Garland of 1663, in company with R. H. and the Bishop, R. H. and the
Butcher, etc., and that Robin Hood and Little John is not there; but I
do not consider this circumstance sufficient to offset the probability
in favor of the supposition, that by Robin Hood and the Stranger is
meant Robin Hood and Little John.
Footnote 108:
Fourteen foot, as proved by his bones, preserved, according to Hector
Boece, in the kirk of Pette, in Murrayland. See Ritson’s Robin Hood,
1832, I, cxxxii f; and Gutch, II, 112, note *.
Footnote 109:
The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood, No 132, is a traditional variation of
Robin Hood Revived.
Footnote 110:
Though Mr W. C. Hazlitt, in his Handbook to the Popular, Poetical, and
Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, p. 514, No 25, has: “Robin Hood
and the Stranger. In two parts. [Col.] London: printed by and for W.
O., and to be sold at the booksellers. Roxb. and Wood Colls.” This
colophon belongs only to Robin Hood, Will Scadlock, and Little John,
otherwise Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon, which see. The title
Robin Hood and the Stranger is adopted from Ritson.
Footnote 111:
‘Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon,’ in Thackeray’s list, Ballad
Society, I, xxiv, and in the late Garlands, 1749, etc.
Footnote 112:
Remarked by Fricke, p. 88 f.
Footnote 113:
Mr E. Maunde Thompson, Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British
Museum, in an obliging letter to Harvard College Library, and in The
Academy, 1885, March 7, p. 170. No 8 C of this collection is in this
manuscript.
Footnote 114:
A verse in the passage from Drayton’s Polyolbion, Song xxvi, cited by
Ritson, I, viii of Robin Hood, 1795, may refer to this version of the
ballad: “The widow in distress he graciously relievd.”
Footnote 115:
In st. 2 Robin is in his proper Lincoln green. He wears scarlet red
again in No. 141, st. 6 and in No 145, st. 18, his men being in green.
Footnote 116:
Fricke has observed this, pp 59, 69, and at p. 58 the resemblance to
Wallace.
Footnote 117:
Even the author of #A# seems not to be aware that Much, the Miller’s
Son, is the standing name of one of Robin Hood’s men, and therefore
would not answer for a disguise. In #B#, #C#, nothing is expressly
said about the change of names, and in fact this arrangement seems not
to be understood, since in #B# 21^1 Clifton is spoken of as _one_
Clifton. Comparing #B# 33, 34, 37, we see that Clifton should be
Little John, but Midge, the Miller’s Son, himself, not Scathlock,
still less John.
Footnote 118:
Also says Ritson, Robin Hood, II, 97, by Francis Coule, 13th June,
1631; but the ballad there entered is The Noble Fisherman.
Footnote 119:
Robin Hood, ed. 1832, p. xxxvi, note, p. lxxxvii.
Footnote 120:
The mutilated parts are supplied, to a slight extent, from a copy in
the Bodleian Library (L. 78. Art., 5th tract), which happens to be
injured on the right side of the title-page in nearly the same places
as the Museum copy, and also has the lower portion cut off, to the
loss of the printer’s name; the rest from an edition printed for J.
Clark, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, 1686. Mr J. P. Collier
possessed a copy with the same imprint as that of the Museum, which he
lent Gutch, and which Gutch says he used for his text. If Gutch
followed the Collier copy, then that was not identical with the Museum
copy. Ritson reprinted the text of 1686.
Footnote 121:
“Now, under this precise gentleman’s favor, one would be glad to know
what these same superstitious words were; there not being anything of
the kind in Dr Gale’s copy, which seems to be the original, and which
is shorter by two lines than the above. Thirteen should be thirty.”
Ritson, Robin Hood, ed. 1832, II, 127 f. For the epitaph and the
gravestone, see the same volume, pp. liv-lvii.
Footnote 122:
Percy: “As for Mirryland Town, it is probably a corruption of Milan
(called by the Dutch Meylandt) town; the Pa is evidently the river Po,
although the Adige, not the Po, runs through Milan.” #B#, 1 is
unintelligible. Do the lads run down the Pa?
