Printed in A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, II, 44, and Evans's Old Ballads, 1777, 1784, I, 126, after a copy very near to c. In Ritson's Robin Hood, 1795, II, 46, probably after Roxburghe II, 394. Not included in the garlands of 1663, 1670; in a garland of 1749, the Aldermary garland, R. Marshall, and the Lichfield, M. Morgan, both not dated, No 8; in the York garland, 1811, No 9. In the Kinloch Manuscripts, V, 183, there is a copy, derived from the broadside, but Scotticised, and improved in the process.
A young man, Allen a Dale, whom Robin Hood has seen passing, one day singing and the next morning sighing, is stopped by Little John and the Miller's Son, and brought before their master, who asks him if he has any money. He has five shillings and a ring, and was to have been married the day before, but his bride has been given to an old knight. Robin asks what he will give to get his true-love. All that he can give is his faithful service. Robin goes to the church and declares the match not fit: the bride shall choose for herself. He blows his horn, and four-and-twenty of his men appear, the foremost of whom is Allen a Dale. Robin tells Allen that he shall be married on the spot. The bishop says no; there must be three askings. Robin puts the bishop's coat on Little John, and Little John asks seven times. Robin gives Allen the maid, and bids the man take her away that dare.
The ballad, it will be observed, is first found in broadside copies of the latter half of the seventeenth century. The story is told of Scarlock in the life of Robin Hood in Sloane Manuscript 715, 7, fol. 157, of the beginning of the seventeenth century; Thorns, Early Prose Romances, II, p. 39.
"Scarlock he induced [to become one of his company] upon this occacion. One day meting him as he walked solitary and lyke to a man forlorne, because a mayd to whom he was affyanced was taken from [him] by the violence of her frends, and given to another, that was auld and welthy; whereupon Robin, understandyng when the maryage-day should be, came to the church as a beggar, and having his company not far of, which came in so sone as they hard the sound of his home, he 'took' the bryde perforce from him that was in hand to have maryed her, and caused the preist to wed her and Scarlocke togeyther."
Translated by Anastasius Grün, p. 146.
This page most recently updated on 29-Mar-2011, 16:09:51. Return to main index
