Yorkshire and Ludlow in Shropshire, are termed Robin Hood’s pricks or
butts; lofty natural eminences in Gloucestershire and Derbyshire are
Robin Hood’s hills; a huge rock near Matlock is Robin Hood’s Tor; an
ancient boundary stone in Lincolnshire is Robin Hood’s cross; a presumed
loggan, or rocking-stone, in Yorkshire is Robin Hood’s penny-stone; a
fountain near Nottingham, another between Doncaster and Wakefield, and
one in Lancashire are Robin Hood’s wells; a cave in Nottinghamshire is
his stable; a rude natural rock in Hope Dale is his chair; a chasm at
Chatsworth is his leap; Blackstone Edge, in Lancashire, is his bed;
ancient oaks, in various parts of the country, are his trees.”[59] All
sorts of traditions are fitted to the localities where they are known.
It would be an exception to ordinary rules if we did not find Robin Hood
trees and Robin Hood wells and Robin Hood hills. But, says Wright, in
his essay on the Robin Hood ballads (p. 208), the connection of Robin
Hood’s name with mounds and stones is perhaps one of the strongest
proofs of his mythic character, as if Robin Hood were conceived of as a
giant. The fact in question is rather a proof that those names were
conferred at a time when the real character of Robin Hood was dimly
remembered. In the oldest ballads Robin Hood is simply a stout yeoman,
one of the best that ever bare bow; in the later ballads he is
repeatedly foiled in contests with shepherds and beggars. Is it
supposable that those who knew of him even at his best estate, could
give him a loggan for a penny-stone? No one has as yet undertaken to
prove that the ballads are later than the names.[60] Mounds and stones
bear his name for the same idle reason that “so many others have that of
King Arthur, King John, and, for want of a better, that of the
devil.”[61]
Kuhn, starting with the assumption that the mythical character of Robin
Hood is fully established (by traditions posterior to the ballads and
contradictory to their tenor), has sought to show that our courteous
outlaw is in particular one of the manifestations of Woden. The
hobby-horse, which, be it borne in mind, though now and then found in
the May-game or morris-dance, was never intimately associated, perhaps
we may say never at all associated, with Robin Hood, represents, it is
maintained, Woden. The fundamental grounds are these. In a Christmas,
New Year, or Twelfth Day sport at Paget’s Bromley, Staffordshire, the
rider of the hobby-horse held a bow and arrow in his hands, with which
he made a snapping noise. In a modern Christmas festivity in Kent, the
young people would affix the head of a horse to a pole about four feet
in length, and tie a cloth round the head to conceal one of the party,
who, by pulling a string attached to the horse’s lower jaw, produced a
snapping noise as he moved along. This ceremony, according to the
reporter, was called a _hoodening_, and the figure of the horse a
_hooden_, “a wooden horse.”[62] The word hooden, according to Kuhn, we
may unhesitatingly expound as Woden; Hood is a corruption of “Hooden,”
and this Hooden again conducts us to Woden.
Glosyng is a ful glorious thing certayn.
The sport referred to is explained in Pegge’s Alphabet of Kenticisms
(collected 1735–36), under the name _hooding_, as a country masquerade
at Christmas time, which in Derbyshire they call guising, and in other
places mumming; and to the same effect in the Rev. W. D. Parish’s
Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect (soon to be published) under
_hoodening_, which word is an obvious corruption, or secondary form, of
hooding. The word hooding, applied to the sport, means just what it does
in the old English hooding-cloth, a curtain; that is, a covering, and so
a disguise by covering. It is true that wooden is pronounced hooden,[63]
or ooden, in Kent, and that the hobby-horse had a wooden head, but it is
quite inconceivable that the sport should receive its name from a
circumstance so subordinate as the material of which the horse was made.
