serious notice of Robin Hood’s noble extraction. The first mention of
this seems to be in Grafton’s Chronicle, 1569. Grafton says: In an
olde and auncient pamphlet I finde this written of the sayd Robert
Hood. This man, sayth he, discended of a noble parentage; or rather,
beyng of a base stocke and linage, was for his manhoode and chiualry
aduaunced to the noble dignitie of an erle.... But afterwardes he so
prodigally exceeded in charges and expences that he fell into great
debt, by reason whereof so many actions and sutes were commenced
against him, wherevnto he aunswered not, that by order of lawe he was
outlawed, etc.: I, 221, ed. 1809. (Some such account furnished a
starting-point for Munday.) Leland also, Ritson adds, has expressly
termed him “nobilis” (Ro: Hood, nobilis ille exlex), Collectanea, I,
54, ed. 1770, and Warner, in Albion’s England (1586), p. 132, ed.
1612, calls him a “county”:
Those daies begot some mal-contents, the principall of whom
A countie was, that with a troop of yeomandry did roam.
Ritson also cites the Sloane MS., 715, “written, as it seems, toward
the end of the sixteenth century;” and Harleian MS., 1233, which he
does not date, but which is of the middle of the seventeenth century.
Against the sixteenth-century testimony, so to call it, we put in that
of the early ballads, all of which describe Robin as a yeoman, the
Gest emphasizing the point.
Footnote 59:
The Edinburgh Review, LXXXVI, 123 (with a slight correction in one
instance), mostly from Ritson, I, cix, cxxvi ff, 1832, and from
Wright’s Essays, etc., II, 209 f, 1846. Of course the list might be
extended: there are some additions in The Academy, XXIV, 231, 1883,
and four Robin Hood’s wells in Yorkshire alone are there noted.
Footnote 60:
A Robin Hood’s Stone, near Barnsdale, of what description we are not
told, is mentioned in an account of a progress made by Henry VII, and
Robin Hood’s Well, in the same region, in an account of a tour made in
1634: Hunter’s Robin Hood, p. 61. The well is also mentioned by
Drunken Barnaby. A Robin Hood’s Hill is referred to in Vicars’ account
of the siege of Gloucester in 1643: The Academy, XXIV, 231.
Footnote 61:
Gough, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, March 8, 1793, cited by Gutch.
Wright has, somewhat naively, furnished his own refutation: “A large
tumulus we know well in our own county, near Ludlow in Shropshire,
which is also called Robin Hood’s But, and which affords us a curious
instance how new stories were often invented to account for a name
whose original import was forgotten. The circumstances, too, in this
case, prove that the story was of late invention. The barrow, as
regarded superstitiously, had borne the name of Robin Hood. On the
roof of one of the chancels of the church of Ludlow, which is called
Fletchers’ chancel, as having been, when ‘the strength of England
stood upon archery,’ the place where the fletchers held their
meetings, and which is distant from the aforesaid barrow two miles, or
two miles and a half, there stands an iron arrow, as the sign of their
craft. The imagination of the people of the place, after archery and
fletchers had been forgotten, and when Robin Hood was known only as an
outlaw and a bowman, made a connection between the barrow (from its
name) and the chancel (from the arrow on its roof), and a tale was
invented how the outlaw once stood upon the former and took aim at the
weathercock on the church steeple; but the distance being a little too
great, the arrow fell short of its mark, and remained up to the
present day on the roof of the chancel.” (Essays, I, 209 f.)
A correspondent of The Academy, XXIV, 181, remarks that one of the
Anglo-Saxon charters in Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus mentions a “place”
in Worcestershire called Hódes ác (now Hodsoak), that there is a
village in Nottinghamshire called Hodsock, that it is improbable that
two men living in districts so widely apart should each have given his
name to an oak-tree, and that therefore we may safely conclude Hód to
be a mythical personage. Somebody’s tree is given as a boundary mark
more than thirty times in these charters, somebody’s thorn at least
ten times, somebody’s oak at least five times. How often such a mark
might occur in connection with any particular name would depend upon
the frequency of the name. Hód or Hóde is cited thirteen times by
Kemble, and few names occur oftener. The name, we may infer, was
relatively as common then as it is in our century, which has seen
three Admiral Hoods (who, by virtue of being three, may be adjudged as
mythical by and by) and one poet Hood alive together. Why may not
three retired wícings and one scóp, of the name, have been living in
Berks, Hants, Wilts, and Worcestershire in the tenth century?