Footnote 123:
In #J#, 4, he will be beaten for losing his ball. In the Irish #F#, 8,
the mother takes a little rod in her hand, meaning to bate him for
staying so long: cf. #J# 10, #N# 4, 12,and the last verse of T. Hood’s
‘Lost Heir.’
Footnote 124:
Dem Volke war die Glocke nicht herzlos; sie war ihm eine beseelte
Persönlichkeit, und stand als solche mit dem Menschen in lebendigem
Verkehr.... Die Glocken ... scheinen auch von höheren Mächten berührt
zu werden; sie sprechen wie Gottesstimmen, ertönen oft von selbst, als
Mahnung von oben, als Botschaft vom Tode bedeutender Personen, als
Wahrzeichen der Unschuld eines Angeklagten, zur Bewährung der
Heiligkeit eines von Gott erwählten Rüstzeugs. Uhland, Schriften zur
Geschichte der Dichtung u. Sage, VIII, 588 f.
Footnote 125:
Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, II, 346 ff. “From 1219 to 1266 the MS.
was written contemporaneously with the events described, from year to
year:” p. xxxvi.
Footnote 126:
Chronica Majora, ed. Luard, V, 516–19. Matthew Paris died in 1259.
Footnote 127:
Seventy-one were thus reserved, but escaped, by the use of money or by
the intercession of the Franciscans, or both. See the same volume, p.
546; but also the account which follows, from the Annals of Burton.
Footnote 128:
Annales de Burton, in Annales Monastici, Luard, I, 340–48. Hugh of
Lincoln is commemorated in the Acta Sanctorum, July (27), VI, 494.
Footnote 129:
Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, etc., from a MS. in the “Bibliothèque
royale, No 7268, 3. 3. A. Colb. 3745, fol. 135, rº, col. 1.” Reprinted
by Halliwell, Ballads and Poems respecting Hugh of Lincoln, p. 1, and
from Halliwell by Hume, Sir Hugh of Lincoln, etc., p. 43 ff. In
stanzas 13, 75, there is an invocation in behalf of King Henry (Qui
Deu gard et tenge sa vie!), which implies that he is living. The
ballad shows an acquaintance with the localities.
Footnote 130:
“A la gule de aust.” The day, according to the Annals of Burton, was
the _vigil_ of St Peter ad vincula. We find in Henschel’s Ducange, “ad
festum S. Petri, in gula Augusti,” and “le jour de feste S. Pere, en
goule Aoust.” Strictly taken, goule should be the first day, Lammas.
Peitevin was actually resident in Lincoln at the time. “He was called
Peitevin the Great, to distinguish him from another person who bore
the appellation of Peitevin the Little. The Royal Commission issued in
1256 directs an inquisition to be taken of the names of all those who
belonged to the school of Peytevin Magnus, who had fled on account of
his implication in the crucifixion of a Christian boy.” London
Athenæum, 1849, p. 1270 f.
Footnote 131:
The site of the Jewry was on the hill and about the castle: London
Athenæum, 1849, p. 1271.
Footnote 132:
These renegades play a like part in many similar cases.
Footnote 133:
Les Jus, 82^1; but this is impossible, and we have li justis in 91^1.
Footnote 134:
“Canwick is pleasantly situated on a bold eminence, about a mile
northward of Lincoln.” Allen, History of the County of Lincoln, I,
208.
Footnote 135:
I do not find this story in the Basel edition of c. 1475.
Footnote 136:
A case cited by Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 2^r Theil, p. 220,
from Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, l. vii, 16, differs from later
ones by being a simple extravagance of drunkenness. Some Jews in
Syria, “A. D. 419,” who were making merry after their fashion, and
indulging in a good deal of tomfoolery, began, as they felt the
influence of wine, to jeer at Christ and Christians; from which they
proceeded to the seizing of a Christian boy and tying him to a cross.
At first they were contented to make game of him, but, growing crazy
with drink, they fell to beating him, and even beat him to death; for
which they were properly punished.
