional evidence of his celebrity is afforded by the connection of his name with a variety of natural objects and archaic remains over a wide extent of country.

“Cairns on Blackdown in Somersetshire, and barrows near to Whitby in Yorkshire 47and Ludlow in Shropshire, are termed Robin Hood’s pricks or butts; lofty natural eminences in Gloucestershire and Derbyshire are Robin Hood’s hills; a huge rock near Matlock is Robin Hood’s Tor; an ancient boundary stone in Lincolnshire is Robin Hood’s cross; a presumed loggan, or rocking-stone, in Yorkshire is Robin Hood’s penny-stone; a fountain near Nottingham, another between Doncaster and Wakefield, and one in Lancashire are Robin Hood’s wells; a cave in Nottinghamshire is his stable; a rude natural rock in Hope Dale is his chair; a chasm at Chatsworth is his leap; Blackstone Edge, in Lancashire, is his bed; ancient oaks, in various parts of the country, are his trees.”^[59] All sorts of traditions are fitted to the localities where they are known. It would be an exception to ordinary rules if we did not find Robin Hood trees and Robin Hood wells and Robin Hood hills. But, says Wright, in his essay on the Robin Hood ballads (p. 208), the connection of Robin Hood’s name with mounds and stones is perhaps one of the strongest proofs of his mythic character, as if Robin Hood were conceived of as a giant. The fact in question is rather a proof that those names were conferred at a time when the real character of Robin Hood was dimly remembered. In the oldest ballads Robin Hood is simply a stout yeoman, one of the best that ever bare bow; in the later ballads he is repeatedly foiled in contests with shepherds and beggars. Is it supposable that those who knew of him even at his best estate, could give him a loggan for a penny-stone? No one has as yet undertaken to prove that the ballads are later than the names.^[60] Mounds and stones bear his name for the same idle reason that “so many others have that of King Arthur, King John, and, for want of a better, that of the devil.”^[61]

Kuhn, starting with the assumption that the mythical character of Robin Hood is fully established (by traditions posterior to the ballads and contradictory to their tenor), has sought to show that our courteous outlaw is in particular one of the manifestations of Woden. The hobby-horse, which, be it borne in mind, though now and then found in the May-game 48or morris-dance, was never intimately associated, perhaps we may say never at all associated, with Robin Hood, represents, it is maintained, Woden. The fundamental grounds are these. In a Christmas, New Year, or Twelfth Day sport at Paget’s Bromley, Staffordshire, the rider of the hobby-horse held a bow and arrow in his hands, with which he made a snapping noise. In a modern Christmas festivity in Kent, the young people would affix the head of a horse to a pole about four feet in length, and tie a cloth round the head to conceal one of the party, who, by pulling a string attached to the horse’s lower jaw, produced a snapping noise as he moved along. This ceremony, according to the reporter, was called a hoodening, and the figure of the horse a hooden, “a wooden horse.”^[62] The word hooden, according to Kuhn, we may unhesitatingly expound as Woden; Hood is a corruption of “Hooden,” and this Hooden again conducts us to Woden.

The sport referred to is explained in Pegge’s Alphabet of Kenticisms (collected 1735–36), under the name hooding, as a country masquerade at Christmas time, which in Derbyshire they call guising, and in other places mumming; and to the same effect in the Rev. W. D. Parish’s Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect (soon to be published) under hoodening, which word is an obvious corruption, or secondary form, of hooding. The word hooding, applied to the sport, means just what it does in the old English hooding-cloth, a curtain; that is, a covering, and so a disguise by covering. It is true that wooden is pronounced hooden,^[63] or ooden, in Kent, and that the hobby-horse had a wooden head, but it is quite inconceivable that the sport should receive its name from a circumstance so subordinate as the material of which the horse was made. Such an interpretation would hardly be thought of had not hooding in its proper sense long been obsolete. That this is the case is plain from two facts: the hooding used to be accompanied with carol-singing, and the Rev. Mr Parish informs us that carol-singing on Christmas Eve is still called hoodening at Monckton, in East Kent. The form Hooden, from which Robin’s name is asserted by Kuhn to be corrupted, is invented for the occasion. I suppose that no one will think that the hobby-horse-rider’s carrying a bow and arrows, in the single instance of the Staffordshire sport, conduces at all to the identifying of Robin Hood with the hobby-horse. Whether the Hobby-Horse represents Woden is not material here. It is enough that the Hobby-Horse cannot be shown to represent Robin Hood.^[64]

