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[Contents]
[Index of Titles]
[Index of First Lines]

[ POPULAR BALLADS]

OF THE OLDEN TIME

SELECTED AND EDITED
BY FRANK SIDGWICK

Fourth Series. Ballads of
Robin Hood and other
Outlaws

‘Come sit we downe under this Hawthorne tree,

The morrowes light shall lend us daie enough,

And tell a tale of Gawen or Sir Guy,

Of Robin Hood, or of good Clem of the Clough.’

SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD
3 Adam Street, Adelphi
London. MCMXII

—C’est une vieille chanson.

—Qui l’a faite?

—On ne sait pas.

—Quand?

—On ne sait pas.

—Quand tu étais petit?

—Avant que je fusse au monde, avant qu’y fût mon père, et le père de mon père, et le père du père de mon père. Cela a toujours été. —Rolland, L’Aube.

[ CONTENTS]

[ PREFACE]

This volume concludes the series, begun in 1903, which was intended to comprise all the best traditional ballads of England and Scotland. The scheme of classification by subject-matter, arbitrary and haphazard as it may seem to be at one point or another, has, I think, proved more satisfactory than could have been anticipated; and in the end I have omitted no ballad without due justification.

In the fourteen years which have elapsed since the completion of Professor Child’s collection, there has been discovered, so far as I know, only one ballad that can claim the right to be added to his roll of 305 ‘English and Scottish Popular Ballads.’ That one is the carol of The Bitter Withy, which I was fortunate enough to recover in 1905, which my friend Professor Gerould of Princeton University has annotated with an erudition worthy of Child, and the genuineness of which has been sponsored by Professor Gummere.[1] I should perhaps have included this in its place in my Second Series, had I known of it in time, but I still hope to treat the traditional English Carols separately. I ought to admit here that the confidence with which I claimed, in my Third Series, a place on the roll for The Jolly Juggler, has abated, and I now consider it to be no more than a narrative lyric without any definitely ‘popular’ characteristics.

These four volumes contain in all 143 ballads, four of which are not to be found in Child’s collection.[2] Thus, out of his 305, I have omitted more than half; but it must be remembered that his work was a collection, and mine—si parva licet componere magnis—has been selection. The omitted ballads are either:—

(i) Fragmentary or mutilated;

(ii) Closely related to ballads which I include;

(iii) Uninteresting, e.g. as dealing with obscure history;

(iv) Degenerate.

The last reason for exclusion particularly affects the Robin Hood ballads, among which Child prints thirty-three late broadsides and fragments which I omit. He preferred to err by inclusion rather than exclusion, and states that he has admitted more than one ballad, ‘actually worthless and manifestly spurious, because of a remote possibility that it might contain relics, or be a debased representative, of something genuine and better.’[3]

I cannot take leave of nine years’ intermittent work on this selection without remembering that its ‘only begetter’ was Mr. A. H. Bullen, with whom I published the first three volumes. While I regret to think how different it is in the result from the edition he then envisaged, I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to him for the inoculation. The anthologist is strictly a plucker of the flowers of literature; but the ballads are not literature—they are lore, and therefore of warmer human interest.

F. S.

[1.] The Popular Ballad (1907), p. 228.

[2.] These are The Nutbrown Maid, First Series; The Lyke-Wake Dirge and Adam, Second Series; and The Jolly Juggler, Third Series.

[3.] Vol. v. p. 182.

[ INTRODUCTION TO THE ROBIN HOOD BALLADS]

‘It is our olde manner,’ sayd Robyn,

‘To leve but lytell behynde.’

‘It will scarcely be expected that one should be able to offer an authentic narrative of the life and transactions of this extraordinary personage. The times in which he lived, the mode of life he adopted, and the silence or loss of contemporary writers, are circumstances sufficiently favourable, indeed, to romance, but altogether inimical to historical truth.’ In these words Joseph Ritson, the first and most painstaking of those well-meaning scholars who have tried to associate the outlaw with ‘historical truth,’ begins his ‘Life of Robin Hood,’ an account which occupies ten pages of his book, and is annotated and illustrated through the following one hundred and five pages. The Dictionary of National Biography includes Robin Hood, as it includes King Arthur; but it is better to face the truth, and to state boldly that Robin Hood the yeoman outlaw never existed in the flesh. As the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus, Robin Hood sprang from the imagination of the English people.

