Chapter IV: Appendix: The Second Part of Adam Bell (1)

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.

1
List northerne laddes to blither things
Then yet were brought to light,
Performed by our countriemen
In many a fray and fight:

2
Of Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough,
And William of Cloudisly,
Who were in fauour with the king,
For all their misery.

3
Yong William of the wine-seller,
When yeoman he was made,
Gan follow then his father’s steps:
He loued a bonny maide.

4
‘God’s crosse,’ quoth William, ‘if I misse,
And may not of her speed,
I’le make a thousand northern hearts
For very wo to bleed.’

5
Gone he is a wooing now,
Our Ladie well him guide!
To merry Mansfield, where I trow
A time he will abide.

6
‘Soone dop the dore, faire Cicelie bright,
I come with all the hast:
I come a wooing thee for loue,
Here am I come at last.’

7
‘I know you not,’ quoth Cicelie tho,
‘From whence that yee bee come;
My loue you may not haue, I trow,
I vow by this faire sonne.

8
‘For why, my loue is fixt so sure
Vpon another wight;
I swere by sweet Saint Anne, I’le neuer
Abuse him, out of sight.

9
‘This night I hope to see my loue,
In all his pride and glee;
If there were thousands, none but him
My heart would ioy to see.’

10
‘God’s curse vpon him,’ yong William said,
‘Before me that hath sped!
A foule ill on the carrion nurse
That first did binde his head!’

11
Gan William tho for to prepare
A medicine for that chaffe:
‘His life,’ quoth he, ‘full hard may fare;
Hee’s best to keepe alaffe.’

12
He drew then out his bright brown sword,
Which was so bright and keene;
A stouter man and hardier
Nere handled sword, I weene.

13
‘Browne tempered, strong, and worthy blade,
Vnto thy maister show,
If now to triall thou bee put,
How thou canst bide a blow.’

14
Yong William till an oake gan hie,
Which was in compasse round
Well six and fifty inches nie,
And feld it to the ground.

15
‘So mot he fare,’ quoth William tho,
‘That for her loue hath laid
Which I haue loued, and nere did know
Him suter till that maide.

16
‘And now, deare father, stout and strong,
William of Cloudesley,
How happie were thy troubled sonne
If here I mot thee see.

17
‘And thy too brethren, Adam Bell
And Clim of the Clough;
Against a thousand men, and more,
We foure would be enough.

18
‘Growne it is full foure a clocke,
And night will come beliue;
Come on, thou lurden, Cislei’s loue,
This night must I thee shriue.

19
‘Prepare thee strong, thou fow[l] black caufe!
What ere thou be, I weene
I’le giue thy coxcomb saick a gird
In Mansfield as neuer was seene.’

20
William a yong faune had slaine,
In Sherwood, merry forrest;
A fairer faune for man’s meat
In Sherwood was neuer drest.

21
Hee hied then till a northerne lasse,
Not halfe a mile him fro;
He said, Dop dore, thou good old nurse,
That in to thee I goe.

22
‘I faint with being in the wood;
Lo heere I haue a kid,
Which I haue slo for thee and I;
Come dresse it then, I bid.

23
‘Fetch bread and other iolly fare,
Whereof thou hast some store;
A blither gest this hundred yeare
Came neuer here before.’

24
The good old nant gan hie a pace
To let yong William in;
‘A happie nurse,’ quoth William then,
‘As can be lightly seene.

25
‘Wend till that house hard by,’ quoth he,
‘That’s made of lime and stone,
Where is a lasse, faire Cisse,’ hee said;
‘I loue her as my owne.

26
‘If thou can fetch her vnto me,
That we may merry be,
I make a vow, in the forrest,
Of deare thou shalt haue fee.’

27
‘Rest then, faire sir,’ the woman said;
‘I sweare by good Saint Iohn,
I will bring to you that same maide
Full quickly and anon.’

28
‘Meane time,’ quoth William, ‘I’le be cooke
And see the faune i-drest;
A stouter cooke did neuer come
Within the faire forrest.’

29
Thick blith old lasse had wit enow
For to declare his minde;
So fast she hi’d, and nere did stay,
But left William behind.

30
Where William, like a nimble cooke,
Is dressing of the fare,
And for this damsell doth he looke;
‘I would that she were here!’

31
‘Good speed, blithe Cisse,’ quoth that old lasse;
‘God dild yee,’ quoth Cisley againe;
‘How done you, nant Ione?’ she said,
‘Tell me it, I am faine.’