I cannot admit that even the shadow of a case has been made out by those who would attach a mythical character either to Robin Hood or to the outlaws of Inglewood, Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudesly.^[65]

49Ballads of other nations, relating to classes of men living in revolt against authority and society, may be expected to show some kind of likeness to the English outlaw-ballads, and such resemblances will be pointed out upon occasion. Spanish broadside ballads dating from the end of the sixteenth century commemorate the valientes and guapos of cities, robbers and murderers of the most flaunting and flagitious description: Duran, Romancero, Nos 1331–36, 1339–43, II, 367 ff.^[66] These display towards corregidores, alcaides, customhouse officers, and all the ministers of government an hostility corresponding to that of Robin Hood against the sheriff; they empty the jails and deliver culprits from the gallows; reminding us very faintly of the Robin Hood broadsides, as of the rescues in Nos 140, 141, the Progress to Nottingham, No 139, in which Robin Hood, at the age of fifteen, kills fifteen foresters, or of Young Gamwell, in No 128, who begins his career by killing his father’s steward.^[67] But Robin Hood and his men, in the most degraded of the broadsides, are tame innocents and law-abiding citizens beside the guapos. The Klephts, whose songs are preserved in considerable numbers, mostly from the last century and the present, have the respectability of being engaged, at least in part, in a war against the Turks, and the romance of wild mountaineers. They, like Robin Hood, had a marked animosity against monks, and they put beys to ransom as he would an abbot or a sheriff. There are Magyar robber-ballads in great number;^[68] some of these celebrate Shobri (a man of this century), who spares the poor, relieves beggars, pillages priests (but never burns or kills), and fears God: Erdélyi’s collection, I, 194–98, Nos 237–39; Arany-Gyulai, II, 56, No 49; Kertbeny, Ausgewählte Ungarische Volkslieder, pp 246–251, Nos 136–38; Aigner, pp 198–201. Russian robber-songs are given by Sakharof, under the title Udaluiya, Skazaniya, 1841, I, iii, 224–32; Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp 44–50. There are a few Sicilian robber-ballads in Pitré, Canti pop. Siciliani, Nos 913–16, II, 125–37.

The Gest is a popular epic, composed from several ballads by a poet of a thoroughly congenial spirit. No one of the ballads from which it was made up is extant in a separate shape, and some portions of the story may have been of the compiler’s own invention. The decoying of the sheriff into the wood, stanzas 181–204, is of the same derivation as the last part of Robin Hood and the Potter, No 121, Little John and Robin Hood exchanging parts; the conclusion, 451–56, is of the same source as Robin Hood’s Death, No 120. Though the tale, as to all important considerations, is eminently original, absolutely so as to the conception of Robin Hood, some traits and incidents, as might be expected, 50are taken from what we may call the general stock of mediæval fiction.