That being so, he is a creation of whom the English people, who have kept him so long alive where he was born and bred, should be proud; and after reflecting on his essential characteristics—his love of the poor, his courteous robbery of the higher orders both spiritual and temporal, his loyalty to the king, his freedom with the king’s deer, and his esteem of all women for the sake of the Virgin—an Englishman should be the first to resent any attempt to identify so truly popular a hero either with one of several historical nonentities, or with a member of the aristocracy, or worst of all, with an Aryan sun-myth.

All these attempts have been made at one time or another, but not until the spirit which begot him had begun to dwindle in the English heart. If King Arthur is the ideal knight of Celtic chivalry, Robin is the ideal champion of the popular cause under feudal conditions: his enemies are bishops, fat monks, and the sheriff who would restrain his liberty. It is natural that an enfranchised yeoman, who took toll of the oppressors, and so effected what we still call a redistribution of wealth, should be the hero of the oppressed and the law-abiding poor; and it is natural that, as social conditions altered (for better or for worse) with the national prosperity under Elizabeth, and classes and masses reconsidered their relative positions, Robin should fall from the popular pantheon, and should degenerate, as we find him degenerated in the broadsides of the Reformation hacks, into a swashbuckler unheroic enough to be defeated in quarter-staff bouts and so undemocratic as to find for himself a noble title and a wife of high degree.

There are, then, four Robin Hoods:—

(i) The popular outlaw of the greenwood, as revealed to us in the older ballads.

(ii) The quasi-historical Robin, the outlaw ennobled (by a contradiction in terms) as the Earl of Huntingdon, Robert Fitzooth, etc., and the husband of Matilda.

(iii) One of a number of actual Robert Hoods, whose existence (and insignificance) has been proved from historical documents.

(iv) Robin Hood, or Robin o’ Wood, explained by German scholars as the English representative of Woden, or a wood-god, or some other mythical personage.

We will now investigate these in turn, attempting so far as may be possible to keep them distinct.

I. The Ballad Hero Robin Hood

The earliest known reference to Robin Hood the outlaw was first pointed out by Bishop Percy, the editor of the Reliques, in Piers Plowman, the poem written by Langland about 1377, where Sloth says (B. text, passus v. 401):—

‘But I can [know] rymes of Robyn hood, and Randolf erle of Chestre.’

Observing that this first mention of Robin is as the subject of ballads, and that he is coupled with another popular hero, one of the twelfth-century Earls of Chester, we pass to the next reference.

‘Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude

Waythmen ware commendyd gude;

In Yngilwode and Barnysdale

Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.’

This passage, from Wyntoun’s Chronicle of Scotland (about 1420), is referred to the year 1283, and means that Robin and his man Little John were known as good hunters (cf. ‘wight yeomen,’ constantly in the ballads), and they carried on their business in Inglewood and Barnsdale at this time.

In 1439 a petition was presented to Parliament concerning a certain Piers Venables, of whom it is stated that, having no other livelihood, he ‘gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers’ and ‘wente into the wodes in that contrë, like as it hadde be Robyn-hode and his meynë.’

About the same time (c. 1437), a longer description is given in Fordun’s Scotichronicon, which was revised and continued by Bower, where the latter states that Robin Hood, ‘that most celebrated robber,’ was one of the dispossessed and banished followers of Simon de Montfort. He proceeds, however, to couple with him ‘Litill Johanne’ and their associates, ‘of whom the foolish vulgar in comedies and tragedies make lewd entertainment, and are delighted to hear the jesters and minstrels sing them above all other ballads,’[4] and to describe briefly one of the ‘tragedies.’

An extract from one more chronicler will suffice, and it should be noted that these three, Wyntoun, Bower, and Major, are all Scottish. John Major (or Mair) was born about 1450, and his Historia Maioris Britanniæ was published in 1521. In the part dealing with the reign of Richard I. (lib. iv. cap. ii.), we find:—

‘About this time it was, as I conceive, that there flourished those most famous robbers Robert Hood, an Englishman, and Little John, who lay in wait in the woods, but spoiled of their goods those only who were wealthy. They took the life of no man, unless either he attacked them or offered resistance in defence of his property. Robert supported by his plundering a hundred bowmen, ready fighters every one, with whom four hundred of the strongest would not dare to engage in combat. The feats of this Robert are told in song all over Britain. He would allow no woman to suffer injustice, nor would he spoil the poor, but rather enriched them from the plunder taken from abbots. The robberies of this man I condemn, but of all thieves he was the prince and the most gentle thief.’[5] This is repeated almost verbatim in Stow’s Annales (1681).

