Also Roxburghe, II, 370, III, 524; The Noble Fisherman's Garland, 1686; Bagford, 643. m. 10, 22.
'The Noble Ffisherman, or, Robin Hoods great Prize' is receipted for to Francis Coules in the Stationers' Registers, June 13, 1631: Arber, IV, 254.
Ritson, Robin Hood, II, 110, 1795, "from three old black-letter copies, one in the collection of Anthony a Wood, another in the British Museum, and the third in a private collection." Evans, Old Ballads, 1777, 1784, I, 171, from an Aldermary garland.
Robin Hood is here made to try his fortunes on the sea, like Eustace the Monk and Wallace. He goes to Scarborough and gives himself out as a fisherman, and is engaged as such by a widow with whom he lodges, who is the owner of a ship. Out of his wantonness, rather than his ignorance, we must suppose, Simon, as he calls himself, when others cast baited hooks into the water, casts in bare lines; for which he is laughed to scorn. A French cruiser bears down on the fishermen, and the master gives up all for lost. Simon asks for his bow; not a Frenchman will he spare. The master, not strangely, takes such talk for brag. Simon requests to be tied to a mast, 'that at his mark he may stand fair,' and to have his bow in his hand, when never a Frenchman will he spare. He shoots one of the enemy through the heart, and then asks to be loosed and to have his bow in his hand, when, again, never a Frenchman will he spare. The Englishmen board, and find a booty of twelve thousand pound. Simon announces that he shall give half the ship to the dame who employed him, and the other half to his comrades. The master objects; Simon has won the vessel with his own hand (a point which might have been made more distinctly to appear in the narrative), and he shall have her. But the outlaw afloat has still his munificent old ways; so it shall be as to the ship, and the twelve thousand pound shall build an asylum 'for the opprest'! All this may strike us as infantile, but the ballad was evidently in great favor two hundred years ago.
Translated (not entirely) by A. Grün, p. 295.
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