This ballad and the following are variations upon the theme of Robin Hood and the Monk, in the Gest. The disguise as a woman occurs in other outlaw stories; as in Eustace the Monk, Michel, p. 43. Also in Blind Harry's Wallace, ed. Moir, book i, 239, and book iv, 764, pp. 9, 72: in the first case Wallace has a rock and sits spinning (see also No, 157). We hear again of the forced mass (st. 23) in No, 145, A 31, B 40; and of money borrowed against the bishop's will, in A 32 of the same. It is the Bishop of Hereford who suffers (see No, 144).
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