These five references show that Robin Hood was popular in ballads for at least a century before the date at which we find those ballads in print; and apart from the fact that printing is usually the last thing that happens to a ballad of the folk, the language in which they are written is unmistakably Middle English—that is to say, the Gest of Robyn Hode (at least) may be dated nearer 1400 than 1500. But Langland’s evidence is clear; ‘rymes’ of Robin Hood were widely known by 1377. Neither Bower nor Major know anything of Robin except what they learnt from the ballads about him.

II. Robin Hood, Earl of Huntingdon

In attempting to provide Robin Hood with a noble ancestry, Ritson quotes, amongst other authorities, a manuscript life of Robin, which, as it supplied him with other errors, had best be put out of court at once. This is Sloane MS. 780 (Ritson calls it 715, which is due to the fact that in his time Sloane MSS. 715-7, 720-1, and 780-1 were bound up together); it is of the early seventeenth century, which is much too late for any faith to be put in its statements.

No allusion to the noble descent of Robin Hood has been found earlier than one in Grafton’s Chronicle (1569), where the author alleges that he takes this information from ‘an olde and auncient pamphlet.’ As Child says, we must ‘invoke the spirit of Ritson to pardon the taking of no very serious notice of Robin Hood’s noble extraction.’

Stukely, an antiquary who published his Palæographia Britannica in 1746, derived ‘Robert Fitzooth, commonly called Robin Hood, pretended Earl of Huntingdon,’ from a series of Anglo-Norman lords.

It would be almost unnecessary to mention the two Elizabethan plays concerning Robert the Earl, were it not for an ingenious suggestion made in connection with them. The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, and The Death of the same, were written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and are first mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary in 1598. The Earl, being outlawed, flies to Sherwood Forest, accompanied by Matilda, daughter of Lord Fitzwater; and there he assumes the style and title of Robin Hood, and calls Matilda Maid Marian. This plot is introduced by an induction in which John Skelton the poet appears as stage-manager; and it has been suggested that Munday’s play may be founded on a now-lost interlude or pageant of Skelton’s composing. Robert, Lord Fitz-Walter, a descendant from the original Earls of Huntingdon, was patron of the living at Diss, in Norfolk, which Skelton held.’[6]

III. Historical Robin Hoods

In 1852 Joseph Hunter issued, as No. 4 of his ‘Critical and Historical Tracts,’ The Great Hero of the ancient Minstrelsy of England, Robin Hood. Amongst other discoveries, he found, in an Exchequer document of expenses in the royal household of Edward II., the name of ‘Robyn Hode’ occurring several times as a ‘vadlet’ or ‘porteur de la chambre,’ at the salary of threepence per diem, between March and November of 1324.

Various other researchers have succeeded in tracing half a dozen people, all named Robin or Robert Hood, within a period of some forty years of the fourteenth century; but few have pressed identification with Robin Hood the outlaw so far as Hunter, ‘who,’ says Professor Child, ‘could have identified Pigrogromitus and Quinapalus, if he had given his mind to it.’ Working on the above datum, Hunter shows how probable it is that Robin Hood the outlaw entered the service of Edward II. at Nottingham, where the king was from November 9-23 in 1323. But the Robin whose fortunes Hunter raked up was a very bad servant, and within a year from the alleged date was ignominiously dismissed from the king’s service, with a present of 5s., ‘because he was no longer able to work’! Was this the invincible champion of English yeomen? Was this the hand that launched a thousand shafts?

The only point to which attention need be called is the obvious fact that ‘Robert Hood’ was not an uncommon combination of names, at least in fourteenth-century England.

IV. Robin Hood the Myth

In 1845 Adalbert Kuhn (in Haupt’s Zeitschrift, v. 472-94) attempted to show that Robin Hood was a mythological figure representing one of the manifestations of Woden, as a vegetation deity; and half a century later Sir J. H. Ramsay suggested that he was a wood-spirit corresponding to the Hodeken of German tradition. Theories such as this[7] seem to be fascinating to all sorts of scholars, perhaps because they involve continually a minute appreciation of fine shades of probability. In the present instance they reach a point at which it is suggested that the rose-garland worn by the Potter—not in the ballad of Robin Hood and the Potter, but in the later play—is a survival of the Strife between Summer and Winter. Certainly there is no need to seek a mythological origin for the Robin Hood of the ballads; but we must proceed to consider the Robin of folk-drama.

