The best qualified judges are not agreed as to the typographical origin of a. The date of b may be anywhere from 1492 to 1534. Copland's edition was not earlier than 1548. The dates of the other texts are uncertain, a, b, f, g, are deficient at 71, 3391, and misprinted at 49, 50, repeating, it may be, the faults of a prior impression, a appears, by internal evidence, to be an older text than b. Some obsolete words of the earlier copies have been modernized in f, g, and deficient lines have been supplied. A considerable number of Middle-English forms remain after those successive renovations of reciters and printers which are presumable in such cases. The Gest may have been compiled at a time when such forms had gone out of use, and these may be relics of the ballads from which this little epic was made up; or the whole poem may have been put together as early as 1400, or before. There are no firm grounds on which to base an opinion.
No notice of Robin Hood has been recovered earlier than that which was long ago pointed out by Percy as occurring in Piers Plowman, and this, according to Professor Skeat, cannot be older than about 1377. Sloth, in that poem, says in his shrift that he knows "rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf, erle of Chestre," though but imperfectly acquainted with his paternoster. Thomas Robinhood is one of six witnesses to a grant in 1380 or 11381 (Historical Manuscripts. Commission, Fifth Report, Appendix, p. 511). References to Robin Hood are not infrequent in the following century.
Thus it is evident that Robin Hood ballads were popular for a century or more before the time when the Gest was printed. Their popularity was fully established at the beginning of this period, and unquestionably extended back to a much earlier day. Of these ballads, there have come down to us in a comparatively ancient form the following: those from which the Gest (printed, perhaps, before 1500) was composed, being at least four, Robin Hood, the Knight and the Monk, Robin Hood, Little John and the Sheriff, Robin Hood and the King, and Robin Hood's death (a fragment); Robin Hood and the Monk (No. 119), more properly Robin Hood rescued by Little John, Manuscript of about 1450, but not for that older than the ballads of the Gest; Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne (No. 118), Percv Manuscript ca. 1650; Robin Hood's Death (No. 120), Percy Manuscript and late garlands; Robin Hood and the Potter No. 121), Manuscript of about 1500, later perhaps than any of the group. Besides these there are thirtytwo ballads (Nos. 122-153). About half a dozen of these thirty-two have in them something of the old popular quality; as many more not the least trace of it. Fully a dozen are variations, sometimes wearisome, sometimes sickening, upon the theme 'Robin Hood met with his match.' A considerable part of the Robin Hood poetry looks like char-work done for the petty press, and should be judged as such. The earliest of these ballads, on the other hand, are among the best of all ballads, and perhaps none in English please so many and please so long.
Robin Hood is absolutely a croation of the ballad-muse. The earliest mention we have of him is as the subject of ballads. The only two early historians who speak of him as a ballad hero (Bower, writing 1441-47, and Major, born ca. 1450) pretend to have no information about him except what they derive from ballads, and show that they have none other by the description they give of him; this description being in entire conformity with ballads in our possession, one of which is found in a Manuscript as old as the older of these two writers.
Robin Hood is a yeoman, outlawed for reasons not given, but easily surmised, "courteous and free," religious in sentiment, and above all reverent of the Virgin, for the love of whom he is respectful to all women. He lives by the king's deer (though he loves no man in the world so much as his king) and by levies on the superfluity of the higher orders, secular and spiritual, bishops and archbishops, abbots, bold barons, and knights, but harms no husbandman or yeoman, and is friendly to poor men generally, imparting to them of what he takes from the rich. Courtesy, good temper, liberality, and manliness are his chief marks; for courtesy and good temper he is a popular Gawain. Yeoman as he is, he has a kind of royal dignity, a princely grace, and a gentleman-like refinement of humor. This is the Robin Hood of the Gest especially; the late ballads debase this primary conception in various ways and degrees.
This is what Robin Hood is, and it is equally important to observe what he is not. He has no sort of political character, in the Gest or any other ballad. This takes the ground from under the feet of those who seek to assign him a place in history. Nor has even a shadow of a case been made out by those who would equate Robin Hood with Odin or account for him in accordance with the supposed principles of comparative mythology.
The chief comrades of Robin Hood are in 'Robin Hood and the Monk,' Little John, Scathlok (Scarlok, Scarlet), and Much; to these the Gest adds Gilbert of the White Hand and Reynold (292 f.). A friar is not a member of his company in the older ballads. Maid Marian is unknown to the genuine Robin Hood tradition.
The Gest is a popular epic, composed from several ballads by a poet of a thoroughly congenial spirit. No one of the ballads from which it was made up is extant in a separate shape, and some portions of the story may have been of the compiler's own invention. The decoying of the sheriff into the wood, stanzas 181-204, is of the same derivation as the last part of Robin Hood and the Potter (No. 121), Little John and Robin Hood exchanging parts; the conclusion, 451-456, is of the same source as Robin Hood's Death (No. 120). Though the tale, as to all important considerations, is eminently original, absolutely so as to the conception of Robin Hood, some traits and incidents, as might be expected, are taken from what we may call the general stock of mediaeval fiction.
The story is a three-ply web of the adventures of Robin Hood with a knight, with the sheriff of Nottingham, and with the king (the concluding stanzas, 451-456, being a mere epilogue), and may be decomposed accordingly. I. How Robin Hood relieved a knight, who had fallen into poverty, by lending him money on the security of Our Lady, the first fit, 1-81; how the knight recovered his lands, which had been pledged to Saint Mary Abbey, and set forth to repay the loan, the second fit, 82-143; how Robin Hood, having taken twice the sum lent from a monk of this abbey, declared that Our Lady had discharged the debt, and would receive nothing more from the knight, the fourth fit, 205-280. II. How Little John insidiously took service with Robin Hood's standing enemy, the sheriff of Nottingham, and put the sheriff into Robin Hood's hands, the third fit, 144-204; how the sheriff, who had sworn an oath to help and not to harm Robin Hood and his men, treacherously set upon the outlaws at a shooting-match, and they were fain to take refuge in the knight's castle; how, missing of Robin Hood, the sheriff made prisoner of the knight; and how Robin Hood slew the sheriff and rescued the knight, the fifth and sixth fit, 281-353. III. How the king, coming in person to apprehend Robin Hood and the knight, disguised himself as an abbot, was stopped by Robin Hood, feasted on his own deer, and entertained with an exhibition of archery, in the course of which he was recognized by Robin Hood, who asked his grace and received a promise thereof, on condition that he and his men should enter into the king's service; and how the king, for a jest, disguised himself and his company in the green of the outlaws, and going back to Nottingham caused a general flight of the people, which he stopped by making himself known; how he pardoned the knight; and how Robin Hood, after fifteen months in the king's court, heart-sick and deserted by all his men but John and Scathlock, obtained a week's leave of the king to go on a pilgrimage to Saint Mary Magdalen of Barnsdale, and would never come back in two-andtwenty years, the seventh and eighth fit, 354-450.
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