+The Text+ is modernised from the Percy Folio MS. (c. 1650). At two
points, after 8.3 and 18.2, half a page of the MS., or about nine
stanzas, is missing--torn out and 'used by maids to light the fire'
in Humphry Pitt's house, where Percy discovered the volume (see
Introduction, First Series, xxxix.). At the end another half-page is
lacking, but Child thinks that it represents only a few verses. He also
indicates a lacuna after st. 4, though none appears in the MS.
+The Story+ of this version, mutilated as it is, agrees in its main
incidents with that given at the end of the _Gest_ (stt. 451-455).
Another variant, _Robin Hood's Death and Burial_, extant in two or three
eighteenth-century 'Garlands,' but none the less of good derivation,
gives no assistance at either hiatus, and we are left with a couple of
puzzles.
The opening of the ballad, stt. 1-6, should be compared with _Robin Hood
and the Monk_, stt. 6-10, where Much takes Will Scarlett's place. Robin,
shooting for a penny with Little John along the way, comes to a black
water with a plank across it, and an old woman on the plank is cursing
Robin Hood. He has been already reminded by Scarlett that he has a
yeoman foe at Kirklees; but neither the banning of the witch, nor the
weeping of others ('We,' 9.3), presumably women, deter him. The
explanation of the witch is lost.
Having arrived at Kirklees and submitted to being bled, Robin at length
suspects treason, and hints as much to Little John. The latter may be
indoors with his master, or, as Child thinks, calling to Robin through a
window from below. Here the second hiatus occurs; and when the ballad
resumes, we can only guess that st. 19 is Robin's final retort after an
altercation with somebody, presumably Red Roger, who is perhaps the
'yeoman' referred to by Will Scarlett. A final difficulty is raised by
the word 'mood' in st. 23; but Child's emendation is not improbable, and
Robin himself realises that he must take his 'housel' in an irregular
way.
In the Garland version Robin goes alone to Kirklees, where his 'cousin'
bleeds him, and leaves him to bleed all day and all night in a locked
room. He summons Little John with 'weak blasts three' of his horn, and
bids him dig a grave where the last arrow shot by Robin Hood falls.