To do this, it is necessary to go back some centuries before the time at which we first hear of Robin Hood the outlaw, and to follow the development of the English folk’s summer festival from song and dance to drama, and from the folk-games—the ‘Induction of May,’ the ‘Induction of Autumn,’ the ‘Play of the King and the Queen,’ which, separately or together, were performed at least as early as the thirteenth century—to the ‘May-game’ or ‘King’s game’ of the middle of the fifteenth century. Going back again to the thirteenth century, and crossing over to France, we find in the fêtes du mai—which were evolved, with the help of the minstrels, from the French folk’s summer festival—the names of Robin and Marion customarily appropriated to the king and queen of these fêtes.

Now between 1450 and 1500 the May-game becomes associated in England with Robin Hood: setting aside the possibility that Bower’s reference, mentioned above, to ‘comedies and tragedies,’ may allude to the May-game, we can find many entries, in parish records from all parts of England, which show that the summer folk-festival has developed into a play of Robin Hood. Further, it has been very plausibly suggested[8] that about the same time the French Robin, becoming confused with the English one, brought in Marion (a French name), and thus supplied our Robin Hood with his Maid Marian, who has no place in the true ballads of the outlaw.

In 1473 Sir John Paston wrote a letter in which he refers to a servant, of whom he says, ‘I have kepyd hym this iii yer to pleye Saynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff of Nottyngham.’ There has also survived a leaf of manuscript—perhaps it is only an accident that it was formerly in the possession of the first editor of the Paston Letters—of about the same date, which contains a portion of the play to which Sir John refers, that of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham,[9] which is founded upon a story similar to that of the ballad of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne (see p. 128). Besides this fragment, we have in William Copland’s edition of the Gest a dramatic appendix of ‘the playe of Robyn Hoode, verye proper to be played in Maye games’ (printed c. 1560); this in fact consists of two plays carelessly tagged together, first Robin Hood and the Friar (who is distinctly called Friar Tuck), and second, Robin Hood and the Potter (partly founded on the ballad of that name). Friar Tuck, it should be noted, occurs also in the earlier fragmentary play; but there is no friar in Robin Hood’s ‘meynie’ in any of the older ballads, and no Maid Marian in either the older ballads or the above plays.

These complications of Robin Hood’s company are further confused by the fact that the morris-dance, which was universally affiliated to the May-game, borrowed therefrom not only Maid Marian but Robin Hood, Little John and Friar Tuck; so that amongst the later ballads and broadsides we find Robin’s company increased. However, by that time Robin himself had degenerated from the fine character exhibited in the earlier ballads given in this volume.

Topography of Robin Hood’s Haunts

Although Robin Hood belongs in legend no more exclusively to any definite district than his noble fore-runner King Arthur, yet, like King Arthur, he has become associated particularly with one or two haunts; and it is no easier—nor in the end more profitable—to reconcile Lyonnesse with Carlisle and Inglewood[10] than to disentangle Robin Hood of Barnsdale from Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest.

The simplest way to begin is to eliminate from our consideration the numerous Robin Hood’s Hills, Wells, Stones, Oaks, or Butts, some of which may be found as far distant as Gloucestershire and Somerset; for many of these probably bear his name in much the same way as other natural freaks bear the Devil’s name. A large number can be found in what may be called Robin Hood’s home-counties, Yorkshire and those which touch Yorkshire—Lancashire, Derby, Nottingham and Lincoln shires.

Undoubtedly the evidence of the best ballads goes to show that at one time there must have been at least two cycles of Robin Hood ballads, one placing him in Barnsdale, the other allotting him headquarters in Sherwood; but it appears that even the ballads of the fifteenth century make little effort to discriminate between the two. Robin Hood and the Monk (MS. of c. 1450) introduces us, in its first five lovely stanzas, to Sherwood; in Robin Hood and the Potter (MS. of c. 1500), the scene is Nottingham, in the Sherwood district. Little John refers to Wentbridge, which lies in the heart of Barnsdale, yet knows every path in merry Sherwood.