Footnote 137:
See the ballads ‘Vom Judenmord zu Deggendorf,’ 1337, ‘Von den Juden zu
Passau,’ 1478, in Liliencron, I, 45, No 12, II, 142, No 153.
Footnote 138:
Nothing could be more just than these words of Percy: “If we consider,
on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times when such
stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the monks who
record them, and the eagerness with which they would be catched up by
the barbarous populace as a pretence for plunder; on the other hand,
the great danger incurred by the perpetrators, and the inadequate
motives they could have to excite them to a crime of so much horror,
we may reasonably conclude the whole charge to be groundless and
malicious.” Reliques, 1795, I, 32.
Footnote 139:
Read the indictment against Christians filed by Zunz, Die synagogale
Poesie des Mittelalters, pp 19–58, covering the time from the eleventh
century to the middle of the sixteenth. It is regrettable that Zunz
has not generally cited his authorities. See also Stobbe, Die Juden in
Deutschland, p. 183 ff., and notes, p. 280 ff., where the authorities
are given.
Footnote 140:
In vol. viii, pp 225, 344, 476, 598, 730, vol. ix, 107, 219, 353, 472,
605, the confessions of the defendants are given from the original
minutes of the trial; and it fully appears from these confessions that
blood is requisite for a proper performance of the Paschal ceremonies,
and also that the blood must be got from a boy, and from a boy while
he is undergoing torment. Only it is to be remembered that the
inducements to these confessions were the same as those which led the
Jews of Passau to acknowledge that blood exuded from the Host when it
was stabbed, and that when two bits of the wafer were thrown into an
oven two doves flew out: Train, as above, p. 116, note 57.
Footnote 141:
For other pictures of these martyrdoms, see the Nuremberg Chronicle,
1493, fol. ccliiii, vº, for Simon of Trent; Lacroix, Mœurs, Usages,
etc., 1875, p. 473, for Richard of Pontoise, p. 475, for Simon,
repeated from the N. Chron.; that of Munich, 1285, and the children of
Ratisbon, reproduced in Cosmos, March 30, 1885 (according to Drumont,
II, 418, note). See also Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, p. 54, note 41.
Footnote 142:
The extraordinary occurrence in Damascus in the same year, 1840, which
excited the indignation, sympathy, and active interposition of nearly
all the civilized world, requires but the briefest allusion. A
capuchin friar was in this instance the victim immolated, and for
blood to mix with the Paschal bread. The most frightful torture was
used, under the direction of the Turkish pacha, assisted by the French
consul, under which three unhappy men succumbed. See Illgen’s detailed
account of this persecution in the periodical and article above cited,
pp. 153 ff. Drumont is of the same mind as he would have been four or
five hundred years ago: “les faits étaient prouvés, démontrés,
indiscutables” (La France Juive, II, 411).
Footnote 143:
The threat implied in #E# 3^4 has no motive; and the phrase “haly
spark” in 5^4 is an unadvised anticipation.
Footnote 144:
Found also in the ballad, A Warning-Piece to England against Pride and
Wickedness: Being the Fall of Queen Eleanor, Wife to Edward the First,
King of England, who, for her Pride, by God’s Judgments, sunk into the
Ground at Charing-Cross and rose at Queen-Hithe. A Collection of Old
Ballads, I, 97.
Footnote 145:
There attributed to Jacques de Vitry, but not found in his Exempla.
Professor Crane informs me that, though the Scala Celi cites Jacques
de Vitry sixty-two times, only fourteen of such _exempla_ occur among
J. de V.’s.
Footnote 146:
The story does not occur in Doni’s Marmi, iii, 27, as has been said.
What is there found is somewhat after the fashion of ‘The Baffled
Knight,’ No 112.
Footnote 147:
Cunningham, in his loose way, talks of several fragments which he had
endeavored to combine, but can spare room for only one couplet:
Though lame of a leg and blind of an ee,
You’re as like William Wallace as ever I did see.
But this is the William of ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter,’
No 110.