Footnote 62:
Plot’s History of Staffordshire, p. 434, cited in Ellis’s Brand, I,
383; The Mirror, XX, 419, cited by Kuhn, Haupt’s Zeitschrift, V, 474
f. The Kentish sport is also described in the Rev. W. D. Parish’s
Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect, p. 77, under Hoodening.
Footnote 63:
In West Worcestershire _h_ is put for _w_, “by an emphatic speaker,”
in such words as wood, wool: Mrs Chamberlain’s Glossary. Hood for wood
occurs in East Sussex; also in Somerset, according to Halliwell’s
Dictionary. The derivation of Hood from wood has often been suggested:
as by Peele, in his Edward I, “Robin of the Wood, alias Robin Hood,”
Works, Dyce, I, 162. The inventive Peck was pleased always to write
Robin Whood.
Footnote 64:
The Hobby-Horse, Schimmel, Fastnachtspferd, Herbstpferd, Adventspferd,
Chevalet, Cheval Mallet, is maintained by Mannhardt to be figurative
of the Corn-Sprite, Korndämon; nichts anderes als das Kornross,
Vegetationsross, nicht aber eine Darstellung Wodans, wie man nach
Kuhns Vorgang jetzt allgemein annimmt: Mannhardt, Mythologische
Forschungen, in Quellen u. Forschungen, LI, p. 165. “Man sieht den
Ungrund der bei deutschen Mythologen so beliebten Identifizierung von
Robin Hood und Wodan:” Mannhardt, Wald- u. Feldkulte, I, 546, note 3.
Footnote 65:
The reasoning, in the instance of Robin Hood, has been signally loose
and incautious; still, the general conclusion finds ready acceptance
with mythologists, on one ground or another, and deductions are made
with the steadiness of a geometer. Robin Hood, being one of the “solar
heroes,” “has his faint reflection in Little John, who stands to him
in the same relation as Patroclus to Achilles,” etc. “Maid Marian will
therefore be the dawn-maiden, to be identified with Briseis,” etc.
“Friar Tuck is one of the triumvirate who appear also in the Cloudesly
and Tell legends,” etc. And again, by an interpreter of somewhat
different views: “though a considerable portion of this story is
ultimately derived from the great Aryan sun-myth, there is the
strongest reason for believing that the Anglian Hód was not originally
a solar personage, but a degraded form of the God of the Wind,
Hermes-Woden. The thievish character of this divinity explains at once
why his name should have been chosen as the popular appellation of an
outlaw chief.” (The Academy, XXIV, 250, 384.)
The Potter in the later Play of Robin Hood (not in the corresponding
ballad) wears a rose garland on his head. So does a messenger in the
history of Fulk Fitz Warine, Wright, p. 78, not to mention other cases
referred to by Ritson, Robin Hood, II, 200, ed. 1832. Fricke, Die
Robin-Hood Balladen, p. 55, surmises that the rose garland worn by the
Potter may be a relic of the strife between Summer and Winter; and
this view, he suggests, would tend to confirm “the otherwise
well-grounded hypothesis” that Robin Hood is a mythological personage.
Footnote 66:
“Desde la última década del siglo xvi hasta pocos años hace, no eran
ya los héroes del pueblo ni los Bernardos, ni los Cides, ni los
Pulgares, ni los Garcilasos, ni los Céspedes, ni los Paredes, porque
su pueblo estaba muerto ó trasformado en vulgo, y este habia
sustituido á aquellos los guapos Francisco Estéban, los Correas, los
Merinos, los Salinas, los Pedrajas, los Montijos.” (Duran, p. 389,
note.)
Footnote 67:
Bernardo del Montijo, Duran, No 1342, kills an alcalde at the age of
eighteen, “con bastante causa:” upon which phrase Duran observes,
“para el vulgo era bastante causa, sin duda, el ser alcalde.”
