What! shall we have incision? shall we embrew?
--Henry IV.
Old Sir Guy of Gamwell, and young William Gamwell, and fair Alice
Gamwell, and Sir Ralph Montfaucon and his squire, rode together the
next morning to the scene of the feast. They arrived on a village green,
surrounded with cottages peeping from among the trees by which the
green was completely encircled. The whole circle was hung round with one
continuous garland of flowers, depending in irregular festoons from the
branches. In the centre of the green was a May-pole hidden in boughs
and garlands; and a multitude of round-faced bumpkins and cherry-checked
lasses were dancing around it, to the quadruple melody of Scrapesqueak,
Whistlerap, Trumtwang, and Muggledrone: harmony we must not call it;
for, though they had agreed to a partnership in point of tune, each,
like a true painstaking man, seemed determined to have his time to
himself: Muggledrone played allegretto, Trumtwang allegro, Whistlerap
presto, and Scrapesqueak prestissimo. There was a kind of mathematical
proportion in their discrepancy: while Muggledrone played the tune four
times, Trumtwang played it five, Whistlerap six, and Scrapesqueak eight;
for the latter completely distanced all his competitors, and indeed
worked his elbow so nimbly that its outline was scarcely distinguishable
through the mistiness of its rapid vibration.
While the knight was delighting his eyes and ears with these pleasant
sights and sounds, all eyes were turned in one direction; and Sir Ralph,
looking round, saw a fair lady in green and gold come riding through the
trees, accompanied by a portly friar in grey, and several fair damsels
and gallant grooms. On their nearer approach, he recognised the lady
Matilda and her ghostly adviser, brother Michael. A party of foresters
arrived from another direction, and then ensued cordial interchanges of
greeting, and collisions of hands and lips, among the Gamwells and the
new-comers,--“How does my fair coz, Mawd?” and “How does my sweet coz,
Mawd?” and “How does my wild coz, Mawd?” And “Eh! jolly friar, your
hand, old boy:” and “Here, honest friar:” and “To me, merry friar:” and
“By your favour, mistress Alice:” and “Hey! cousin Robin:” and “Hey!
cousin Will:” and “Od’s life! merry Sir Guy, you grow younger every
year,”--as the old knight shook them all in turn with one hand, and
slapped them on the back with the other, in token of his affection. A
number of young men and women advanced, some drawing, and others dancing
round, a floral car; and having placed a crown of flowers on Matilda’s
head, they saluted her Queen of the May, and drew her to the place
appointed for the rural sports.
A hogshead of ale was abroach under an oak, and a fire was blazing in
an open space before the trees to roast the fat deer which the foresters
brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series of
bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning,
wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing or
amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued. The conqueror
was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand of the Queen of the
May, who was to be his partner in the dance till the close of the feast.
This stimulated the knight’s emulation: young Gamwell supplied him with
a bow and arrow, and he took his station among the foresters, but had
the mortification to be out-shot by them all, and to see one of them
lodge the point of his arrow in the golden ring of the centre, and
receive the prize from the hand of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on
him with particular grace. The jealous knight scrutinised the successful
champion with great attention, and surely thought he had seen that face
before. In the mean time the forester led the lady to the station. The
luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless grace
of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand, and adjusting the
arrow with her right, advancing her left foot, and gently curving her
beautiful figure with a slight motion of her head that waved her black
feathers and her ringleted hair, she drew the arrow to its head, and
loosed it from her open fingers. The arrow struck within the ring of
gold, so close to that of the victorious forester that the points were
in contact, and the feathers were intermingled. Great acclamations
succeeded, and the forester led Matilda to the dance. Sir Ralph gazed
on her fascinating motions till the torments of baffled love and jealous
rage became unendurable; and approaching young Gamwell, he asked him
if he knew the name of that forester who was leading the dance with the
Queen of the May?
“Robin, I believe,” said young Gamwell carelessly; “I think they call
him Robin.”
“Is that all you know of him?” said Sir Ralph.
“What more should I know of him?” said young Gamwell.