In the Gest, compiled as it is from ballads of both cycles, no attempt was made to reconcile their various topographies; but it can be seen that the general geography of the first division of the Gest (Fyttes I. II. and IV.) is that of Barnsdale, while the second division (Fyttes III. V. and VI.), dealing with the Sheriff of Nottingham, mainly centres round Sherwood. In the seventh Fytte, the King goes, presumably from London (322.³), to Nottingham via Lancashire; and the eighth jumps from Nottingham to Kirksley.[11]

In Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne (certainly an early ballad, although the Percy Folio, which supplies the only text, is c. 1650), the scene is specified as Barnsdale; yet at the end the Sheriff of Nottingham flees to his house as if it were hard by, whereas he had a fifty-mile run before him. The later ballads forget Barnsdale altogether.

Barnsdale

The majority of the places mentioned in the northern or Barnsdale cycle will be found in the south of the West Riding of Yorkshire, a district bounded by the East Riding and Lincolnshire to the east, Derby and Nottingham shires to the south, and the river Calder to the north. To the west, the natural boundary is the high ground of the Peak, which divides Manchester from Sheffield.

The town of Barnsley lies slightly to the east of a line joining Leeds and Sheffield; Barnsdale itself is east and north of Barnsley, where the high backbone of the Pennines drops towards the flats surrounding the river Humber. The great North Road (‘Watling Street,’ Gest, 18.²) between Doncaster and Pontefract, crosses the small slow river Went at Wentbridge (probably referred to in st. 135 of the Gest), which may be taken as the northern boundary of Barnsdale. That this part of the North Road was considered unsafe for travellers as early as Edward I.’s reign is shown by the fact that a party going from Scotland to Winchester, and for most of the journey guarded by a dozen archers, saw fit to increase their number of guards to twenty between Pontefract and Tickhill, the latter being on the border of Yorkshire and Nottingham, south of Doncaster.

The remaining places, except those explained in the footnotes, may be dealt with here.

‘Blyth’ (Gest, 27.⁴, 259.⁴), twice mentioned as a place at which to dine, is a dozen miles south of Doncaster, and in Nottingham; it is almost exactly half-way between Barnsdale and Sherwood.

‘Verysdale’ (Gest, 126.⁴) may be Wyersdale, a wild tract of the old Forest of Lancashire, near Lancaster.

‘Holderness’ (Gest, 149.¹) is the nose of Yorkshire; between the south-easterly turn of the Humber below Hull and the North Sea.

‘Kyrkesly’ (Gest, 451.³, 454.³), or ‘Churchlees’ (Robin Hood’s Death, 1.³). Kirklees Priory is on the left or north bank of the river Calder, a few miles north of Huddersfield.

‘St. Mary Abbey’ is ‘here besyde’ (Gest, 54.⁴) and in York (84.⁴).

Sherwood

The name of Sherwood is not mentioned in the Gest, though that of Nottingham is frequent. The old forest was a district about twenty-five miles square, lying to the north of Nottingham, between that town and Worksop, including Mansfield and, to the north, the district now known as ‘the Dukeries,’ i.e. the parks of Welbeck, Clumber and Rufford. There is a village of Sherwood, a northern suburb of Nottingham, and a Sherwood Hall near Mansfield; between the two may be found Friar Tuck’s Well, Robin Hood’s Well, Robin Hood’s Stable, and a Robin Hood Hill. But, as has been pointed out above, these names have little significance in view of the fact that similarly-named objects can be found in other counties.

It is more interesting to note that a pasture called ‘Robynhode Closse’ (i.e. close) is mentioned in the Nottingham Chamberlain’s accounts as early as 1485, and a ‘Robynhode Well’ in 1500.

[4.] So translated by Ritson. ‘Comedies and tragedies’ is an ambiguous phrase in the fifteenth century, and may mean either the dramatised May-games or ballads. Cf. Chambers, Mediæval Stage, ii. 211.

[5.] Translation (except the last phrase) by A. Constable, Edinburgh, 1892.

[6.] See H. L. D. Ward’s Catalogue of Romances, 506, under the Romance of Fulk Fitz-Warine.

[7.] The suggestion that ‘Hood’ = ‘o’ Wood’ was originally made in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March 1793, over the signature D. H.

[8.] First, as regards Marian, by Warton, History of English Poetry (1774), p. 245: recently and in more detail by E. K. Chambers, Mediæval Stage (1903), i. 176.

