The manuscript in which this ballad occurs contains a variety of matters, and, as the best authority[foot-note] has declared, may in part have been written as early as 1650, but all the ballads are in a nineteenth-century hand, and some of them are maintained to be forgeries. I see no sufficient reason for regarding this particular piece as spurious, and therefore, though I should be glad to be rid of it, accept it for the present as perhaps a copy of a broadside, or a copy of a copy.
The story resembles that of Robin Hood's Delight, pedlars taking the place of keepers; but Robin is reduced to an ignominy paralleled only in the second ballad of Robin Hood and the Beggar. Robin Hood, accompanied by Scarlet and John, bids three pedlars stand. They pay no heed, and he sends an arrow through the pack of one of them. Hereupon they throw down their packs and wait for their assailants to come up. Robin's bow is broken by a blow from a staff of one of the pedlars. Robin calls a truce until he and his men can get staves. There is then an equal fight, the end of which is that Robin Hood is knocked senseless and left in a swoon, tended by Scarlet and John. But before the pedlars set forward, Kit o Thirsks, the best man of the three, and the one who has fought with Robin, administers a balsam to his fallen foe, which he says will heal his hurts, but which operates unpleasantly.
Thirsk is about twenty miles from York, in the North Riding.
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