a is printed from the manuscript in Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 54, 1806; Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 179, 1829; Ritson's Robin Hood, ed. 1832, II, 221, collated by Sir Frederic Madden. Here printed from a fresh transcript, carefully revised by Rev. Professor Skeat.
On a bright Whitsuntide morning, Robin Hood, not having "seen his Savior" for more than a fortnight, resolves to go to mass at Nottingham. Much advises that he take twelve yeomen with him for safety, but Robin will have only Little John. They improve the time, while on their way to church, by shooting for a wager. Robin scornfully offers John three to one; but John nevertheless wins five shillings of his master, at which Robin loses his temper, and strikes John. John will be his man no more, and returns to the wood. Robin, sorry for this consequence of his bad humor, goes on to Nottingham alone. A monk at Saint Mary's church recognizes Robin, and gives information to the sheriff, who comes with a large force to arrest the king's felon. Robin kills or wounds many of the posse, but his sword breaks upon the sheriff's head. In some way which we do not learn, owing to verses lost,[foot-note] Robin's men hear that their master has been taken. They are all out of their wits but Little John. Mild Mary, he tells his comrades, will never forsake one who has been so long devoted to her, and he, with her help, will see to the monk. The next day John and Much waylay the monk, who is carrying letters to the king conveying the tidings of Robin's capture; they kill him, take the letters, and carry them to the king themselves. The king gives them twenty pounds for their news, and makes them yeomen of the crown; he sends his privy seal to the sheriff by John, commanding that Robin Hood shall be brought to him unhurt. The sheriff, upon receiving the seal, makes John good cheer, and goes to bed heavy with wine. John and Much, while the sheriff is sleeping, make their way to the jail. John rouses the porter, runs him through,[foot-note] and takes his keys, unbinds Robin Hood, and puts a good sword in his hand; they leap from the wall where it is lowest. The sheriff finds the jailer dead in the morning, and searches the town for his captive; but Robin is in merry Sherwood. Farewell now, says John; I have done thee a good turn for an ill. Nay, says Robin, I make thee master of my men and me. So shall it never be, answers John; I care only to be a comrade. The king hears that Robin has escaped, and that the sheriff is afraid to show himself. Little John has beguiled us both, says the king. I made them yeomen of the crown, and gave them pay with my own hand! Little John loves Robin Hood better than he does us. Say no more. John has beguiled us all.
Too much could not be said in praise of this ballad, but nothing need be said. It is very perfection in its kind; and yet we have others equally good, and beyond doubt should have had more, if they had been written down early, as this was, and had not been left to the chances of tradition. Even writing would not have saved all, but writing has saved this (in large part), and in excellent form.
The landscape background of the first two stanzas has been often praised, and its beauty will never pall. It may be called landscape or prelude, for both eyes and ears are addressed, and several others of these woodland ballads have a like symphony or setting: Adam Bell, Robin Hood and the Potter, Guy of Gisborne, even the much later ballad of The Noble Fisherman. It is to be observed that the story of the outlaw Fulk Fitz Warine, which has other traits in common with Robin Hood ballads, begins somewhat after the same fashion.[foot-note]
Robin Hood's devotion to the Virgin, st. 34, is a feature which reappears in Robin Hood and the Potter, Guy of Gisborne, Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar, and above all in The Gest. His profound piety, as evinced in stanzas 6, 7, and again in 8, 9 of The Gest, is commemorated by Bower in a passage in the Scotichronicon, of about the same date as the manuscript of the present ballad (1450), which we have every reason to assume to be derived from a lost ballad.[foot-note] Robin Hood had mass regularly sung at Barnsdale, nor would he suffer the office to be interrupted for the most pressing occasion. (We know from The Gest, st. 440, that he had a pretty chapel there, dedicated to Mary Magdalen.) One day, while so engaged, he was informed that the sheriff and his men, old foes of his, had tracked him to the very retired part of the forest where the service was going on, and was urged to fly with his best speed. This, for reverence of the sacrament, which he was then most devoutly adoring, he utterly refused to do, and then, while the rest were fearing for their lives, trusting in him whom he worshipped, fell upon his enemies, with a few of his followers who had rallied to him, and easily put them to rout. Enriched with their spoil and ransom, he was led to hold the ministers of the church (but apparently not "bishops and archbishops," Gest, st. 15) and masses in greater veneration than ever, mindful of the common saw, God hears the man who often hears the mass.[foot-note]
There is a general resemblance between the rescue of Robin Hood in stanzas 61-81 and that of William of Cloudesly in Adam Bell, 56-94, and the precaution suggested by Much in the eighth stanza corresponds to the warning given by Adam in the eighth stanza of the other ballad. There is a verbal agreement in stanzas 71 of the first and 66 of the second.[foot-note] Such agreements or repetitions are numerous in the Robin Hood ballads, and in other traditional ballads, where similar situations occur.
Robin Hood's rescue of Little John, in Guy of Gisborne, after quarrelling with him on a fanciful provocation, is a partial offset for Little John's heart-stirring generosity in this ballad. We have already had several cases of ballads in which the principal actors exchange parts.
That portion of 'Robin Hood's Death' in which Robin Hood gets angry with Scarlet, and shoots with Little John on his way to be let blood, may have been transferred, at least in part, from Robin Hood and the Monk.
It is hardly worth the while to ask whether the monk in this ballad is the same who is pillaged in The Gest. So rational a suggestion as that more than one monk must have fallen into Robin's hands, in the course of his long and lucrative career, may not be conclusive, but we may rest certain that there were many Robin Hood ballads besides the few old ones which have come down to us; and if so, there would be many variations upon so agreeable a topic as the depleting of overstocked friars.
Translated, after Jamieson, by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 148, No 24; by Anastasius Grün, p. 89.
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