Beginning with so much promise of spirit, he afterwards, in carrying
off his mistress, who was about to be wedded against her will, kills
six constables, a corregidor, the bridegroom, and a captain of the
guard. For differences, compare the English broadside R. H. and
Allen-a-Dale, No 138.
Footnote 68:
“Doch sind sie meist ohne grossen poetischen Werth, nur als Zeugniss
für die Denkweise des Volkes über die ‘armen Bursche,’ die es lange
nicht für so grosse Verbrecher hält als der Staat, und die es, ihre
Vorurtheile theilend, im Gegentheile oft als kühne Freiheitshelden
betrachtet, die gegen grössere oder kleinere Tyrannen sich zu erheben
und denselben zu trotzen wagen, und als ungerecht verfolgte Söhne
seines Stammes in Schutz nimmt gegen die fremden Gesetzvollstrecker.”
(Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen, p. xxvi f.)
Footnote 69:
J. Hunter (Critical and Historical Tracts, No IV), whom I follow here,
shows that Barnsdale was peculiarly unsafe for travellers in Edward
the First’s time. Three ecclesiastics, conveyed from Scotland to
Winchester, had a guard, sometimes of eight archers, sometimes of
twelve, or, further south, none at all; but when they passed from
Pontefract to Tickhill, the number was increased to twenty, _propter
Barnsdale_: p. 14.
Footnote 70:
Hunter suspects that the Nottinghamshire knight, Sir Richard at the
Lee, in the latter half of the Gest, was originally a different person
from the knight in the former half, “the knight of the Barnsdale
ballads,” p. 25. Fricke makes the same suggestion, Die Robin-Hood
Balladen, p. 19. This may be, but the reasons offered are not quite
conclusive.
Footnote 71:
And so, as to Nottingham and Barnsdale, in No 118; and perhaps No 121,
for the reference to Wentbridge, st. 6, would imply that Robin Hood is
in Barnsdale rather than Sherwood.
Footnote 72:
I say Barnsdale, though the place is not specified, and though
Sherwood would remove or reduce the difficulty as to distance. We have
nothing to do with Sherwood in the Gest: a rational topography is out
of the question. In the seventh fit the king starts from Nottingham,
365, walks “down by yon abbey,” 368, and ere he comes to Nottingham,
370, falls in with Robin, 375.
Footnote 73:
This was a custom of Arthur’s only upon certain holidays, according to
the earlier representation, but in later accounts is made general. For
romances, besides these mentioned at I, 257, in which this way of
Arthur’s is noted (Rigomer, Jaufré, etc.), see Gaston Paris, Les
Romans en vers du Cycle de la Table Ronde, Histoire Litt. de la
France, XXX, 49.
Footnote 74:
Pothouis Liber de Miraculis S. D. G. Mariæ, c. 33, p. 377; Vincentius
B., Speculum Hist., vii. c. 82. Mussafia, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener
Akad., Phil.-Hist. Classe, CXIII, 960–91, notes nine Latin copies,
besides that attributed to Potho, in MSS mostly of the 13th century.
Gautier de Coincy, ed. Poquet, cols. 543–52; Adgar’s Marienlegenden,
Neuhaus, p. 176, No 29; Miracles de Nostre Dame par Personnages, G.
Paris et U. Robert, VI, 171–223, No 35; Romania, VIII, 16, No 3
(Provençal). Berceo, in Sanchez, II, 367, No 23. Unger, Mariu Saga, No
15, pp. 87–92, 1064–67. Mone’s Anzeiger, VIII, col. 355, No 8, as a
broadside ballad. Afanasief, Skazki, vii, No 49, as a popular tale,
the Jew changed to a Tartar, and the Cross taken as surety, Ralston,
Russian Folk-Tales, p. 27. “God-borg” in Alfred’s Laws, c. 33, Schmid,
Gesetze der Angelsachsen, p. 88 f., was perhaps only an asseveration
with an invocation of the Deity, like the Welsh “briduw.” And so “Ich
wil dir got ze bürgen geben,” “Got den wil ich ze bürgen han,” in the
Ritter v. Staufenberg, vv. 403, 405, Jänicke, Altdeutsche Studien.
