The tolk ballads. Robin Hood Ballads contents: Introduction chapter the life of Robin Hood

CHAPTER 2. Early ballads.
2.1. Child ballads.
The earliest surviving text of a Robin Hood ballad is the 15th-century "Robin Hood and the Monk". This is preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48. Written after 1450, it contains many of the elements still associated with the legend, from the Nottingham setting to the bitter enmity between Robin and the local sheriff. Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood; the sword he is depicted with was common in the oldest ballads The first printed version is A Gest of Robyn Hode (c. 1500), a collection of separate stories that attempts to unite the episodes into a single continuous narrative. After this comes "Robin Hood and the Potter", contained in a manuscript of c. 1503. "The Potter" is markedly different in tone from "The Monk": whereas the earlier tale is "a thriller" the latter is more comic, its plot involving trickery and cunning rather than straightforward force.
Other early texts are dramatic pieces, the earliest being the fragmentary Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham (c. 1475). These are particularly noteworthy as they show Robin's integration into May Day rituals towards the end of the Middle Ages; Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham, among other points of interest, contains the earliest reference to Friar Tuck.⁵
The plots of neither "the Monk" nor "the Potter" are included in the Gest; and neither is the plot of "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne", which is probably at least as old as those two ballads although preserved in a more recent copy. Each of these three ballads survived in a single copy, so it is unclear how much of the medieval legend has survived, and what has survived may not be typical of the medieval legend. In the decades following the publication of Ritson's book, other ballad collections would occasionally publish stray Robin Hood ballads Ritson had missed. In 1806, Robert Jamieson published the earliest known Robin Hood ballad, Robin Hood and the Monk in Volume II of his Popular Ballads and Songs From Tradition. In 1846, the Percy Society included The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood in its collection, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England. In 1850, John Mathew Gutch published his own collection of Robin Hood ballads, Robin Hood Garlands and Ballads, with the tale of the lytell Geste, that in addition to all of Ritson's collection, also included Robin Hood and the Pedlars and Robin Hood and the Scotchman.
In 1858, Francis James Child published his English and Scottish Ballads which included a volume grouping all the Robin Hood ballads in one volume, including all the ballads published by Ritson, the four stray ballads published since then, as well as some ballads that either mentioned Robin Hood by name or featured characters named Robin Hood but weren't traditional Robin Hood stories. For his more scholarly work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in his volume dedicated to the Robin Hood ballads, published in 1888, Child removed the ballads from his earlier work that weren't traditional Robin Hood stories, gave the ballad Ritson titled Robin Hood and the Stranger back its original published title Robin Hood Newly Revived, and separated what Ritson had printed as the second part of Robin Hood and the Stranger as its own separate ballad, Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon. He also included alternate versions of ballads that had distinct, alternate versions. He numbered these 38 Robin Hood ballads among the 305 ballads in his collection as Child Ballads Nos 117–154, which is how they're often referenced in scholarly works.⁶
The character of Robin in these first texts is rougher edged than in his later incarnations. In "Robin Hood and the Monk", for example, he is shown as quick tempered and violent, assaulting Little John for defeating him in an archery contest; in the same ballad Much the Miller's Son casually kills a 'little page' in the course of rescuing Robin Hood from prison. No extant early ballad actually shows Robin Hood 'giving to the poor', although in "A Gest of Robyn Hode" Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate knight, which he does not in the end require to be repaid; and later in the same ballad Robin Hood states his intention of giving money to the next traveller to come down the road if he happens to be poor.
As it happens the next traveller is not poor, but it seems in context that Robin Hood is stating a general policy. The first explicit statement to the effect that Robin Hood habitually robbed from the rich to give the poor can be found in John Stow's Annales of England (1592), about a century after the publication of the Gest. But from the beginning Robin Hood is on the side of the poor; the Gest quotes Robin Hood as instructing his men that when they rob:
loke ye do no husbonde harme
That tilleth with his ploughe.
No more ye shall no gode yeman
That walketh by gren-wode shawe;
Ne no knyght ne no squyer
That wol be a gode felawe.
And in its final lines the Gest sums up:
he was a good outlawe,
And dyde pore men moch god.
Within Robin Hood's band, medieval forms of courtesy rather than modern ideals of equality are generally in evidence. In the early ballad, Robin's men usually kneel before him in strict obedience: in A Gest of Robyn Hode the king even observes that 'His men are more at his byddynge Then my men be at myn.' Their social status, as yeomen, is shown by their weapons: they use swords rather than quarterstaffs. The only character to use a quarterstaff in the early ballads is the potter, and Robin Hood does not take to a staff until the 17th-century Robin Hood and Little John.
The political and social assumptions underlying the early Robin Hood ballads have long been controversial. J. C. Holt influentially argued that the Robin Hood legend was cultivated in the households of the gentry, and that it would be mistaken to see in him a figure of peasant revolt. He is not a peasant but a yeoman, and his tales make no mention of the complaints of the peasants, such as oppressive taxes. He appears not so much as a revolt against societal standards as an embodiment of them, being generous, pious, and courteous, opposed to stingy, worldly, and churlish foes. Other scholars have by contrast stressed the subversive aspects of the legend, and see in the medieval Robin Hood ballads a plebeian literature hostile to the feudal order.