Such an interpretation would hardly be thought of had not hooding in its
proper sense long been obsolete. That this is the case is plain from two
facts: the hooding used to be accompanied with carol-singing, and the
Rev. Mr Parish informs us that carol-singing on Christmas Eve is still
called hoodening at Monckton, in East Kent. The form Hooden, from which
Robin’s name is asserted by Kuhn to be corrupted, is invented for the
occasion. I suppose that no one will think that the hobby-horse-rider’s
carrying a bow and arrows, in the single instance of the Staffordshire
sport, conduces at all to the identifying of Robin Hood with the
hobby-horse. Whether the Hobby-Horse represents Woden is not material
here. It is enough that the Hobby-Horse cannot be shown to represent
Robin Hood.[64]
I cannot admit that even the shadow of a case has been made out by those
who would attach a mythical character either to Robin Hood or to the
outlaws of Inglewood, Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of
Cloudesly.[65]
Ballads of other nations, relating to classes of men living in revolt
against authority and society, may be expected to show some kind of
likeness to the English outlaw-ballads, and such resemblances will be
pointed out upon occasion. Spanish broadside ballads dating from the end
of the sixteenth century commemorate the valientes and guapos of cities,
robbers and murderers of the most flaunting and flagitious description:
Duran, Romancero, Nos 1331–36, 1339–43, II, 367 ff.[66] These display
towards corregidores, alcaides, customhouse officers, and all the
ministers of government an hostility corresponding to that of Robin Hood
against the sheriff; they empty the jails and deliver culprits from the
gallows; reminding us very faintly of the Robin Hood broadsides, as of
the rescues in Nos 140, 141, the Progress to Nottingham, No 139, in
which Robin Hood, at the age of fifteen, kills fifteen foresters, or of
Young Gamwell, in No 128, who begins his career by killing his father’s
steward.[67] But Robin Hood and his men, in the most degraded of the
broadsides, are tame innocents and law-abiding citizens beside the
guapos. The Klephts, whose songs are preserved in considerable numbers,
mostly from the last century and the present, have the respectability of
being engaged, at least in part, in a war against the Turks, and the
romance of wild mountaineers. They, like Robin Hood, had a marked
animosity against monks, and they put beys to ransom as he would an
abbot or a sheriff. There are Magyar robber-ballads in great number;[68]
some of these celebrate Shobri (a man of this century), who spares the
poor, relieves beggars, pillages priests (but never burns or kills), and
fears God: Erdélyi’s collection, I, 194–98, Nos 237–39; Arany-Gyulai,
II, 56, No 49; Kertbeny, Ausgewählte Ungarische Volkslieder, pp 246–251,
Nos 136–38; Aigner, pp 198–201. Russian robber-songs are given by
Sakharof, under the title Udaluiya, Skazaniya, 1841, I, iii, 224–32;
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, pp 44–50. There are a few Sicilian
robber-ballads in Pitré, Canti pop. Siciliani, Nos 913–16, II, 125–37.
The Gest is a popular epic, composed from several ballads by a poet of a
thoroughly congenial spirit. No one of the ballads from which it was
made up is extant in a separate shape, and some portions of the story
may have been of the compiler’s own invention. The decoying of the
sheriff into the wood, stanzas 181–204, is of the same derivation as the
last part of Robin Hood and the Potter, No 121, Little John and Robin
Hood exchanging parts; the conclusion, 451–56, is of the same source as
Robin Hood’s Death, No 120. Though the tale, as to all important
considerations, is eminently original, absolutely so as to the
conception of Robin Hood, some traits and incidents, as might be
expected, are taken from what we may call the general stock of mediæval
fiction.
The story is a three-ply web of the adventures of Robin Hood with a
knight, with the sheriff of Nottingham, and with the king (the
concluding stanzas, 451–56, being a mere epilogue), and may be
decomposed accordingly. I. How Robin Hood relieved a knight, who had
fallen into poverty, by lending him money on the security of Our Lady,
the first fit, 1–81; how the knight recovered his lands, which had been
pledged to Saint Mary Abbey, and set forth to repay the loan, the second
fit, 82–143; how Robin Hood, having taken twice the sum lent from a monk
of this abbey, declared that Our Lady had discharged the debt, and would
receive nothing more from the knight, the fourth fit, 205–280. II. How
Little John insidiously took service with Robin Hood’s standing enemy,
the sheriff of Nottingham, and put the sheriff into Robin Hood’s hands,
the third fit, 144–204; how the sheriff, who had sworn an oath to help
and not to harm Robin Hood and his men, treacherously set upon the
outlaws at a shooting-match, and they were fain to take refuge in the
knight’s castle; how, missing of Robin Hood, the sheriff made prisoner
of the knight; and how Robin Hood slew the sheriff and rescued the
knight, the fifth and sixth fit, 281–353. III. How the king, coming in
person to apprehend Robin Hood and the knight, disguised himself as an
abbot, was stopped by Robin Hood, feasted on his own deer, and
entertained with an exhibition of archery, in the course of which he was
recognized by Robin Hood, who asked his grace and received a promise
thereof, on condition that he and his men should enter into the king’s
service; and how the king, for a jest, disguised himself and his company
in the green of the outlaws, and going back to Nottingham caused a
general flight of the people, which he stopped by making himself known;
how he pardoned the knight; and how Robin Hood, after fifteen months in
the king’s court, heart-sick and deserted by all his men but John and
Scathlock, obtained a week’s leave of the king to go on a pilgrimage to
Saint Mary Magdalen of Barnsdale, and would never come back in
two-and-twenty years, the seventh and eighth fit, 354–450. A particular
analysis may be spared, seeing that many of the details will come out
incidentally in what follows.