The story is a three-ply web of the adventures of Robin Hood with a knight, with the sheriff of Nottingham, and with the king (the concluding stanzas, 451–56, being a mere epilogue), and may be decomposed accordingly. I. How Robin Hood relieved a knight, who had fallen into poverty, by lending him money on the security of Our Lady, the first fit, 1–81; how the knight recovered his lands, which had been pledged to Saint Mary Abbey, and set forth to repay the loan, the second fit, 82–143; how Robin Hood, having taken twice the sum lent from a monk of this abbey, declared that Our Lady had discharged the debt, and would receive nothing more from the knight, the fourth fit, 205–280. II. How Little John insidiously took service with Robin Hood’s standing enemy, the sheriff of Nottingham, and put the sheriff into Robin Hood’s hands, the third fit, 144–204; how the sheriff, who had sworn an oath to help and not to harm Robin Hood and his men, treacherously set upon the outlaws at a shooting-match, and they were fain to take refuge in the knight’s castle; how, missing of Robin Hood, the sheriff made prisoner of the knight; and how Robin Hood slew the sheriff and rescued the knight, the fifth and sixth fit, 281–353. III. How the king, coming in person to apprehend Robin Hood and the knight, disguised himself as an abbot, was stopped by Robin Hood, feasted on his own deer, and entertained with an exhibition of archery, in the course of which he was recognized by Robin Hood, who asked his grace and received a promise thereof, on condition that he and his men should enter into the king’s service; and how the king, for a jest, disguised himself and his company in the green of the outlaws, and going back to Nottingham caused a general flight of the people, which he stopped by making himself known; how he pardoned the knight; and how Robin Hood, after fifteen months in the king’s court, heart-sick and deserted by all his men but John and Scathlock, obtained a week’s leave of the king to go on a pilgrimage to Saint Mary Magdalen of Barnsdale, and would never come back in two-and-twenty years, the seventh and eighth fit, 354–450. A particular analysis may be spared, seeing that many of the details will come out incidentally in what follows.

Barnsdale, Robin Hood’s haunt in the Gest, 3, 21, 82, 134, 213, 262, 440, 442, is a woodland region in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a little to the south of Pontefract and somewhat further to the north of Doncaster. The river Went is its northern boundary. “The traveller enters upon it [from the south] a little beyond a well-known place called Robin Hood’s Well [some ten miles north of Doncaster, near Skelbrook], and he leaves it when he has descended to Wentbridge.” (For Wentbridge, see No 121, st. 6; the Gest, 135¹.) A little to the west is Wakefield, and beyond Wakefield, between that town and Halifax, was the priory of Kyrkesly or Kirklees. The Sayles, 18, was a very small tenancy of the manor of Pontefract. The great North Road, formerly so called, and here, 18, denominated Watling Street (as Roman roads often are), crosses Barnsdale between Doncaster and Ferrybridge.^[69] Saint Mary Abbey, “here besyde,” 54, was at York, and must have been a good twenty miles from Barnsdale. The knight, 126⁴, is said to be “at home in Verysdale.” Wyresdale (now Over and Nether Wyersdale) was an extensive tract of wild country, part of the old forest of Lancashire, a few miles to the southeast of Lancaster. The knight’s son had slain a knight and a squire of Lancaster, a, Lancashire, b, f, g, 53. It is very likely, therefore, that the knight’s castle, in the original ballad, was in Lancashire. However this may be, it is put in the Gest, 309 f, on the way between Nottingham and Robin Hood’s 51retreat, which must be assumed to be Barnsdale. From it, again, Barnsdale is easily accessible to the knight’s wife, 334 f.^[70] Wherever it lay or lies, the distance from Nottingham or from Barnsdale, as also the distance from Nottingham to Barnsdale (actually some fifty miles), is made nothing of in the Gest.^[71] The sheriff goes a-hunting; John, who is left behind, does not start from Nottingham till more than an hour after noon, takes the sheriff’s silver to Barnsdale,^[72] runs five miles in the forest, and finds the sheriff still at his sport: 155 f, 168, 176–82. We must not be nice. Robin Hood has made a vow to go from London to Barnsdale barefoot. The distance thither and back would not be much short of three hundred and fifty miles. King Edward allows him a seven-night, and no longer, 442 f. The compiler of the Gest did not concern himself to adjust these matters. There was evidently at one time a Barnsdale cycle and a Sherwood cycle of Robin Hood ballads. The sheriff of Nottingham would belong to the Sherwood series (to which Robin Hood and the Monk appertains). He is now a capital character in all the old Robin Hood ballads. If he was adopted from the Sherwood into the Barnsdale set, this was done without a rearrangement of the topography.

