a is printed by Gutch, Robin Hood, II, 230, with deviations. Of b Ritson says: The corruptions of the press being equally numerous and minute, some of the most trifling have been corrected without notice. Despite the corruptions, b is, in some readings, preferable to a. Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. xliii, says that pretty early stall copies were printed both at Aberdeen and Glasgow.
Robin Hood attempts to stop a beggar, from whom he thinks he may get some money. The beggar gives no heed to his summons, but hies on. Robin, getting a surly answer upon a second essay, says that if there be but a farthing he will have it, orders the beggar to loose the strings of his pocks, and threatens him with an arrow. The beggar defies him, and upon Robin's drawing his bow, reaches him such a stroke with a staff that bow and arrow are broken to bits. Robin takes to his sword; the beggar lights on his hand with his staff and disables him completely, then follows in with lusty blows, till Robin falls in a swoon. The beggar moves on with entire unconcern. Three of Robin's men come by and revive him with water. Their master tells them of his disgrace; he had never been in so hard a place in forty year. He bids them bring the beggar back or slay him. Two of the three will be enough for that, they say, and one shall stay with him. Two set forth, accordingly, with a caution to be wary, take a short cut, which brings them out ahead of the beggar, and leap on him from a hiding, one gripping his staff and the other putting a dagger to his breast. The beggar sues for his life in vain; they will bind him and will take him back to their master, to be slain or hanged. He offers them a hundred pound and more for his liberty. They decide together to take the money, and say nothing about it, simply reporting that they have killed the old carl. The beggar spreads his cloak on the ground and many a pock on it; then, standing between them and the wind, takes a great bag of meal from his neck and flings the meal into their eyes. Having thus blinded them, he seizes his staff, which they had stuck in the ground, and gives each of them a dozen. The young men take to their heels, the beggar calling after them to stop for their pay. Robin, after a jest at the meal on their cloaths, makes them tell how they have fared. We are shamed, forever, he cries; but smiles to see that they have had their taste of the beggar's tree.
This tale is rightly called by Ritson a North Country composition of some antiquity, "perhaps Scottish." Fragments of Robin Hood ballads, Motherwell informs us, were traditionally extant in his day which had not (and have not) found their way into printed collections, and we know from very early testimony that such ballads were current in Scotland. This is by far the best of the Robin Hood ballads of the secondary, so to speak cyclic, period. It has plenty of homely humor, but the heroic sentiment is gone. It does not belong to the iron, the cast-iron, age of Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, etc.; but neither does it belong to the golden age of Robin Hood and the Monk, or the Gest. It would be no gain to have Thersites drubbing Odysseus. Robin finds his match, for the nonce, in the Potter, but he does not for that depute two of his men to be the death of the Potter. It never occurred to Little John and Much to get a hundred pound from a beggar, kill him, and pocket the money.
A story resembling that of the second part of this ballad occurs, as Ritson has observed, in Le moyen de parvenir, "1739, I, 304;" II, 94, London, 1786; p. 171, Paris, 1841. A friar encounters two footpads, who offer to relieve him of the burden of his frock. He asks them to let him take it off peaceably, puts his staff under his foot, takes off the frock and throws it before them. While one of the pair stoops to get it, the friar picks up the staff and hits the knave a blow which sends him headlong; the other runs off.
Translated by Anastasius Grün, p. 180.
This page most recently updated on 03-Jun-2011, 16:40:55. Return to main index