Barnsdale, Robin Hood’s haunt in the Gest, 3, 21, 82, 134, 213, 262,
440, 442, is a woodland region in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a little
to the south of Pontefract and somewhat further to the north of
Doncaster. The river Went is its northern boundary. “The traveller
enters upon it [from the south] a little beyond a well-known place
called Robin Hood’s Well [some ten miles north of Doncaster, near
Skelbrook], and he leaves it when he has descended to Wentbridge.” (For
Wentbridge, see No 121, st. 6; the Gest, 135^1.) A little to the west is
Wakefield, and beyond Wakefield, between that town and Halifax, was the
priory of Kyrkesly or Kirklees. The Sayles, 18, was a very small tenancy
of the manor of Pontefract. The great North Road, formerly so called,
and here, 18, denominated Watling Street (as Roman roads often are),
crosses Barnsdale between Doncaster and Ferrybridge.[69] Saint Mary
Abbey, “here besyde,” 54, was at York, and must have been a good twenty
miles from Barnsdale. The knight, 126^4, is said to be “at home in
Verysdale.” Wyresdale (now Over and Nether Wyersdale) was an extensive
tract of wild country, part of the old forest of Lancashire, a few miles
to the southeast of Lancaster. The knight’s son had slain a knight and a
squire of Lancaster, #a#, Lancashire, #b#, #f#, #g#, 53. It is very
likely, therefore, that the knight’s castle, in the original ballad, was
in Lancashire. However this may be, it is put in the Gest, 309 f, on the
way between Nottingham and Robin Hood’s retreat, which must be assumed
to be Barnsdale. From it, again, Barnsdale is easily accessible to the
knight’s wife, 334 f.[70] Wherever it lay or lies, the distance from
Nottingham or from Barnsdale, as also the distance from Nottingham to
Barnsdale (actually some fifty miles), is made nothing of in the
Gest.[71] The sheriff goes a-hunting; John, who is left behind, does not
start from Nottingham till more than an hour after noon, takes the
sheriff’s silver to Barnsdale,[72] runs five miles in the forest, and
finds the sheriff still at his sport: 155 f, 168, 176–82. We must not be
nice. Robin Hood has made a vow to go from London to Barnsdale barefoot.
The distance thither and back would not be much short of three hundred
and fifty miles. King Edward allows him a seven-night, and no longer,
442 f. The compiler of the Gest did not concern himself to adjust these
matters. There was evidently at one time a Barnsdale cycle and a
Sherwood cycle of Robin Hood ballads. The sheriff of Nottingham would
belong to the Sherwood series (to which Robin Hood and the Monk
appertains). He is now a capital character in all the old Robin Hood
ballads. If he was adopted from the Sherwood into the Barnsdale set,
this was done without a rearrangement of the topography.
5–7. Robin Hood will not dine until he has some guest that can pay
handsomely for his entertainment, 18, 19, 206, 209; dinner, accordingly,
is sometimes delayed a long time, 25, 30, 143, 220; to Little John’s
impatience, 5, 16, 206, 211. This habit of Robin’s seems to be a
humorous imitation of King Arthur, who in numerous romances will not
dine till some adventure presents itself; a custom which, at least on
one occasion, proves vexatious to his court. Cf. I, 257 f.[73]
8–10. Robin’s general piety and his special devotion to the Virgin are
again to be remarked in No 118. There is a tale of a knight who had a
castle near a public road, and robbed everybody that went by, but said
his Ave every day, and never allowed anything to interfere with his so
doing, in Legenda Aurea, c. 51, Grässe, p. 221; Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer,
III, 563, No 86; Morlini Novellæ, Paris, 1855, p. 269, No 17, etc.
13–15. Robin’s practice corresponds closely with Gamelyn’s:
Whil Gamelyn was outlawed hadde he no cors;
There was no man that for him ferde the wors
But abbotes and priours, monk and chanoun;
On hem left he no-thing, whan he mighte hem nom.
vv 779–82, ed. Skeat.
Fulk Fitz Warine, nor any of his, during the time of his outlawry would
ever do hurt to any one except the king and his knights: Wright, p. 77
f.
45. “Distraint of knighthood,” or the practice of requiring military
tenants who held 20 _l._ per annum to receive knighthood, or pay a
composition, began under Henry III, as early as 1224, and was continued
by Edward I. This was regarded as a very serious oppression under James
I and Charles I, and was abolished in 1642. Stubbs, Constitutional
History, II, 281 f; Hallam, Constitutional History, ed. 1854, I, 338,
note x, II, 9, 99.