“Then I can tell you,” said Sir Ralph, “he is the outlawed Earl of
Huntingdon, on whose head is set so large a price.”
“Ay, is he?” said young Gamwell, in the same careless manner.
“He were a prize worth the taking,” said Sir Ralph.
“No doubt,” said young Gamwell.
“How think you?” said Sir Ralph: “are the foresters his adherents?”
“I cannot say,” said young Gamwell.
“Is your peasantry loyal and well-disposed?” said Sir Ralph.
“Passing loyal,” said young Gamwell.
“If I should call on them in the king’s name,” said Sir Ralph, “think
you they would aid and assist?”
“Most likely they would,” said young Gamwell, “one side or the other.”
“Ay, but which side?” said the knight.
“That remains to be tried,” said young Gamwell.
“I have King Henry’s commission,” said the knight, “to apprehend this
earl that was. How would you advise me to act, being, as you see,
without attendant force?”
“I would advise you,” said young Gamwell, “to take yourself off without
delay, unless you would relish the taste of a volley of arrows, a shower
of stones, and a hailstorm of cudgel-blows, which would not be turned
aside by a God save King Henry.”
Sir Ralph’s squire no sooner heard this, and saw by the looks of the
speaker that he was not likely to prove a false prophet, than he clapped
spurs to his horse and galloped off with might and main. This gave the
knight a good excuse to pursue him, which he did with great celerity,
calling, “Stop, you rascal.” When the squire fancied himself safe out
of the reach of pursuit, he checked his speed, and allowed the knight
to come up with him. They rode on several miles in silence, till
they discovered the towers and spires of Nottingham, where the knight
introduced himself to the sheriff, and demanded an armed force to assist
in the apprehension of the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon. The sheriff, who
was willing to have his share of the prize, determined to accompany the
knight in person, and regaled him and his man with good store of the
best; after which, they, with a stout retinue of fifty men, took the way
to Gamwell feast.
“God’s my life,” said the sheriff, as they rode along, “I had as lief
you would tell me of a service of plate. I much doubt if this outlawed
earl, this forester Robin, be not the man they call Robin Hood, who
has quartered himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring
to apprehend I have fallen divers times into disasters. He has
gotten together a band of disinherited prodigals, outlawed debtors,
excommunicated heretics, elder sons that have spent all they had, and
younger sons that never had any thing to spend; and with these he kills
the king’s deer, and plunders wealthy travellers of five-sixths of their
money; but if they be abbots or bishops, them he despoils utterly.”
The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure of
the abbot of Doubleflask (which some grave historians have related of
the abbot of Saint Mary’s, and others of the bishop of Hereford): how
the abbot, returning to his abbey in company with his high selerer,
who carried in his portmanteau the rents of the abbey-lands, and with a
numerous train of attendants, came upon four seeming peasants, who
were roasting the king’s venison by the king’s highway: how, in just
indignation at this flagrant infringement of the forest laws, he asked
them what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine: how he
ordered them to be seized and bound, and led captive to Nottingham,
that they might know wild-flesh to have been destined by Providence
for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for the base hunger of
unqualified knaves: how they prayed for mercy, and how the abbot swore
by Saint Charity that he would show them none: how one of them thereupon
drew a bugle horn from under his smock-frock and blew three blasts, on
which the abbot and his train were instantly surrounded by sixty bowmen
in green: how they tied him to a tree, and made him say mass for their
sins: how they unbound him, and sate him down with them to dinner, and
gave him venison and wild-fowl and wine, and made him pay for his fare
all the money in his high selerer’s portmanteau, and enforced him to
sleep all night under a tree in his cloak, and to leave the cloak behind
him in the morning: how the abbot, light in pocket and heavy in heart,
raised the country upon Robin Hood, for so he had heard the chief
forester called by his men, and hunted him into an old woman’s cottage:
how Robin changed dresses with the old woman, and how the abbot rode in
great triumph to Nottingham, having in custody an old woman in a green
doublet and breeches: how the old woman discovered herself: how the
merrymen of Nottingham laughed at the abbot: how the abbot railed at the
old woman, and how the old woman out-railed the abbot, telling him that
Robin had given her food and fire through the winter, which no abbot
would ever do, but would rather take it from her for what he called the
good of the church, by which he meant his own laziness and gluttony; and
that she knew a true man from a false thief, and a free forester from a
greedy abbot.