5–7. Robin Hood will not dine until he has some guest that can pay handsomely for his entertainment, 18, 19, 206, 209; dinner, accordingly, is sometimes delayed a long time, 25, 30, 143, 220; to Little John’s impatience, 5, 16, 206, 211. This habit of Robin’s seems to be a humorous imitation of King Arthur, who in numerous romances will not dine till some adventure presents itself; a custom which, at least on one occasion, proves vexatious to his court. Cf. I, 257 f.^[73]

8–10. Robin’s general piety and his special devotion to the Virgin are again to be remarked in No 118. There is a tale of a knight who had a castle near a public road, and robbed everybody that went by, but said his Ave every day, and never allowed anything to interfere with his so doing, in Legenda Aurea, c. 51, Grässe, p. 221; Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, III, 563, No 86; Morlini Novellæ, Paris, 1855, p. 269, No 17, etc.

13–15. Robin’s practice corresponds closely with Gamelyn’s:

Fulk Fitz Warine, nor any of his, during the time of his outlawry would ever do hurt to any one except the king and his knights: Wright, p. 77 f.

45. “Distraint of knighthood,” or the practice of requiring military tenants who held 20 l. per annum to receive knighthood, or pay a composition, began under Henry III, as early as 1224, and was continued by Edward I. This was regarded as a very serious oppression under James I and Charles I, and was abolished in 1642. Stubbs, Constitutional History, II, 281 f; Hallam, Constitutional History, ed. 1854, I, 338, note x, II, 9, 99.

62–66. The knight has no security to offer for a loan “but God that dyed on a tree,” and such security, or that of the saints, is peremptorily rejected by Robin; but when the knight says that he can offer no other, unless 52it be Our Lady, the Virgin is instantly accepted as entirely satisfactory. In a well-known miracle of Mary, found in most of the larger collections, a Christian, who resorts to a Jew to borrow money, tenders Jesus as security, and the Jew, who regards Jesus as a just man and a prophet, though not divine, is willing to lend on the terms proposed. The Christian, not being able, as he says, to produce Jesus Christ in person, takes the Jew to a church, and, standing before an image of the Virgin and Child, causes him to take the hand of the Child, saying, Lord Jesus Christ, whose image I have given as pledge for this money, and whom I have offered this Jew as my surety, I beg and entreat that, if I shall by any chance be prevented from returning the money to this man upon the day fixed, but shall give it to thee, thou wilt return it to him in such manner and form as may please thee. In the sequel this miraculous interposition becomes necessary, and the money is punctually restored, the act of grace being implicitly or distinctly attributed to Mary rather than her Son; distinctly in an English form of the legend, where the Christian, especially devoted to the Virgin, offers Saint Mary for his borrow: Horstmann, Die altenglischen Marienlegenden des MS. Vernon, in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, LVI, 232, No 6.^[74]

107. The abbot had retained the chief justice “by robe and fee,” to counsel and aid him in the spoliation of the knight, 93. Taking and giving of robes and fees for such purposes is defined as conspiracy in a statute of Edward I, 1305–06; and by another statute, 20 Edward III, c. vi, 1346, justices are required to swear that they will take robes and fees from no man but the king: et que vos ne prendrez fee, tant come vos serez justicz, ne robes, de nul homme, graunt ne petit, sinoun du roi meismes. Statutes of the Realm, I, 145, 305: cited by J. Lewelyn Curtis, in Notes and Queries, S. I, VI, 479 f. All the English judges, including the chief justice, were convicted of bribery and were removed, under Edward I, 1289.