Footnote 148:
#A# 15, #B# 12, #D# 12, are somewhat corrupted. In #F# 14 Wallace says
he never _had_ a better bode. In #E# 10 Wallace’s reply is, Pay down,
for if your answer be not good you shall have the downfall of Robin
Hood; and in #G# 30, Tell down, and ye shall see William Wallace with
the downcome of Robin Hood; that is, I suppose, you shall be knocked
down as if by Robin Hood.
Footnote 149:
Post enim conflictum de Roslyn, Wallace, ascensa navi, Franciam petit,
ubi quanta probitate refulsit, tam super mare a piratis quam in
Francia ab Anglis perpessus est discrimina, et viriliter se habuit,
nonnulla carmina, tam in ipsa Francia quam Scotia, attestantur.
Scotichronicon, Goodall, II, 176, note.
Footnote 150:
“Thou hadst twenty ships hither, thou’st have twenty away,” #B# 37. It
would be more in the ballad-way were the second twenty doubled.
Footnote 151:
In the London Athenæum, about twenty-five years ago, there was (I
think) a story of an Englishman in Russia resembling Hugh Spencer’s. I
have wrongly noted the number as 1871, and have not recovered the
story after much rummaging. This ballad is not very unlike Russian
_bylinas_.
Footnote 152:
Presbyteri, fratres et clerici, sutores et mechanici, Bower; agricolæ
ac pastores, et capellani imbecilles et decrepiti, Knyghton; miseri
monachi, improbi presbyteri, porcorum pastores, sutores et pelliparii,
Chronicon de Lanercost; clericos et pastores, Walsingham, Hist. Angl.
Footnote 153:
It is very doubtful whether there was an Earl of Buchan in 1346. Henry
de Beaumont, according to the peerages, died in 1341. He was an
Englishman, had fought against the Scots at Duplin, 1332, and was
after that in the service of Edward III.
Footnote 154:
‘Famous,’ the MS. reading in 14^1, may probably be an error for James,
which occurs so often in 28–33. William Douglas, the Knight of
Liddesdale, had a brother James, but this James had been killed in
1335. He had also a brother John, Scotichronicon and Chronicon de
Lanercoste, and the latter, as has been mentioned, puts John in
Murray’s division. Knyghton, col. 2590, gives as among the prisoners
dominus Willielmus Duglas et frater ejusdem Willielmi.
Footnote 155:
When William Douglas, in the Chronicle of Lanercost, tells the king
that the English are at hand, and David replies, there is nothing in
England but monks, priests, swineherds, etc., Douglas says, ‘aliter
invenietis; sunt varii validi viri.’
Footnote 156:
Froissart says that the English force was in four battalions: the
first commanded by the Bishop of Durham and Lord Percy; the second by
the Archbishop of York and Lord Neville; the third by the Bishop of
Lincoln and Lord Mowbray; the fourth by Edward Balliol and the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Footnote 157:
Crécy, 26 August, 1346; Durham, 17 October, 1346; Poitiers, 19
September, 1356.
Footnote 158:
“Froissart describes a Scottish host of the same period as consisting
of ‘.iiii. M. of armes, knightis and squiers, mounted on good horses,
and other .x. M. men of warre, armed after their gyse, right hardy and
firse, mounted on lytle hackeneys, the whiche were never tyed nor kept
at hard meate, but lette go to pasture in the feldis and busshes.’”
Happily cited by Scott, in illustration of #C# 16: Lord Berners’
translation, cap. xvii, Pynson, 1523, fol. viii.
Footnote 159:
A consolation as old as wise. So Paris, for himself: νίκη δ’
ἐπαμείβεται ἄνδρας, Iliad, vi, 339.
Footnote 160:
Buchanan has these numbers, with the exception of 1840, for 1860,
killed: ed. 1582, fol. 101. “That there was a memorable slaughter in
this affair, a slaughter far beyond the usual proportion to the
numbers engaged, cannot be doubted; nor was there ever bloodshed more
useless for the practical ends of war. It all came of the capture of
the Percy’s pennon. The Scots might have got clear off with all their
booty; the English forgot all the precautions of war when they made a
midnight rush on a fortified camp without knowledge of the ground or
the arrangements of their enemy. It was for these specialties that
Froissart admired it so. He saw in it a fight for fighting’s sake, a
great passage at arms in which no bow was drawn, but each man fought
hand to hand; in fact, about the greatest and bloodiest tournament he
had to record. Hence his narrative is ever interrupted with bursts of
admiration as his fancy contemplates the delightful scene raised
before it.” Burton, History of Scotland, II, 364, ed. 1873 (who,
perhaps by an error of the press, makes the losses of the English in
killed eight hundred and forty, in place of Buchanan’s eighteen
hundred and forty).