Footnote 75:
Le Doctrinal de Sapience, fol. 67 b, cited by Legrand, is not to the
purpose. Scala Celi refers to a Speculum Exemplorum.
In Peele’s Edward I, the friar, having lost five nobles at dice to St
Francis, pays them to St Francis’ receiver; but presently wins a
hundred marks of the saint, and makes the receiver pay. (The story has
in one point a touch of the French _fabliau_.) Peele’s Works, ed.
Dyce, I, 157–61.
Footnote 76:
hey hoy.
Footnote 77:
435. The three in 433, as in 416, is for rhyme, and need not be taken
strictly.
Footnote 78:
Critical and Historical Tracts, No IV, Robin Hood, p. 28 ff.
Footnote 79:
Think of Robin as light porter,—Robin who had been giving and taking
buffets that might fell an ox. Think of him as worn out with the work
in eleven months, and dropped for disability. Think of his being put
on threepence a day, after paying his yeomen at thrice the rate, 171,
not to speak of such casual gratuities as we hear of in 382. “There is
in all this, perhaps, as much correspondency as we can reasonably
expect between the record and the ballad,” says Hunter, p. 38.
Footnote 80:
Hunter asks if it is not possible to find in this Robert Hood of
Wakefield, near Barnsdale, “the identical person whose name has been
so strangely perpetuated.” This Robert Hood would be a person of some
consideration, and he would thus be qualified “for his station among
the vadlets of the crown,”—three-penny vadlets, Great Hob, Little
Coll, Robert _Trash_, and their fellows. The Wakefield Robert’s wife
was named Matilda, “and the ballad testimony is—not the Little Gest,
but other ballads of uncertain antiquity,—that the outlaw’s wife was
named Matilda, which name she exchanged for Marian when she joined him
in the green-wood.” (Pp 46–48.) Hunter has made a trivial mistake
about Matilda: she belongs to Munday’s play, and not to the ballads
(ballad) he has in mind.
Footnote 81:
The sheriff flees from Barnsdale “towards his house in Nottingham,” in
stanza 57. In fact, though these places are fifty miles apart, this
ballad treats them as adjacent. See p. 50 f.
Footnote 82:
Formerly among Sir John Fenn’s papers (for the history of which see
Gairdner, Paston Letters, I, vii. ff); now in the possession of Mr
William Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge. The fragment, Mr
Wright informs me, is written on a paper which was evidently the last
half-leaf of a folio MS. On the back are various memoranda, and among
them this: It^m. R^d of Rechard Wytway, penter [_or_ peuter], for hes
hosse rent, in full payment, lx [ix?] s’, the vij day of November, aº
Ed. iiij^{ti} xv \[1475]. The grammatical forms of themselves warrant
our putting the composition further back. This interesting relic has
already been printed in Notes and Queries, First Series, XII, 321,
from a very incorrect copy made by Dr Stukely. It is given here from a
transcript made for me by Henry Bradshaw, of honored memory. Mr Wright
has compared this with the original, and given me the history of the
paper, so far as known.
This paper, as far as we can see, came into Sir John Fenn’s hands in
company with the Paston Letters. In a letter of the date 1473, Sir
John Paston writes: W. Woode, whyche promysed ... he wold never goo
fro me, and ther uppon I have kepyd hym thys iii yer to pleye Seynt
Jorge, and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham, and now, when I
wolde have good horse, he is gone into Bernysdale, and I without a
keeper. Fenn, Original Letters, etc., 1787, II, 134, cited by Ritson;
Gairdner, Paston Letters, III, 89. The play cited above might be
called one of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and may
possibly have been the very one in which William Wood was used to
perform, before he went “into Barnysdale,” that is, ran away from
service.
Footnote 83:
The [d]oo in the last line is not quite certain. I am not sure that
the parts are always rightly assigned in the third dialogue.
Footnote 84:
Norray should be Nornee, or Norny, the name of a court fool. He is
mentioned in James IV’s Treasurer’s Accounts, 1503–12. See Laing’s
Dunbar, II, 307 f. Allan Bell being sly at shot, it is probable that
Allan is miswritten in the MS. for Adam.
