a is printed, with changes, by Ritson, Robin Hood, 1795, II, 122. Evans, Old Ballads, 1777, 1784, 1, 180, agrees with the Aldermary garland.
There is a copy in the Roxburghe Collection, III, 20.
Robin Hood, riding towards Nottingham, comes upon a beggar, who asks charity. Robin says he has no money, but must have a bout with him. The beggar with his staff gives three blows for every stroke of Robin's with his sword. Robin cries truce, and at the suggestion, we might almost say upon the requisition, of the beggar, exchanges his horse and finery for the beggar's bags and rags. Thus equipped, he proceeds to Nottingham, and has the adventure with the sheriff and three yeomen which is the subject of No 140.
The copy in the Wood and in the Roxburghe collections is signed T.R., like Robin Hood and the Butcher, B, and, like the latter ballad, this is a rifacimento, with middle rhyme in the third line. It is perhaps made up from two distinct stories; the Second Part, beginning at stanza 20, from Robin Hood rescuing Three Squires, and what precedes from a ballad resembling Robin Hood and the Beggar, II.
But no seventeenth-century version of Robin Hood and the Beggar, II, is known, and it is more likely that we owe the fight between Robin Hood and the Beggar to the folly and bad taste of T.R. Robin has no sort of provocation to fight with the beggar, and no motive for changing clothes, the proposition actually coming from the beggar, st. 15, and it is an accident that his disguise proves useful (cf. Guy of Gisborne). The beggar should have reported that three men were to be hanged, but instead of this is forced into a fight, in order that one more ignominious defeat may be scored against Robin.
The verses,
occur also in Robin Hood and the Bishop, No 143, 63,4. 'And this mantle of mine I'le to thee resign,' 163, looks very like a reminiscence of Robin Hood and the Bishop, 103, 'Thy spindle and twine unto me resign.'[foot-note]
This page most recently updated on 28-Mar-2011, 18:16:50. Return to main index