Footnote 161:
Bower and Barry say St Oswald’s day, Wednesday, the 5th,
Scotichronicon, II, 405, 407; Knyghton also; the continuator of
Higden’s Polychronicon, August 12, Wednesday. The ballad, #A# 18^4,
gives the day as Wednesday. There was a full moon August 20, which
makes the 19th of itself far more probable, and Froissart says the
moon was shining. See White, Battle of Otterburn, p. 133.
Footnote 162:
Walsingham writes in the vein of Froissart: “Erat ibidem cernere
pulchrum spectaculum, duos tam præclaros juvenes manus conserere et
pro gloria decertare.” Walsingham says that the English were few.
Malverne puts the Scots at 30,000, and here, as in the ballad #A# 35,
the cronykle does not layne (indeed, the ballad is all but accurate),
if the main body of the Scots be included, which was at first supposed
to be supporting Douglas.
Footnote 163:
‘The perssee and the mongumrye met, that day, that day, that gentil
day,’ which I suppose to be either a different reading from any that
has come down, or a blending of a line from Otterburn with one from
The Hunting of the Cheviot, #A# 24^1; indicating in either case the
present ballad only, for The Hunttis of Cheuet had been cited before.
Furnivall holds that the second line means another ballad: Captain
Cox, p. clix.
Footnote 164:
The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, p. 104.
Footnote 165:
For Motherwell’s views, see his Minstrelsy, li, lii, and lxxi, note
30.
Footnote 166:
#B# 20.
Ingen iomfru maa ieg loffue,
huerchen lønlig eller aaben-bahre;
det haffuer ieg iomfru Maria loffuet
hindis tienere skall ieg verre.
Footnote 167:
The burden is ‘O kiennicheinn Maria’ in the first, ‘Hilf Maria’ in the
second; in both George declines the king’s daughter, and orders a
church to be built ‘mit Mariabeild,’ or to himself and Mary. This, and
perhaps the hint for St George’s addiction to Mary altogether, is from
the Golden Legend, where the king “in honorem beatæ Mariæ et beati
Georgii ecclesiam miræ magnitudinis construxit”: Grässe, p. 261.
Footnote 168:
Following in part Buchanan, who, however, says nothing of Melrose, or
of the prophecy, which is the point here. Illa vero a vobis postrema
peto: primum, vt mortem meam et nostros et hostes cœletis; deinde, ne
vexillum meum dejectum sinatis; demum, vt meam cædem vlciscamini. Hæc
si sperem ita fore, cætera æquo animo feram. Fol. 101, ed. 1582.
Footnote 169:
I have not resorted to the MS. in this case, for the reason that I
could not expect to get a transcript which would merit the confidence
which must attach to one made by the hand of Professor Skeat.
Footnote 170:
British Bibliographer, IV, 99 f; Wright, Songs and Ballads, p. viii;
etc.
Footnote 171:
The grammatical forms of the Hunting of the Cheviot are, however,
older than those of the particular copy of Otterburn which has been
preserved. The plural of the noun is very often in -ës or -ys, as
lordës, 23^1; longës, 37^1; handdës, 60^1; sydis, 8^2; bowys, 13^2,
25^1, 29^1, etc., at least sixteen cases. We find, also, sydë at 6^2,
and possibly should read fayllë at 9^3. The plural in -ës is rare in
The Battle of Otterburn: starrës, 45^4; swordës, 54^2; Skottës, 59^1,
62^1. Probably we are to read swordës length in 55^3.
Footnote 172:
See the passage in the Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, referred to
in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, I, 235, and given at length in Hales and
Furnivall, II, 3 f.