32
The good old Ione said weele she was,
‘And commen in an arrand till you;
For you must to my cottage gone,
Full quick, I tell you true;

33
‘Where we full merry meane to be,
All with my elder lad:’
When Cissley heard of it, truely,
She was exceeding glad.

34
‘God’s curse light on me,’ quoth Cissley tho,
‘If with you I doe not hie;
I neuer ioyed more forsooth
Then in your company.’

35
Happy the good-wife thought her selfe
That of her purpose she had sped,
And home with Cisley she doth come,
So lightly did they tread.

36
And comming in, here William soone
Had made ready his fare;
The good old wife did wonder much
So soone as she came there.

37
Cisley to William now is come,
God send her mickle glee!
Yet was she in a maze, God wot,
When she saw it was hee.

38
‘Had I beene ware, good sir,’ she said,
‘Of that it had beene you,
I would haue staid at home in sooth,
I tell you very true.’

39
‘Faire Cisley,’ then said William kind,
‘Misdeeme thou not of mee;
I sent not for thee to the end
To do thee iniury.

40
‘Sit downe, that we may talke a while,
And eate all of the best
And fattest kidde that euer was slaine
In merry Sirwood forrest.’

41
His louing words wan Cisley then
To keepe with him a while;
But in the meane time Cislei’s loue
Of her was tho beguile.

42
A stout and sturdie man he was
Of quality and kind,
And knowne through all the north country
To beare a noble minde.

43
‘But what,’ quoth William, ‘do I care?
If that he meane to weare,
First let him winne; els neuer shall
He haue the maide, I sweare.’

44
Full softly is her louer come,
And knocked at the dore;
But tho he mist of Cislei’s roome,
Whereat he stampt and swore.

45
‘A mischief on his heart,’ quoth he,
‘That hath enlured the maide
To be with him in company!’
He car’d not what he sayd.

46
He was so with anger mooued
He sware a well great oth,
‘Deere should he pay, if I him knew,
Forsooth and by my troth!’

47
Gone he is to finde her out,
Not knowing where she is;
Still wandring in the weary wood,
His true-loue he doth misse.

48
William purchast hath the game,
Which he doth meane to hold:
‘Come rescew her, and if you can,
And dare to be so bold!’

49
At length when he had wandred long
About the forrest wide,
A candle-light a furlong off
Full quickly he espied.

50
Then to the house he hied him fast,
Where quickly he gan here
The voice of his owne deere true-loue,
A making bonny cheere.

51
Then gan he say to Cisley tho,
O Cisley, come a way!
I haue beene wandring thee to finde
Since shutting in of day.

52
‘Who calls faire Cisse?’ quoth William then;
‘What carle dares bee so bold
Once to aduenture to her to speake
Whom I haue now in hold?’

53
‘List thee, faire sir,’ quoth Cislei’s loue,
‘Let quickly her from you part;
For all your lordly words, I sweare
I’le haue her, or make you smart.’

54
Yong William to his bright browne sword
Gan quickly then to take:
‘Because thou so dost challenge me,
I’le make thy kingdome quake.

55
‘Betake thee to thy weapon strong;
Faire time I giue to thee;
And for my loue as well as thine
A combat fight will I.’

56
‘Neuer let sonne,’ quoth Cislei’s loue,
‘Shine more vpon my head,
If I doe flie, by heauen aboue,
Wert thou a giant bred.’

57
To bilbo-blade gat William tho,
And buckler stiffe and strong;
A stout battaile then they fought,
Well nie two houres long.

58
Where many a grieuous wound was giue
To each on either part;
Till both the champions then were droue
Almost quite out of heart.

59
Pitteous mone faire Cisley made,
That all the forrest rong;
The grieuous shrikes made such a noise,
She had so shrill a tongue.

60
At last came in the keepers three,
With bowes and arrowes keene,
Where they let flie among these two,
An hundred as I weene.

61
William, stout and strong in heart,
When he had them espied,
Set on corrage for his part;
Among the thickst he hied.

62
The chiefe ranger of the woods
At first did William smite;
Where, at on blow, he smot his head
Fro off his shoulders quite.

