"A the Austen fryers
They count us for lyers:
And at Saynt Thomas of Akers
They carpe us lyke crakers."
--Skelton's _Colin Clout_ (Works, ed. Dyce, i. 357).
This tale is imitated in _Hobson's Conceits_.
P. 60. _Of the gentylman, that promysed the scoler of Oxforde a sarcenet
typet_--Sarcenet, at the period to which this story refers, was a
material which only certain persons were allowed to wear. See Nicolas'
note to a passage in the _Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York_, p.
220. This jest is transplanted by Johnson, with very little alteration,
into the _Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson_, 1607.
P. 78. _Therefore I pray thee, teche me my Pater noster, and by my
truthe, I shall therfore teche thee a songe of Robyn Hode that shall be
worth xx of it!_
The following passage from a poem, which has been sometimes ascribed to
Skelton, is a curious illustration of this paragraph:--
Thus these sysmatickes,
And lowsy lunatickes,
With spurres and prickes
Call true men heretickes.
They finger their fidles,
And cry in quinibles,
Away these bibles,
For they be but ridles!
And give them Robyn Whode,
To red howe he stode
In mery grene wode,
When he gathered good,
Before Noyes ffloodd!
_The Image of Ipocrysy_, Part iii.