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The tolk ballads. Robin Hood Ballads
CONTENTS:
Introduction……………………………………………………………………..3
CHAPTER 1. The life of Robin Hood…………………………………............6
1.1. The Robin Hood Ballads…………………………………………………….6
1.2. The Ballad Hero Robin Hood……………………………………………….10
CHAPTER 2. Early ballads……………………………………………………14
2.1. Child ballads…………………………………………………….…………..14
2.2. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood………………………………….…..21
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….26
Referances…………………………………………………………………..…...29
Introduction
Familiar in our mouth as household words, at the end of the eighteenth, excited the editor’s curiosity to retrieve all the historical or poetical remains concerning him that could be met with: an object which he has occasionally pursued for many years; and of which pursuit he now publishes the result. He cannot, indeed, pretend that his researches, extensive as they must appear, have been attended with all the success he could have wished; but, at the same time, it ought to be acknowledged that many poetical pieces, of great antiquity and some merit, are deservedly rescued from oblivion.
The materials collected for the “Life” of this celebrated character, which are either preserved at large or carefully referred to in the “Notes and Illustrations,” are not, it must be confessed, in every instance, so important, so ancient, or, perhaps, so authentic, as the subject seems to demand; although the compiler may be permitted to say, in humble second-hand imitation of the poet Martial:
Some there are good, some middling, and some bad; But yet they were the best that could be had. Desirous to omit nothing that he could find upon the subject, he has everywhere faithfully vouched and exhibited his authorities, such as they are: it would, therefore, seem altogether uncandid or unjust to make him responsible for the want of authenticity of such of them as may appear liable to that imputation.
T will scarcely be expected that one should be able to offer an authentic narrative of the life and transactions of this extraordinary personage. The times in which he lived, the mode of life he adopted, and the silence or loss of contemporary writers, are circumstances sufficiently favourable, indeed, to romance, but altogether inimical to historical truth.
The reader must, therefore, be contented with such a detail, however scanty or imperfect, as a zealous pursuit of the subject enables one to give; and which, though it may fail to satisfy, may possibly serve to amuse.
No assistance has been derived from the labours of his professed biographers ; and even the industrious Sir John Hawkins, from whom the public might have expected ample gratification upon the subject, acknowledges that “the history of this popular hero is but little known, and all the scattered fragments concerning him, could they be brought together, would fall far short of satisfying such an inquirer as none but real and authenticated facts will content. We must,” he says, “take his story as we find it.” He accordingly gives us nothing but two or three trite and trivial extracts, with which every one at all curious about the subject was as well acquainted as himself.
It is not, at the same time, pretended, that the present attempt promises more than to bring together the scattered fragments to which the learned historian alludes. This, however, has been done, according to the best of the compiler’s information and abilities; and the result is, with a due sense of the deficiency of both, submitted to the reader’s candour.
Robin Hood was born at locksley, in the county of Nottingham , in the reign of king henry the second, and about the year of christ 1160 . his extraction was noble, and his true name Robert Fitzooth, which vulgar pronunciation easily corrupted into robin hood . he is frequently styled, and commonly reputed to have been, earl of huntingdon; a title to which, in the latter part of his life, at least, he actually appears to have had some sort of pretension .
In his youth he is reported to have been of a wild and extravagant disposition; insomuch that, his inheritance being consumed or forfeited by his excesses, and his person outlawed for debt, either from necessity or choice, he sought an asylum in the woods and forests, with which immense tracts, especially in the northern parts of the kingdom, were at that time covered . Of these, he chiefly affected Barnsdale, in Yorkshire, Sherwood, in Nottinghamshire, and, according to some, Plompton Park, in Cumberland. Here he either found, or was afterward joined by, a number of persons in similar circumstances—
“Such as the fury of ungovern’d youth
Thrust from the company of awful men,”
who appear to have considered and obeyed him as their chief or leader, and of whom his principal favourites, or those in whose courage and fidelity he most confided, where Little John (whose surname is said to have been Nailor), William Scadlock (Scathelock or Scarlet), George a Green, pinder (or pound-keeper) of Wakefield, Much, a miller’s son, and a certain monk or frier named Tuck. He is likewise said to have been accompanied in his retreat by a female, of whom he was enamoured, and whose real or adopted name was Marian .
His company, in process of time, consisted of a hundred archers; men, says Major, most skilful in battle, whom four times that number of the boldest fellows durst not attack .
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