121. The knight would have given something for the use of the four hundred pound had the abbot been civil, though under no obligation to pay interest. In 270 the knight proffers Robin twenty mark (3⅓ per cent) for his courtesy, which seemingly small sum was to be accompanied with the valuable gift of a hundred bows and a hundred sheaf of peacock-feathered, silver-nocked arrows. But though the abbot had not lent for usury, still less had he lent for charity. The knight’s lands were to be forfeited if the loan should not be punctually returned, 86 f, 94, 106; and of this the knight was entirely aware, 85. “As for mortgaging or pawning,” says Bacon, Of Usury, “either men will not take pawns without use, or, if they do, they will look precisely for the forfeiture. I remember a cruel moneyed man in the country that would say, The devil take this usury; it keeps us from forfeitures of mortgages and bonds.” But troubles, legal or other, might ensue upon this hard-dealing unless the knight would give a quittance, 117 f.

135–37. A ram was the prize for an ordinary wrestling-match; but this is an occasion which brings together all the best yeomen of the West Country, and the victor is to have a bull, a horse saddled and bridled, a pair of gloves, a ring, and a pipe of wine. In Gamelyn “there was set up a ram and a ring,” v. 172.

181–204. The sheriff is decoyed into the wood by Robin Hood in No 121, 56–69, No 53122, A, 18–25, B, 20–27, as here by Little John. Fulk Fitz Warine gets his enemy, King John, into his power by a like stratagem. Fulk, disguised as a collier, is asked by King John if he has seen a stag or doe pass. He has seen a horned beast; it had long horns. He offers to take the king to the place where he saw it, and begs the king to wait while he goes into the thicket to drive the beast that way. Fulk’s men are in the forest: he tells them that he has brought the king with only three knights; they rush out and seize the king. Fulk says he will have John’s life, but the king promises to restore Fulk’s heritage and all that had been taken from him and his men, and to be his friend forever after. A pledge of faith is exacted and given, and very happy is the king so to escape. But the king keeps the forced oath no better than the sheriff. Wright, p. 145 ff. There is a passage which has the same source, though differing in details, in Eustace the Monk, Michel, pp. 36–39, vv 995–1070. The story is incomparably better here than elsewhere.

213–33. The black monks are Benedictines. There are two according to 213 f, 218, 225⁴, but the high cellarer only (who in 91–93 is exultant over the knight’s forfeiture) is of consequence, and the other is made no account of. Seven score of wight young men, 229³, is the right number for a band of outlaws; so Gamelyn, v. 628. The sheriff has his seven score in Guy of Gisborn, 13.

243–47. “What is in your coffers?” So Eustace the monk to the merchant, v. 938, p. 34, Michel: “Di-moi combien tu as d’argent.” The merchant tells the exact truth, and Eustace, having verified the answer by counting, returns all the money, saying, If you had lied in the least, you would not have carried off a penny. When Eustace asks the same question of the abbot, v. 1765, p. 64, the abbot answers, after the fashion of our cellarer, Four silver marks. Eustace finds thirty marks, and returns to the abbot the four which he had confessed.