63
And being in so furious teene,
About him then he laid;
He slew immediatly the wight
Was sutor to the maide.

64
Great moane was then made;
The like was neuer heard;
Which made the people all around
To crie, they were so feard.

65
‘Arme! arme!’ the country cried,
‘For God’s loue quickly hie!’
Neuer was such a slaughter seene
In all the north country.

66
Will[iam] still, though wounded sore,
Continued in his fight
Till he had slaine them all foure,
That very winter-night.

67
All the country then was raisd,
The traytor for to take
That for the loue of Cisley faire
Had all this slaughter make.

68
To the woods hied William tho—
’Twas best of all his play—
Where in a caue with Cisley faire
He liued many a day.

69
Proclamation then was sent
The country all around,
The lord of Mansfield should he be
That first the traytor found.

70
Till the court these tydings came,
Where all men did bewaile
The yong and lusty William,
Which so had made them quaile.

71
Hied vp then William Cloudesley,
And lustie Adam Bell,
And famous Clim of the Clough,
Which three then did excell.

72
To the king they hied them fast,
Full quickly and anon;
‘Mercy I pray,’ quoth old William,
‘For William my sonne.’

73
‘No mercy, traitors,’ quoth the king,
‘Hangd shall yee be all foure;
Vnder my nose this plot haue you laid
To bringe to passe before.’

74
‘In sooth,’ bespake then Adam Bell,
‘Ill signe Your Grace hath seene
Of any such comotion
Since with you we haue beene.

75
‘If then we can no mercy haue,
But leese both life and goods,
Of your good grace we take our leaue
And hie vs to the woods.’

76
‘Arme, arme,’ then quoth the king,
‘My merry men euerychone,
Full fast againe these rebbells now
Vnto the woods are gone.

77
‘A, wo is vs! what shall we doo,
Or which way shall we worke,
To hunt them forth out of the woods,
So traytrouslie there that lurke?’

78
‘List you,’ quoth a counsellor graue,
A wise man he seemd;
The[n] craued the king his pardon free
Vnto them to haue deemd.

79
‘God’s forbod!’ quoth the king,
‘I neuer it will do!
For they shall hang, each mother’s sonne;
Faire sir, I tell you true.’

80
Fifty thousand men were charged
After them for to take;
Some of them, set in sundry townes,
In companies did waite.

81
To the woods gan some to goe,
In hope to find them out;
And them perforce they thought to take,
If they might find them out.

82
To the woods still as they came
Dispatched still they were;
Which made full many a trembling heart,
And many a man in feare.

83
Still the outlawes, Adam Bell
And Clim of the Clough,
Made iolly cheere with venison,
Strong drinke and wine enough.

84
‘Christ me blesse!’ then said our king,
‘Such men were neuer knowne;
They are the stoutest-hearted men
That manhoode euer showne.

85
‘Come, my secretary good,
And cause to be declared
A generall pardone to them all,
Which neuer shall be discared.

86
‘Liuing plenty shall they haue,
Of gold and eke of fee,
If they will, as they did before,
Come liue in court with me.’

87
Sodenly went forth the newes,
Declared by trumpets sound,
Whereof these three were well aduis’d,
In caue as they were in ground.

88
‘But list you, sirs,’ quoth William yong,
‘I dare not trust the king;
It is some fetch is in his head,
Whereby to bring vs in.

89
‘Nay, stay we here: or first let me
A messenger be sent
Vnto the court, where I may know
His Maiestie’s intent.’

90
This pleased Adam Bell:
‘So may we liue in peace,
We are at his most high command,
And neuer will we cease.

91
‘But if that still we shall be vrged,
And called by traitrous name,
And threated hanging for euery thing,
His Highnesse is to blame.

92
‘Neare had His Grace subiects more true,
And sturdier then wee,
Which are at His Highnesse will;
God send him well to bee!’

93
So to the court is yong William gone,
To parley with the king,
Where all men to the king’s presence
Did striue him for to bring.

94
When he before the king was come,
He kneeled down full low;
He shewed quickly to the king
What duty they did owe;

95
In such delightfull order blith,
The king was quickly wonne
To comfort them in their request,
As he before had done.

96
‘Fetch bread and drinke,’ then said His Grace,
‘And meat all of the best;
And stay all night here at the court,
And soundly take thy rest.’

97
‘Gramercies to Your Grace,’ said William,
‘For pardon graunted I see:’
‘For signe thereof, here take my seale,
And for more certainty.’

98
‘God’s curse vpon me,’ sayd William,
‘For my part if I meane
Euer againe to stirre vp strife!
It neuer shall bee seene.’

