This ballad is thoroughly lyrical, and therein like the old age, and was pretty well sung to pieces before it ever was printed. 'A ballett of Wakef ylde and a grene' is entered in the Stationers' Register to Master John Wallye and Mistress Toye, 19 July, 1557 - 9 July, 1558. A snatch of 'The Jolly Pinder' is sung in each of the Robin Hood plays, Anthony Munday's Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, and Munday and Chettle's Death of Robert Earl of Huntington, both printed in 1601. Silence sings the line 'And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John' in the Second Part of Henry IV (act v, scene 3), and there are other allusions to the ballad. The adventure of the ballad is naturally introduced into the play of George a Greene the Pinner of Wakefield, printed in 1599 (reprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays, and by Dyce among the works of Robert Greene). The scene in the play is found in the prose history of George a Green, London, 1706, of which a copy is known of the date 1632. The ballad is so imperfect that one might be in doubtwhether the Pinder fights with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John all together or successively. But we see from the History and from Greene's play that the Pinder must take them one after the other, and Robin the last of the three.
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