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.