[9.] This leaf has lately been given to the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, by Mr. Aldis Wright. It may be seen in facsimile as well as in type in the Collections (p. 117) of the Malone Society (Part ii., 1908), where the two plays of Robin Hood mentioned above are also reprinted.

[10.] It should be remembered that Wyntoun says that Robin Hood plied his trade in Inglewood and Barnsdale (see ante, p. xiv.).

[11.] Child, in saying that ‘Robin Hood has made a vow to go from London to Barnsdale’ (v. 51) seems to assume that the ‘king’s court’ (Gest, 433) implies London, which, however, is not specified.

[ SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBIN HOOD]

Ritson, Joseph. Robin Hood: A Collection of all the ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English Outlaw. 2 vols. London, 1795.

Gutch, John Matthew. A Lytell Geste of Robin Hode, with other Ancient and Modern Ballads and Songs relating to this celebrated yeoman. 2 vols. London, 1847.

Hunter, Rev. Joseph. The Ballad-Hero Robin Hood. London, 1852. (No. of Critical and Historical Tracts.)

Fricke, Richard. Die Robin-Hood-Balladen. In Herrig’s Archiv, lxix. 241-344. Also separately, Braunschweig, 1883.

Brandl, Alois. Englische Volkspoesie. In Paul’s Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie. Strassburg, 1893.

Kiessman, R. Untersuchungen über die Motivs der Robin-Hood-Balladen. Halle, 1895.

Chambers, E. K. The Mediæval Stage. 2 vols. Oxford, 1903. (Vol. i, chap. viii.)

Heusler, A. Lied und Epos. Dortmund, 1905.

Hart, W. M. Ballad and Epic. In Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature. Vol. xi. Boston, 1907.

Clawson, W. H. The Gest of Robin Hood. In University of Toronto Studies. Toronto, 1909.

ARTICLES

The London and Westminster Review. March 1840. Vol. xxxiii.

The Academy (correspondence). 1883. Vol. xxiv.

The Quarterly Review. July 1898.

A GEST OF ROBYN HODE

‘Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur.’

Major.

The Text.—There are seven texts of the Gest, to be distinguished as follows:—

(i.) begins ‘Here begynneth a gest of Robyn Hode’; an undated printed fragment preserved with other early pieces in a volume in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. It was reprinted in 1827 by David Laing, who then supposed it to be from the press of Chepman and Myllar, Edinburgh printers of the early sixteenth century; but he afterwards had reason to doubt this opinion. It is now attributed to Jan van Doesborch, a printer from Antwerp. The extent of this fragment is indicated below. Internal evidence (collected by Child, iii. 40) shows it to be an older text than

(ii.) ‘Here begynneth a lytell geste of Robyn hode’—so runs the title-page; at the head of the poem are added the words—‘and his meyne [= meinie, company], And of the proude Sheryfe of Notyngham.’ The colophon runs ‘Explycit. kynge Edwarde and Robyn hode and Lytell Johan Enprented at London in fletestrete at the sygne of the sone By Wynken de Worde.’ This also is undated, and Child says it ‘may be anywhere from 1492 to 1534.’ Recent bibliographical research shows that Wynkyn de Worde moved to Fleet Street at the end of the year 1500, which gives the downward limit; and as the printer died in 1584, the Lytell Geste must be placed between those dates.[1] The text is complete save for two lines (7.¹ and 339.¹), which have also dropped from the other early texts. The only known copy is in the Cambridge University Library.

(iii., iv. and v.) Three mutilated printed fragments, containing about thirty-five, seventy, and fifteen stanzas respectively, preserved amongst the Douce fragments in the Bodleian (the last presented by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps). The first was lent to Ritson in or before 1790 by Farmer, who thought it to be Rastell’s printing; in Ritson’s second edition (1836) he says he gave it to Douce, and states without reason that it is of de Worde’s printing ‘probably in 1489.’

(vi.) A mery geste of Robyn Hoode, etc., a quarto preserved in the British Museum, not dated, but printed ‘at London vpon the thre Crane wharfe by wyllyam Copland,’ who printed there about 1560. This edition also contains ‘a newe playe for to be played in Maye games, very plesaunte and full of pastyme.’

(vii.) A Merry Iest of Robin Hood, etc., printed at London for Edward White; no date, but perhaps the ‘pastorall plesant commedie’ entered to White in the Stationers’ Registers, May 14, 1594. There is a copy of this in the Bodleian, and another was in the Huth Library.