“Thus you see,” added the sheriff, “how this villain perverts the
deluded people by making them believe that those who tithe and toll upon
them for their spiritual and temporal benefit are not their best friends
and fatherly guardians; for he holds that in giving to boors and old
women what he takes from priests and peers, he does but restore to the
former what the latter had taken from them; and this the impudent varlet
calls distributive justice. Judge now if any loyal subject can be safe
in such neighbourhood.”
While the sheriff was thus enlightening his companion concerning the
offenders, and whetting his own indignation against them, the sun was
fast sinking to the west. They rode on till they came in view of a
bridge, which they saw a party approaching from the opposite side, and
the knight presently discovered that the party consisted of the lady
Matilda and friar Michael, young Gamwell, cousin Robin, and about
half-a-dozen foresters. The knight pointed out the earl to the sheriff,
who exclaimed, “Here, then, we have him an easy prey;” and they rode on
manfully towards the bridge, on which the other party made halt.
“Who be these,” said the friar, “that come riding so fast this way? Now,
as God shall judge me, it is that false knight Sir Ralph Montfaucon, and
the sheriff of Nottingham, with a posse of men. We must make good our
post, and let them dislodge us if they may.”
The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff and the
knight, advancing in the front of the cavalcade, called on the lady,
the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters, to deliver up that
false-traitor, Robert, formerly Earl of Huntingdon. Robert himself made
answer by letting fly an arrow that struck the ground between the fore
feet of the sheriff’s horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing, and
lodged the sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time, the fair Matilda
favoured the knight with an arrow in his right arm, that compelled him
to withdraw from the affray. His men lifted the sheriff carefully up,
and replaced him on his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and
zeal urged on to the assault with his fifty men at his heels, some of
whom were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters
and Matilda; while the friar, with an eight-foot staff, dislodged the
sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all the vigour of the church
militant on earth, in spite of his ejaculations of “Hey, friar
Michael! What means this, honest friar? Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy
friar!”--till Matilda interposed, and delivered the battered sheriff
to the care of the foresters. The friar continued flourishing his
staff among the sheriff’s men, knocking down one, breaking the ribs of
another, dislocating the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of
a fourth, cracking the skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the
river, till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole bones,
clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives, under a farewell
volley of arrows.
Sir Ralph’s squire, meanwhile, was glad of the excuse of attending
his master’s wound to absent himself from the battle; and put the poor
knight to a great deal of unnecessary pain by making as long a business
as possible of extracting the arrow, which he had not accomplished when
Matilda, approaching, extracted it with great facility, and bound up
the wound with her scarf, saying, “I reclaim my arrow, sir knight, which
struck where I aimed it, to admonish you to desist from your enterprise.
I could as easily have lodged it in your heart.”
“It did not need,” said the knight, with rueful gallantry; “you have
lodged one there already.”
“If you mean to say that you love me,” said Matilda, “it is more than I
ever shall you: but if you will show your love by no further interfering
with mine, you will at least merit my gratitude.”
The knight made a wry face under the double pain of heart and
body caused at the same moment by the material or martial, and the
metaphorical or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a
declaration more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put
in any such claim to the lady’s gratitude as would bar all hopes of her
love: he therefore remained silent; and the lady and her escort, leaving
him and the sheriff to the care of the squire, rode on till they came in
sight of Arlingford Castle, when they parted in several directions. The
friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him they
heard his voice through the twilight, singing,--
A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff,
That is both stoure and stiff,
Is all a good friar can needs desire
To shrive a proud sheriffe.
And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so
Of the forester’s greenwood game,
Wilt be in no haste thy time to waste
In seeking more taste of the same:
Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well,
Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell,
Than the sheriff of Nottinghame.