213–272. Nothing was ever more felicitously told, even in the best dit or fabliau, than the “process” of Our Lady’s repaying the money which had been lent on her security. Robin’s slyly significant welcome to the monk upon learning that he is of Saint Mary Abbey, his professed anxiety that Our Lady is wroth with him because she has not sent him his pay, John’s comfortable suggestion that perhaps the monk has brought it, Robin’s incidental explanation of the little business in which the Virgin was a party, and request to see the silver in case the monk has come upon her affair, are beautiful touches of humor, and so delicate that it is all but brutal to point them out. The story, however, is an old one, and was known, perhaps, wherever monks were known. A complete parallel is afforded by Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst, No 59 (c. 1515). A nobleman took a burgess’s son prisoner in war, carried him home to his castle, and shut him up in a tower. After lying there a considerable time, the prisoner asked and obtained an interview with his captor, and said: Dear lord, I am doing no good here to you or myself, since my friends will not send my ransom. If you would let me go home, I would come back in eight weeks and bring you the money. Whom will you give for surety? asked the nobleman. I have no one to offer, replied the prisoner, but the Lord God, and will swear you an oath by him to keep my word. The nobleman was satisfied, made his captive swear the oath, and let him go. The hero sold all that he owned, and raised the money, but was three weeks longer in so doing than the time agreed upon. The nobleman, one day, when he was riding out with a couple of servants, fell in with an abbot or friar who had two fine horses and a man. See here, my good fellows, said the young lord; that monk is travelling with two horses, as fine as any knight, when he ought to be riding on an ass. Look out now, we will play him a turn. So saying, he rode up to the monk, seized the bridle of his horse, and asked, Sir, who are you? Who is your lord? The monk answered, I am a servant of God, and he is my lord. You come in good time, said the nobleman. I had a prisoner, and set him free upon his leaving your lord with me as a surety. But I can get nothing from this 54lord of yours; he is above my power; so I will lay hands on his servant; and accordingly made the monk go with him afoot to the castle, where he took from him all that he had. Shortly after, his prisoner appeared, fell at his feet, and wished to pay the ransom, begging that he would not be angry, for the money could not be got sooner. But the nobleman said, Stand up, my good man. Keep your money, and go whither you will, for your surety has paid your ransom. Ed. Oesterley, p. 49. The gist of the story is in Jacques de Vitry, Sermones Vulgares, fol. 62, MS. 17,509, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Scala Celi (1480), 159 b, “De Restitucione,” and elsewhere: see Oesterly’s note, p. 480. A very amusing variety is the fabliau Du povre Mercier, Barbazan et Méon, III, 17; Montaiglon et Raynaud, II, 114; Legrand, III, 93, ed. 1829.^[75]

293³. Reynolde. Possibly Little John borrows this Reynolde’s name in 149, but there is no apparent reason why he should. In the following very strange, and to me utterly unintelligible, piece in Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia, which may have been meant to have only enough sense to sing, Renold, a miller’s son, mickle of might (was he rechristened Much?), becomes one of Robin Hood’s men. (Deuteromelia, p. 4: London, for Tho. Adams, 1609.)

302–05. The Klepht Giphtakis, wounded in knee and hand, exclaims: Where are you, my brother, my friend? Come back and take me off, or take off my head, lest the Turk should do so, and carry it to that dog of an Ali Pacha. (1790. Fauriel, I, 20; Zambelios, p. 621, No 32; Passow, p. 52, No 61.)

357–59. The king traverses the whole length of Lancashire and proceeds to Plumpton Park, missing many of his deer. Camden, Britannia, II, 175, ed. 1772, places Plumpton Park on the bank of the Petterel, in Cumberland, 55east of Inglewood. (Hunter, p. 30, citing no authority, says it was part of the forest of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire.) Since this survey makes the king wroth with Robin Hood, we must give a corresponding extent to Robin’s operations. And we remember that Wyntoun says that he exercised his profession in Inglewood and Barnsdale.

371 ff. The story of the seventh fit has a general similitude to the extensive class of tales, mostly jocular, represented by ‘The King and the Miller;’ as to which, see further on.

403–09. The sport of “pluck-buffet” (424³) is a feature in the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, 762–98, Weber, II, 33 f. Richard is betrayed to the king of Almayne by a minstrel to whom he had given a cold reception, and is put in prison. The king’s son, held the strongest man of the land, visits the prisoner, and proposes to him an exchange of this sort. The prince gives Richard a clout which makes fire spring from his eyes, and goes off laughing, ordering Richard to be well fed, so that he may have no excuse for returning a feeble blow when he takes his turn. The next day, when the prince comes for his payment, Richard, who has waxed his hand by way of preparation, delivers a blow which breaks the young champion’s cheek-bone and fells him dead. There is another instance in ‘The Turke and Gowin,’ Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, I, 91 ff.