62–66. The knight has no security to offer for a loan “but God that dyed
on a tree,” and such security, or that of the saints, is peremptorily
rejected by Robin; but when the knight says that he can offer no other,
unless it be Our Lady, the Virgin is instantly accepted as entirely
satisfactory. In a well-known miracle of Mary, found in most of the
larger collections, a Christian, who resorts to a Jew to borrow money,
tenders Jesus as security, and the Jew, who regards Jesus as a just man
and a prophet, though not divine, is willing to lend on the terms
proposed. The Christian, not being able, as he says, to produce Jesus
Christ in person, takes the Jew to a church, and, standing before an
image of the Virgin and Child, causes him to take the hand of the Child,
saying, Lord Jesus Christ, whose image I have given as pledge for this
money, and whom I have offered this Jew as my surety, I beg and entreat
that, if I shall by any chance be prevented from returning the money to
this man upon the day fixed, but shall give it to thee, thou wilt return
it to him in such manner and form as may please thee. In the sequel this
miraculous interposition becomes necessary, and the money is punctually
restored, the act of grace being implicitly or distinctly attributed to
Mary rather than her Son; distinctly in an English form of the legend,
where the Christian, especially devoted to the Virgin, offers Saint Mary
for his borrow: Horstmann, Die altenglischen Marienlegenden des MS.
Vernon, in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, LVI, 232, No
6.[74]
107. The abbot had retained the chief justice “by robe and fee,” to
counsel and aid him in the spoliation of the knight, 93. Taking and
giving of robes and fees for such purposes is defined as conspiracy in a
statute of Edward I, 1305–06; and by another statute, 20 Edward III, c.
vi, 1346, justices are required to swear that they will take robes and
fees from no man but the king: et que vos ne prendrez fee, tant come vos
serez justicz, ne robes, de nul homme, graunt ne petit, sinoun du roi
meismes. Statutes of the Realm, I, 145, 305: cited by J. Lewelyn Curtis,
in Notes and Queries, S. I, VI, 479 f. All the English judges, including
the chief justice, were convicted of bribery and were removed, under
Edward I, 1289.
121. The knight would have given something for the use of the four
hundred pound had the abbot been civil, though under no obligation to
pay interest. In 270 the knight proffers Robin twenty mark (3⅓ per cent)
for his courtesy, which seemingly small sum was to be accompanied with
the valuable gift of a hundred bows and a hundred sheaf of
peacock-feathered, silver-nocked arrows. But though the abbot had not
lent for usury, still less had he lent for charity. The knight’s lands
were to be forfeited if the loan should not be punctually returned, 86
f, 94, 106; and of this the knight was entirely aware, 85. “As for
mortgaging or pawning,” says Bacon, Of Usury, “either men will not take
pawns without use, or, if they do, they will look precisely for the
forfeiture. I remember a cruel moneyed man in the country that would
say, The devil take this usury; it keeps us from forfeitures of
mortgages and bonds.” But troubles, legal or other, might ensue upon
this hard-dealing unless the knight would give a quittance, 117 f.
135–37. A ram was the prize for an ordinary wrestling-match; but this is
an occasion which brings together all the best yeomen of the West
Country, and the victor is to have a bull, a horse saddled and bridled,
a pair of gloves, a ring, and a pipe of wine. In Gamelyn “there was set
up a ram and a ring,” v. 172.
181–204. The sheriff is decoyed into the wood by Robin Hood in No 121,
56–69, No 122, #A#, 18–25, #B#, 20–27, as here by Little John. Fulk Fitz
Warine gets his enemy, King John, into his power by a like stratagem.
Fulk, disguised as a collier, is asked by King John if he has seen a
stag or doe pass. He has seen a horned beast; it had long horns. He
offers to take the king to the place where he saw it, and begs the king
to wait while he goes into the thicket to drive the beast that way.
Fulk’s men are in the forest: he tells them that he has brought the king
with only three knights; they rush out and seize the king. Fulk says he
will have John’s life, but the king promises to restore Fulk’s heritage
and all that had been taken from him and his men, and to be his friend
forever after. A pledge of faith is exacted and given, and very happy is
the king so to escape. But the king keeps the forced oath no better than
the sheriff. Wright, p. 145 ff. There is a passage which has the same
source, though differing in details, in Eustace the Monk, Michel, pp.
36–39, vv 995–1070. The story is incomparably better here than
elsewhere.
