The jocular author of this ballad, who would certainly have been diverted by any one's supposing him to write under the restraints of tradition, brings Adam Bell, Clim. and Cloudesly into company with Robin Hood's father. He makes Robin Hood's mother niece to Guy of Warwick, and sister to Gamwel of Gamwel Hall. In No, 128 Young Gamwell is Robin Hood's sister's son. The author knows nothing of the Earl of Huntington and Matilda Fitzwater, but represents Robin Hood as the son of a forester. In everything except keeping Robin a yeoman, he writes "as the world were now but to begin, antiquity forgot, custom not known; " but poets in his day, to quote the editor of the ballad collection of 1728, "were looked upon like other Englishmen, born to live and write with freedom."
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