99
The nobles all to William came,
He was so stout and trimme,
And all the ladies, for very ioy,
Did come to welcome him.

100
‘Faire Cisley now I haue to wife,
In field I haue her wonne;’
‘Bring her here, for God’s loue,’ said they all,
‘Full welcome shall she be [soone].’

101
Forth againe went William backe,
To wood that he did hie,
And to his father there he shewd
The king his pardone free.

102
‘Health to His Grace,’ quoth Adam Bell,
‘I beg it on my knee!’
The like said Clim of the Clough,
And William of Cloudesley.

103
To the court they all prepare,
Euen as fast as they can hie,
Where graciously they were receiud,
With mirth and merry glee.

104
Cisley faire is wend alone
Vpon a gelding faire;
A proprer damsell neuer came
In any courtly ayre.

105
‘Welcome, Cisley,’ said the queene,
‘A lady I thee make,
To wait vpon my owne person,
In all my chiefest state.’

106
So quickly was this matter done,
Which was so hardly doubted,
That all contentions after that
From court were quickly rowted.

107
Fauourable was the king;
So good they did him finde,
The[y] neuer after sought againe
To vex his royall minde.

108
Long time they liued in court,
So neare vnto the king
That neuer after was attempt
Offred for any thing.

109
God aboue giue all men grace
In quiet for to liue,
And not rebelliously abroad
Their princes for to grieue.

110
Let not the hope of pardon mooue
A subiect to attempt
His soueraigne’s anger, or his loue
From him for to exempt.

111
But that all men may ready be
With all their maine and might
To serue the Lord, and loue the King,
In honor, day and night!

* * * * *

#a.# 1^4. In mickle.

6^1. Some.

13^4. canst thou.

20^3. man’s y-meat.

21^2. he fro.

28^2. I drest.

35^2. That her purpose he had of sped.

35^4. they read.

37^4. amaze.

46^1. was yso.

64^1. ythen.

76^2. euery chone.

92^1. more subjects true.

93^3. Which _for_ Where.

#b.# 1^4. In many.

5^2. will _for_ well.

6^1. Soone.

6^3. to thee.

13^1. sword _for_ strong.

13^4. thou canst.

18^4. I must.

19^1. ffowle.

19^4. was neuer.

20^3. man’s meate.

21^2. him ffroe.

21^3. dop the.

22^3. slaine ffor thee & mee.

28^2. To see: well drest.

31^1. God speed.

31^3. doe yee.

32^1. woman _for_ Ione.

32^2. in _wanting_: to you.

35^2. of her purpose shee had sped.

35^4. they did tread.

37^3. a maze.

40^3. The ffattest.

44^3. mist Cisleys companye.

45^2. allured this.

46^1. soe.

52^4. in my _for_ now in.

57^2. That was both stiffe.

57^4. Weer neere.

61^1. strong & stout.

66^1. Will_ia_m.

68^2. Itt was the best.

73^2. You shall be hanged.

73^3. plott yee have.

76^2. euer-eche one.

78^3. The craued.

79^4. I tell you verry true.

86^1. Liuings.

92^1. subiects more true.

93^3. Where.

97^1. Gramercy.

100^4. Welcome shee shall bee soone.

104^1. is gone.

105^4. cheefe estate.

106^4. rooted.

107^3. ffought _for_ sought.

117

A GEST OF ROBYN HODE

#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 this 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 7^1, 339^1, 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.

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

Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude
Waythmen ware commendyd gude;
In Yngilwode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.

Laing, II, 263.

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:”

Ther were tynkerris in tarlottus, the met was fulle goode,
The “sowe sat one him benche” (_sic_), and harppyd Robyn Hoode.

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

He that made this songe full good
Came of the northe and of the sothern blode,
And somewhat kyne to Robyn Hode.

Gutch, Robin Hood, I, 55 f.

These passages show the popularity of Robin Hood ballads for a century or more before 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, abbots, 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]

Friar 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:

At Paske began our Morris, and ere Penticost our May;
Tho Robin Hood, Liell John, Frier Tucke and Marian deftly play,
And Lard and Ladie gang till kirk, with lads and lasses gay.[51]

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 morris 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 and 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 or 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.

Glosyng is a ful glorious thing certayn.

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]

Ballads 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, are 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, 135^1.) 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, 126^4, 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 retreat, 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]