Footnote 85:
The gap at 30^2 occurs between two pages, and is peculiarly
regrettable. The former reading of “Robyns men” in 30^1 made matters
much worse, since there was no way of accounting for the appearance of
his men at this point. We must suppose that some one of Robin’s many
friends carries the news of his capture to his band, and not simply
that; with this there must have come information that their leader was
to be held to await knowledge of the king’s pleasure, otherwise delay
would be dangerous, and summary measures for his deliverance be
required.
Footnote 86:
The porter or warden, in such cases, may commonly look to have his
neck wrung, to be thrown over the wall, into a well, etc.: compare
Adam Bell, st. 65; Jock o the Side, sts 13, 14; the Tale of Gamelyn,
Skeat, v. 303–05; Fulk Fitz Warine, Wright, pp 44, 82 f; King Horn.
ed. Wissmann, vv 1097–99; Romance de don Gaiferos, F. Wolf, Ueber eine
Sammlung spanischer Romanzen, p. 76, Wolf y Hofmann, Primavera, II,
148, No 174; etc.
Footnote 87:
En le temps de Averyl e May, quant les prees e les herbes
reverdissent, et chescune chose vivaunte recovre vertue, beaute e
force, les mountz e les valeys retentissent des douce chauntz des
oseylouns, e les cuers de chescune gent, pur la beaute du temps e la
sesone, mountent en haut e s’enjolyvent, etc.: Wright, Warton Club,
1855, p. 1; Stevenson, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum,
etc., p. 277.
Footnote 88:
Already cited at p. 41. Bower wrote 1441–47, and died 1449: Skene,
Johannis de Fordun Chronica, pp xv, xli.
Footnote 89:
Par cest exemple bien veons
Que li dous Deux en qui creons
Ame et chierist et honneure
Celui qui volentiers demeure
Pour oïr messe en sainte eglise, etc.
‘Du chevalier qui ooit la messe, et Notre-Dame estoit pour lui au
tournoiement,’ Barbazan et Méon, Fabliaux, 1808, I, 86.
Footnote 90:
These resemblances are noted by Fricke, Die Robin Hood Balladen, a
dissertation, reprinted in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen
(vol. 69), in which the relations of the ballads in question are
discussed with sagacity and vigilance.
Footnote 91:
“You shall never hear more of me” might mean something stronger, but
it is unlikely that Will is so touchy as to throw up fealty for a
testy word from a sick man. A stanza or more seems to be lost here.
Arthur is equally hasty with Gawain. He makes his vow to be the bane
of Cornwall King. It is an unadvised vow, says Gawain.
And then bespake him noble Arthur,
And these were the words said he:
Why, if thou be afraid, Sir Gawaine the gay,
Goe home, and drink wine in thine own country.
I, 285, sts 33–35.
Footnote 92:
John is again his sole companion when Robin goes in search of Guy of
Gisborne. The yeoman in stanza 3 should be Red Roger; but a suspicion
has more than once come over me that the beginning of this ballad has
been affected by some version of Guy of Gisborne.
Footnote 93:
I can make nothing of “give me mood,” in 23^{1,2}. ‘Give me God’ or
‘Give me my God,’ seems too bold a suggestion: at any rate I have no
example of God used simply for housel.
Footnote 94:
A few verses are wanting at the end. The “met-yard” of the last line
is one of the last things we should think Robin would care for.
Footnote 95:
It seemed to me at one time that there was a direction to shoot an
arrow to determine the place of a grave also in No 16, #A# 3, #I#,
185.
Now when that ye hear me gie a loud cry,
Shoot frae thy bow an arrow, and there let me lye.
But upon considering the corresponding passage in 16 #B#, #C#, and in
15 #B#, the idea seems rather to be, that the arrow is to leave the
bow at the moment when the soul shoots from the body.
Footnote 96:
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 46, who cites #B# 17, 18. Mr
Ralston observes that most of the so-styled Robber Songs of the
Russians are reminiscences of the revolt of the Don Cossacks against
Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich. Stenka Razín, the chief of the insurgents,
after setting for several years the forces of the Tsar at defiance,
was put to a cruel death in 1672: p. 45, as above.