The Text here given is mainly the Wynkyn de Worde text, except where the earlier Edinburgh fragment is available; the stanzas which the latter preserves are here numbered 1.-83.³, 113.⁴-124.¹, 127.⁴-133.², 136.⁴-208.³, and 314.²-349.³, omitting 2.^2,3 and 7.¹. A few variations are recorded in the footnotes, it being unnecessary in the present edition to do more than refer to Child’s laborious collation of all the above texts.

The spelling of the old texts is retained with very few exceptions. The reason for this is that although the original texts were printed in the sixteenth century, the language is of the fifteenth, and a number of Middle English forms remain; these are pointed out by Child, iii. 40, and elaborately classified by W. H. Clawson, The Gest of Robin Hood, 4-5. A possible alternative was to treat the Gest on the plan adopted for fifteenth-century texts by E. K. Chambers and the present editor in Early English Lyrics (1907); but in that book the editors were mostly concerned with texts printed from manuscript, whereas here there is good reason to suspect the existence of a text or texts previous to those now available. For the sounded e (ë) I have mostly followed Child.

The Gest is not a single ballad, but a conglomeration of several, forming a short epic. Ballads representing its component parts are not now extant; although on the other hand there are later ballads founded on certain episodes in the Gest. The compiler availed himself of incidents from other traditional sources, but he produced a singularly original tale.

The word gest, now almost obsolete, is derived through Old French from the Latin gesta, ‘deeds’ or ‘exploits.’ But as the word was particularly applied to ‘exploits as narrated or recited,’ there came into use a secondary meaning—that of ‘a story or romantic tale in verse,’ or ‘a metrical chronicle.’ The latter meaning is doubtless intended in the title of the Gest of Robyn Hode. A further corruption may be noticed even in the titles of the later texts as given above; Copland adds the word ‘mery,’ which thirty years later causes White to print a ‘Merry Jest.’

I have kept the original divisions of the story into eight ‘fyttes,’ but it falls more naturally into three main sections, in each of which a complete story is narrated. These may he distinguished thus:—

1. Robin Hood and the Knight.
(Fyttes First, Second, and Fourth.)

2. Robin Hood, Little John, and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
(Fyttes Third, Fifth, and Sixth.)

3. Robin Hood and King Edward.
(Fyttes Seventh and Eighth.)

An argument and general notes are prefixed to each fytte.

[ THE FIRST FYTTE (1-81)]

Argument.—Robin Hood refuses to dine until he finds some guest to provide money for his entertainment. He sends Little John and all his men to bring in any earl, baron, abbot, or knight, to dine with him. They find a knight, and feast him beneath the greenwood tree: but when Robin demands payment, the knight turns out to be in sorry plight, for he has sold all his goods to save his son. On the security of Our Lady, Robin lends him four hundred pounds, and gives him a livery, a horse, a palfrey, boots, spurs, etc., and Little John as squire.

Robin’s unwillingness to dine until he has a guest appears to be a parody of King Arthur’s custom of refusing dinner until he has had an adventure. (See Child, i. 257, note ‡.) The offer of the Virgin as security for a loan is apparently derived from a well-known miracle of Mary, in which a Christian, wishing to borrow money of a Jew, takes him to a church and makes him lay his hand on a statue of the Virgin and Child, praying that, if he fails to return the money on the day fixed to the lender, but gives it to the statue, Christ will return it to the Jew. This miracle eventually takes place, but is attributed rather to the Virgin than to her Son. (See Child, iii. 52.)

[1.] Mr. Charles Sayle puts it ‘before 1519’ in his catalogue of the early printed books in the University Library.

THE FIRST FYTTE

1.

1.¹ ‘Lythe and listin,’ hearken and listen: a very common opening.

1.² ‘frebore,’ free-born.

Lythe and listin, gentilmen,

That be of frebore blode;

I shall you tel of a gode yeman,

His name was Robyn Hode.

2.

2.^2,3 ‘Whyles . . . outlaw’: supplied from the Wynkyn de Worde text.

Robyn was a prude outlaw,

Whyles he walked on grounde;

So curteyse an outlaw as he was one

Was never non yfounde.

3.

Robyn stode in Bernesdale,

And lenyd hym to a tre;

And bi him stode Litell Johnn,

A gode yeman was he.