Footnote 173:
The minstrel was not too nice as to topography either: Otterburn is
not in Cheviot.
Footnote 174:
Tytler, History of Scotland, III, 293, though citing only the
Scotichronicon, says Sir Robert Ogle, and also Scott, I, 270; for
reasons which do not appear.
Footnote 175:
An Apologie for Poetrie, p. 46 of Arber’s reprint of the first
edition, 1595. For the date of the writing, 1581–85, see Arber, p. 7
f.
Footnote 176:
The courtly poet deserves much of ballad-lovers for avowing his
barbarousness (one doubts whether he seriously believed that the
gorgeous Pindar could have improved upon the ballad), but what would
he not have deserved if he had written the blind crowder’s song down!
Footnote 177:
Popular Music, I, 198. Chevy Chase is entered in the Stationers’
Registers, among a large parcel of ballads, in 1624, and clearly was
no novelty: Arber, IV, 131. “Had it been printed even so early as
Queen Elizabeth’s reign,” says Percy, “I think I should have met with
some copy wherein the first line would have been, God prosper long our
noble queen.” “That it could not be much later than that time appears
from the phrase _doleful dumps_, which in that age carried no ill
sound with it, but to the next generation became ridiculous. We have
seen it pass uncensured in a sonnet that was at that time in request,
and where it could not fail to have been taken notice of had it been
in the least exceptionable; see above, Book ii, song v, ver. 2 [by
Richard Edwards, 1596?]. Yet, in about half a century after, it was
become burlesque. Vide Hudibras, Pt. I, c. 3, v. 95.” Reliques, 1794,
I, 268, note, 269.
The copy in the Percy MS., #B a#, though carelessly made, retains,
where the broadsides do not, two of the readings of #A#: bade on the
bent, 28^2; to the hard head haled he, 45^4.
Footnote 178:
Addison was not behind any of us in his regard for traditional songs
and tales. No 70 begins: “When I travelled, I took a particular
delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from father to
son and are most in vogue among the common people of the countries
through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be
universally tasted and approved by a multitude, tho they are only the
rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to
please and gratify the mind of man. Human nature is the same in all
reasonable creatures, and whatever falls in with it will meet with
admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions.”
Footnote 179:
A Description of the Parish of Melrose [by the Revd. Adam Milne],
Edinburgh, 1743, p. 21. Scott cites the epitaph, with some slight
variations (as “English louns”), Appendix to The Eve of St. John,
Minstrelsy, IV, 199, ed. 1833. The monument was “all broken in pieces”
in Milne’s time; seems to have been renewed and again broken up (The
Scotsman, November 12, 1873); but, judging from Murray’s Handbook of
Scotland, has again been restored.
Squire Meldrum’s valor was inferior to nobody’s, but as his fortune
was happier than Witherington’s and Lilliard’s, a note may suffice for
him. “Quhen his schankis wer schorne in sunder, vpon his knees he
wrocht greit wounder:” Lindsay, ed. 1594, Cv. recto, v. 30 f, Hall, p.
358, v. 1349 f. But really he was only “hackit on his hochis and
theis,” or as Pittscottie says, Dalyell, p. 306, “his hochis war
cutted and the knoppis of his elbowis war strikin aff,” and by and by
he is “haill and sound” again, according to the poet, and according to
the chronicler he “leived fyftie yeires thairefter.”
Footnote 180:
As stanch as some of these was a Highlander at the battle of Gasklune,
1392, who, though nailed to the ground by a horseman’s spear, held
fast to his sword, writhed himself up, and with a last stroke cut his
foeman above the foot to the bone, “through sterap-lethire and the
bute, thre ply or foure”: Wyntoun’s Chronicle, B. ix, ch. 14, Laing,
III, 59.
Footnote 181:
Legally just: Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, Historical and
Traditionary, I, 349 ff.
Footnote 182:
And afterwards, 1748, by Robert Foulis, Glasgow: “Two old Historical
Scots Poems, giving an account of the Battles of Harlaw and the
Reid-Squair.”
Footnote 183: