"With awkward stride there city groom
Would part of fabled knight assume."
614. Robin Hood. Scott says here: "The exhibition of this renowned
outlaw and his band was a favorite frolic at such festivals as we are
describing. This sporting, in which kings did not disdain to be actors,
was prohibited in Scotland upon the Reformation, by a statute of the 6th
Parliament of Queen Mary, c. 61, A. D. 1555, which ordered, under heavy
penalties that 'na manner of person be chosen Robert Hude, nor Little
John, Abbot of Unreason, Queen of May, nor otherwise.' But in 1561, the
'rascal multitude,' says John Knox, 'were stirred up to make a Robin
Hude, whilk enormity was of mony years left and damned by statute and
act of Paliament; yet would they not be forbidden.' Accordingly
they raised a very serious tumult, and at length made prisoners the
magistrates who endeavored to suppress it, and would not release them
till they extorted a formal promise that no one should be punished for
his share of the disturbance. It would seem, from the complaints of
the General Assembly of the Kirk, that these profane festivities were
continued down to 1592 (Book of the Universal Kirk, p. 414). Bold Robin
was, to say the least, equally successful in maintaining his ground
against the reformed clergy of England; for the simple and evangelical
Latimer complains of coming to a country church where the people refused
to hear him because it was Robin Hood's day, and his mitre and rochet
were fain to give way to the village pastime. Much curious information
on this subject may be found in the Preliminary Dissertation to the late
Mr. Ritson's edition of the songs respecting this memorable outlaw. The
game of Robin Hood was usually acted in May; and he was associated with
the morrice-dancers, on whom so much illustration has been bestowed
by the commentators on Shakespeare. A very lively picture of these
festivities, containing a great deal of curious information on the
subject of the private life and amusements of our ancestors, was thrown,
by the late ingenious Mr. Strutt, into his romance entitled Queen-hoo
Hall, published after his death, in 1808."
615. Friar Tuck. "Robin Hood's fat friar," as Shakespeare calls him
(T. G. of V. iv. 1. 36), who figures in the Robin Hood ballads and
in Ivanhoe. Scarlet and Little John are mentioned in one of Master
Silence's snatches of song in 2 Hen. IV. v. 3. 107: "And Robin, Scarlet,
and John." Scathelocke is a brother of Scarlet in Ben Jonson's Sad
Shepherd, which is a "Tale of Robin Hood," and Mutch is a bailiff in the
same play.