Footnote 97:
The personage may have been varied in the broadside ballads to catch
the pence of tanners, tinkers, and the rest; or possibly some member
of the respective fraternities might do this for the glory of his
craft. A parallel case seems to be afforded by the well-known German
ballad, ‘Der Zimmergesell und die junge Markgräfin,’ which is also
sung of a journeyman shoemaker, tailor, locksmith, etc.; as remarked
by A. Grün, Robin Hood, Ein Balladenkranz, p. 47 f.
Footnote 98:
Fricke, Die Robin-Hood-Balladen, p. 20 f, suggests a ballad of Robin
Hood and the Sheriff (How Robin took revenge for the sheriff’s setting
a price on his head), which may have been blended with another, of the
Rescue of a Knight, to form the sixth fit of The Gest; and points to
st. 329 of the Gest, ‘Robyn Hode walked in the forest,’ etc., as the
probable beginning of such a ballad.
Footnote 99:
#b# would have taken precedence of #a#, having been printed earlier
(1607–41), but I am at liberty only to collate Pepys copies. The Wood
copies of Robin Hood ballads are generally preferable to the Pepys.
Footnote 100:
“A wet weary man,” #A# 7^1, should probably be “wel weary.” Why should
R. H. be wet? And if wet, he may as well be a little wetter.
Footnote 101:
Like terms are assured the cook by John in the Gest, sts 170, 171, and
offered the Tanner by Robin Hood, R. H. and the Tanner, st. 26. Cf.
Adam Bell, sts 163–65.
The ‘Life’ in the Sloane MS., which is put not much before 1600, says:
He procurd the Pynner of Wakefeyld to become one of his company, and a
freyr called Muchel; though some say he was an other kynd of religious
man, for that the order of freyrs was not yet sprung up.
Footnote 102:
Curtilarius (Old English curtiler) qui curtile curat aut incolit:
Ducange.
Footnote 103:
I suppose that it must already have been pointed out that the story of
King Ramiro, versified by Southey from the Portuguese, Poetical Works,
1838, VI, 122, is a variety of that of Solomon. There are curious
points of resemblance between ‘R. H. rescuing Three Squires’ and the
conclusion of the story of Solomon.
Footnote 104:
Dodsley’s Old Plays, 4th ed., by W. C. Hazlitt, VIII, 195, 232.
Footnote 105:
A very serious offence: see E. Peacock, Hales and Furnivall, Percy
Folio Manuscript, I, lxii, note to p. 34.
Footnote 106:
Further on, Brathwayte alludes to a difference between Robin Hood and
the Shoemaker of Bradford, which had been treated of by stage-poets.
This refers to the fight that Robin Hood and George a Green have with
the shoemakers, in chap. xii of the History (Thoms, p. 52 f), which is
introduced into Robert Greene’s play (Dyce, p. 199 f), but only George
does the fighting there. It is mere carelessness when Munday,
‘Downfall,’ etc., applies the name of George a Greene to the Shoemaker
of Bradford (Hazlitt, as above, p. 151). In the same play and the same
scene he makes Scathlock and Scarlet two persons.
Footnote 107:
Robin Hood Newly Revived (which, by the way, is in the same bad style
as Robin Hood and Little John) is directed to be sung ‘to a delightful
new Tune.’ The tune, as is seen from the burden, was that of Arthur a
Bland, etc., called in Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon (the Second
Part of Robin Hood Newly Revived) Robin Hood, or Hey down, down a
down. The earliest printed copy of the air is preserved in the
ballad-opera of The Jovial Crew, 1731 (Rimbault, in Gutch’s Robin
Hood, II, 433, Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 391), and the song which
is there sung to it has middle rhyme in the first line as well as the
third, which is the case with no Robin Hood ballad except Robin Hood
and the Peddlers.
Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which has the middle rhyme in the third
line, is directed to be sung to Robin Hood Revived. Robin Hood and the
Scotchman, as already said, has middle rhyme in the third line; so
have The King’s Disguise, etc., R. H. and the Golden Arrow, R. H. and
the Valiant Knight; but the tune assigned to the last is Robin Hood
and the Fifteen Foresters, that is, Robin Hood’s Progress to
Nottingham.