213–33. The black monks are Benedictines. There are two according to 213
f, 218, 225^4, but the high cellarer only (who in 91–93 is exultant over
the knight’s forfeiture) is of consequence, and the other is made no
account of. Seven score of wight young men, 229^3, is the right number
for a band of outlaws; so Gamelyn, v. 628. The sheriff has his seven
score in Guy of Gisborn, 13.
243–47. “What is in your coffers?” So Eustace the monk to the merchant,
v. 938, p. 34, Michel: “Di-moi combien tu as d’argent.” The merchant
tells the exact truth, and Eustace, having verified the answer by
counting, returns all the money, saying, If you had lied in the least,
you would not have carried off a penny. When Eustace asks the same
question of the abbot, v. 1765, p. 64, the abbot answers, after the
fashion of our cellarer, Four silver marks. Eustace finds thirty marks,
and returns to the abbot the four which he had confessed.
213–272. Nothing was ever more felicitously told, even in the best _dit_
or _fabliau_, than the “process” of Our Lady’s repaying the money which
had been lent on her security. Robin’s slyly significant welcome to the
monk upon learning that he is of Saint Mary Abbey, his professed anxiety
that Our Lady is wroth with him because she has not sent him his pay,
John’s comfortable suggestion that perhaps the monk has brought it,
Robin’s incidental explanation of the little business in which the
Virgin was a party, and request to see the silver in case the monk has
come upon her affair, are beautiful touches of humor, and so delicate
that it is all but brutal to point them out. The story, however, is an
old one, and was known, perhaps, wherever monks were known. A complete
parallel is afforded by Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst, No 59 (c. 1515). A
nobleman took a burgess’s son prisoner in war, carried him home to his
castle, and shut him up in a tower. After lying there a considerable
time, the prisoner asked and obtained an interview with his captor, and
said: Dear lord, I am doing no good here to you or myself, since my
friends will not send my ransom. If you would let me go home, I would
come back in eight weeks and bring you the money. Whom will you give for
surety? asked the nobleman. I have no one to offer, replied the
prisoner, but the Lord God, and will swear you an oath by him to keep my
word. The nobleman was satisfied, made his captive swear the oath, and
let him go. The hero sold all that he owned, and raised the money, but
was three weeks longer in so doing than the time agreed upon. The
nobleman, one day, when he was riding out with a couple of servants,
fell in with an abbot or friar who had two fine horses and a man. See
here, my good fellows, said the young lord; that monk is travelling with
two horses, as fine as any knight, when he ought to be riding on an ass.
Look out now, we will play him a turn. So saying, he rode up to the
monk, seized the bridle of his horse, and asked, Sir, who are you? Who
is your lord? The monk answered, I am a servant of God, and he is my
lord. You come in good time, said the nobleman. I had a prisoner, and
set him free upon his leaving your lord with me as a surety. But I can
get nothing from this lord of yours; he is above my power; so I will lay
hands on his servant; and accordingly made the monk go with him afoot to
the castle, where he took from him all that he had. Shortly after, his
prisoner appeared, fell at his feet, and wished to pay the ransom,
begging that he would not be angry, for the money could not be got
sooner. But the nobleman said, Stand up, my good man. Keep your money,
and go whither you will, for your surety has paid your ransom. Ed.
Oesterley, p. 49. The gist of the story is in Jacques de Vitry, Sermones
Vulgares, fol. 62, MS. 17,509, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Scala Celi
(1480), 159 b, “De Restitucione,” and elsewhere: see Oesterly’s note, p.
480. A very amusing variety is the _fabliau_ Du povre Mercier, Barbazan
et Méon, III, 17; Montaiglon et Raynaud, II, 114; Legrand, III, 93, ed.
1829.[75]
293^3. Reynolde. Possibly Little John borrows this Reynolde’s name in
149, but there is no apparent reason why he should. In the following
very strange, and to me utterly unintelligible, piece in Ravenscroft’s
Deuteromelia, which may have been meant to have only enough sense to
sing, Renold, a miller’s son, mickle of might (was he rechristened
Much?), becomes one of Robin Hood’s men. (Deuteromelia, p. 4: London,
for Tho. Adams, 1609.)
1
By Lands-dale hey ho,
By mery Lands-dale hey ho,
There dwelt a jolly miller,
And a very good old man was he, hey ho.
2
He had, he had and a sonne a,
Men called him Renold,
And mickle of his might
Was he, was he, hey ho.
3
And from his father a wode a,
His fortune for to seeke,
From mery Lands-dale
Wode he, wode he, hey ho.
4
His father would him seeke a,
And found him fast a sleepe;
Among the leaves greene
Was he, was he, hey ho.