4.

4.⁴ i.e., worthy of a groom, or young man.

And alsoo dyd gode Scarlok,

And Much, the miller’s son;

There was none ynch of his bodi

But it was worth a grome.

5.

5.³ ‘and,’ if.

Than bespake Lytell Johnn

All untoo Robyn Hode:

‘Maister, and ye wolde dyne betyme

It wolde doo you moche gode.’

6.

6.⁴ ‘unkouth,’ unknown.

Than bespake hym gode Robyn:

‘To dyne have I noo lust,

Till that I have som bolde baron,

Or som unkouth gest.

7.

7.¹ Wanting in all versions.

7.³ ‘som,’ supplied from Wynken de Worde’s text.

.....

‘That may pay for the best,

Or some knyght or som squyer

That dwelleth here bi west.’

8.

8.⁴ ‘messis,’ masses.

A gode maner than had Robyn:

In londe where that he were,

Every day or he wold dyne

Thre messis wolde he here.

9.

9.⁴ ‘allther moste,’ most of all.

The one in the worship of the Fader,

And another of the Holy Gost,

The thirde was of Our dere Lady

That he loved allther moste.

10.

10.² ‘dout,’ fear.

Robyn loved Oure dere Lady;

For dout of dydly synne,

Wolde he never do compani harme

That any woman was in.

11.

‘Maistar,’ than sayde Lytil Johnn,

‘And we our borde shal sprede,

Tell us wheeler that we shall go

And what life that we shall lede.

12.

12.³ ‘reve,’ pillage.

‘Where we shall take, where we shall leve,

Where we shall abide behynde;

Where we shall robbe, where we shall reve,

Where we shall bete and bynde.’

13.

13.¹ ‘no force,’ no matter.

‘Thereof no force,’ than sayde Robyn;

‘We shall do well inowe;

But loke ye do no husbonde harme

That tilleth with his ploughe.

14.

‘No more ye shall no gode yeman

That walketh by grene-wode shawe;

Ne no knyght ne no squyer

That wol be a gode felawe.

15.

‘These bisshoppes and these archebishoppes,

Ye shall them bete and bynde;

The hye sherif of Notyingham,

Hym holde ye in your mynde.’

16.

16.² ‘lere,’ learn.

16.³ ‘fer dayes,’ late in the day: ‘gest,’ exploit.

‘This worde shalbe holde,’ sayde Lytell Johnn,

‘And this lesson we shall lere;

It is fer dayes; God sende us a gest,

That we were at our dynere.’

17.

‘Take thy gode bowe in thy honde,’ sayde Robyn;

‘Late Much wende with thee;

And so shal Willyam Scarlok,

And no man abyde with me.

18.

18.¹ The Sayles, a small part of the manor of Pontefract.

18.² Watling Street = the great North Road.

18.⁴ ‘Up chaunce,’ in case.

‘And walke up to the Saylis

And so to Watlinge Strete,

And wayte after some unkuth gest,

Up chaunce ye may them mete.

19.

19.⁴ ‘dight,’ prepared.

‘Be he erle, or ani baron,

Abbot, or ani knyght,

Bringhe hym to lodge to me;

His dyner shall be dight.’

20.

They wente up to the Saylis,

These yemen all three;

They loked est, they loked weest,

They myght no man see.

21.

21.² ‘dernë strete,’ hidden or obscure path.

But as they loked in to Bernysdale,

Bi a dernë strete,

Than came a knyght ridinghe;

Full sone they gan hym mete.

22.

All dreri was his semblaunce,

And lytell was his pryde;

His one fote in the styrop stode,

That othere wavyd beside.

23.

23.¹ ‘iyn,’ eyes.

His hode hanged in his iyn two;

He rode in symple aray;

A soriar man than he was one

Rode never in somer day.

24.

Litell Johnn was full curteyes,

And sette hym on his kne:

‘Welcome be ye, gentyll knyght,

Welcom ar ye to me.

25.

25.² ‘Hendë,’ noble.

‘Welcom be thou to grenë wode,

Hendë knyght and fre;

My maister hath abiden you fastinge,

Syr, al these ourës thre.’

26.

‘Who is thy maister?’ sayde the knyght;

Johnn sayde, ‘Robyn Hode’;

‘He is a gode yoman,’ sayde the knyght,

‘Of hym I have herde moche gode.