414–450. Robin Hood is pardoned by King Edward on condition of his leaving the greenwood with all his company, and taking service at court. In the course of a twelvemonth,^[77] keeping up his old profusion, Robin has spent not only all his own money, but all his men’s, in treating knights and squires, and at the end of the year all his band have deserted him save John and Scathlock. About this time, chancing to see young men shooting, the recollection of his life in the woods comes over him so powerfully that he feels that he shall die if he stays longer with the king. He therefore affects to have made a vow to go to Barnsdale “barefoot and woolward.” Upon this plea he obtains from the king leave of absence for a week, and, once more in the forest, never reports for duty in two and twenty years.

Hunter, who could have identified Pigrogromitus and Quinapalus, if he had given his mind to it, sees in this passage, and in what precedes it of King Edward’s trip to Nottingham, a plausible semblance of historical reality.^[78] Edward II, as may be shown from Rymer’s Fœdera, made a progress in the counties of York, Lancaster, and Nottingham, in the latter part of the year 1323. He was in Yorkshire in August and September, in Lancashire in October, at Nottingham November 9–23, spending altogether five or six weeks in that neighborhood, and leaving it a little before Christmas. “Now it will scarcely be believed, but it is, nevertheless, the plain and simple truth, that in documents preserved in the Exchequer, containing accounts of expenses in the king’s household, we find the name of Robyn Hode, not once, but several times occurring, receiving, with about eight and twenty others, the pay of 3d. a day, as one of the ‘vadlets, porteurs de la chambre’ of the king;” these entries running from March 24, 1324, to November 22 of the same year. There are entries of payments to vadlets during the year preceding, but unluckily the accountant has put down the sums in gross, without specifying the names of persons who received regular wages. This, as Hunter remarks, does not quite prove that Robyn Hode had not been among these persons before Christmas, 1323, but, on the other hand, account-book evidence is lacking to show that he had been. Hunter’s interpretation of the data is that Robyn Hode entered the king’s service at Nottingham a little before Christmas, 1323. If this was so, his career as porter was not only brief, but pitiably checkered. His pay is docked for five days’ absence in May, again for eight days in August, then for fifteen days in October. “He was growing weary of his new mode of life.” Seven days, once more, are deducted in November, and 56under the 22d of that month we find this entry: Robyn Hode, jadys un des porteurs, poar cas qil ne poait pluis travailler de donn par comandement, v. s. After this his name no longer appears.

A simple way of reading the Exchequer documents is that one Robert Hood, some time (and, for aught we know, a long time) porter in the king’s household, after repeatedly losing time, was finally discharged, with a present of five shillings, because he could not do his work. To detect “a remarkable coincidence between the ballad and the record” requires not only a theoretical prepossession, but an uncommon insensibility to the ludicrous.^[79] But taking things with entire seriousness, there is no correspondence between the ballad and the record other than this: that Robin Hood, who is in the king’s service, leaves it; in the one instance deserting, and in the other being displaced. Hunter himself does not, as in the case of Adam Bell, insist that the name Robin Hood is “peculiar.” He cites, p. 10, a Robert Hood, citizen of London, who supplied the king’s household with beer, 28 Edward I, and a Robert Hood of Wakefield, twice mentioned, 9, 10 Edward II.^[80] Another Robert Hood at Throckelawe, Northumbria, is thrice mentioned in the Exchequer Rolls, Edward I, 19, 20, 30: Rot. Orig. in Cur. Scac. Abbrev., I, 69, 73, 124. A Robert Hood is manucaptor for a burgess returned from Lostwithiel, Cornwall, 7 Edward II, Parliamentary Writs, II, 1019, and another, of Howden, York, 10 Edward III, is noted in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, p. 125, No 31, cited by Ritson. In all these we have six Robin Hoods between 30 Edward I and 10 Edward III, a period of less than forty years.

433, 435–50 are translated by A. Grün, p. 166.