“These byshoppes and thyse archebyshoppes, Ye shall them bete and bynde,” was an injunction carefully impressed upon his followers. The Abbot of Saint Mary’s, in York from some unknown cause, appears to have been distinguished by particular animosity; and the Sheriff of Not­ting­ham­shire , who may have been too active and officious in his endeavours to apprehend him, was the unremitted object of his vengeance.⁷
Notwithstanding, however, the aversion in which he appears to have held the clergy of every denomination, he was a man of exemplary piety, according to the notions of that age, and retained a domestic chaplain (Frier Tuck, no doubt) for the diurnal celebration of the divine mysteries. This we learn from an anecdote preserved by Fordun , as an instance of those actions which the historian allows to deserve commendation. One day, as he heard mass, which he was most devoutly accustomed to do (nor would he, in whatever necessity, suffer the office to be interrupted,) he was espied by a certain sheriff and officers belonging to the king, who had frequently before molested him in that most secret recess of the wood where he was at mass. Some of his people, who perceived what was going forward, advised him to fly with all speed, which, out of reverence to the sacrament, which he was then most devoutly worshipping, he absolutely refused to do.
But the rest of his men having fled for fear of death, Robin, confiding solely in Him whom he reverently worshipped, with a very few, who by chance were present, set upon his enemies, whom he easily vanquished; and, being enriched with their spoils and ransom, he always held the ministers of the Church and masses in greater veneration ever after, mindful of what is vulgarly said:
Having, for a long series of years, maintained a sort of independent sovereignty, and set kings, judges, and magistrates at defiance, a proclamation was published offering a considerable reward for bringing him in either dead or alive; which, however, seems to have been productive of no greater success than former attempts for that purpose. At length, the infirmities of old age increasing upon him , and desirous to be relieved, in a fit of sickness, by being let blood, he applied for that purpose to the Prioress of Kirkleys nunnery in Yorkshire, his relation (women, and particularly religious women, being, in those times, somewhat better skilled in surgery than the sex is at present), by whom he was treacherously suffered to bleed to death. This event happened on the 18th of November 1247, being the 31st year of King Henry III. and (if the date assigned to his birth be correct) about the 87th of his age . He was interred under some trees, at a short distance from the house; a stone being placed over his grave, with an inscription to his memory .
Such was the end of Robin Hood: a man who, in a barbarous age, and under a complicated tyranny, displayed a spirit of freedom and independence which has endeared him to the common people, whose cause he maintained (for all opposition to tyranny is the cause of the people), and, in spite of the malicious endeavours of pitiful monks, by whom history was consecrated to the crimes and follies of titled ruffians and sainted idiots, to suppress all record of his patriotic exertions and virtuous acts, will render his name immortal.⁸
With respect to his personal character: it is sufficiently evident that he was active, brave, prudent, patient; possessed of uncommon bodily strength and considerable military skill; just, generous, benevolent, faithful, and beloved or revered by his followers or adherents for his excellent and amiable qualities. Fordun, a priest, extols his piety, Major (as we have seen) pronounces him the most humane and the prince of all robbers; and Camden, whose testimony is of some weight, calls him “prædonem mitissimum,” the gentlest of thieves.
The author of the two plays upon the story of our hero, of which a particular account will be hereafter given, makes him contemporary with King Richard, who, as well as his brother Prince John, is introduced upon the scene; which is confirmed by another play, quoted in Note. Warner, also, in his Albion’s England, 1602, refers his existence to “better daies, first Richard’s daies.” This, to be sure, may not be such evidence as would be sufficient to decide the point in a court of justice; but neither judge nor counsel will dispute the authority of that oracle of the law Sir Edward Coke, who pronounces that “This Robert Hood lived in the reign of King R. I.” (3 Institute, 197).
We must not therefore regard what is said by such writers as the author of “George a Greene, the pinner of Wakefield,” 1599 , who represents our hero as contemporary with King Edward IV and the compiler of a foolish book called “The noble birth, &c. of Robin Hood”, who commences it by informing us of his banishment by King Henry VIII.
Which to beleeve, might show my wits but weake;”
or to imagine his story must have been familiar to Plutarch, because in his Morals, translated by Dr. Philemon Holland, 1603, we read the following passage:—“Evenso, when learned men at a table plunge and drowne themselves (as it were), in subtile problemes and questions interlaced with logicke, which the vulgar sort are not able for their lives to comprehend and conceive; whiles they also againe for their part come in with their foolish songs, and vain ballads of Robin Hood and Little John, telling tales of a tubbe, or of a roasted horse, and such like.” Who, indeed, would be apt to think that his skill in archery was known to Virgil? And yet, as interpreted by our facetious friend Mr. Charles Cotton, he tells us that
“Cupid was a little tyny,
Cogging, lying, peevish nynny;
But with a bow the shit-breecht elf
Would shoot like Robin Hood himself.”
In a word, if we are to credit translators, he must have existed before the siege of Troy; for thus, according to one of Homer’s:
“Then came a choice companion
Of Robin Hood and Little John,
Who many a buck and many a doe,
In Sherwood forest, with his bow,
Had nabb’d; believe me it is true, sir,
The fellow’s Christian name was Teucer.”
This last supposition, indeed, has even the respectable countenance of Dan Geoffrey Chaucer:
“Pandarus answerde, it may be well inough,
And held with him of all that ever he saied,
But in his hart he thought, and soft lough,
And to himselfe full soberly he saied,
From hasellwood there Jolly Robin plaied,
Shall come all that thou abidest here,
Ye, farewell all the snow of ferne yere.”
Troilus (B. 5), Speght’s edition, 1602.
(4) “His extraction was noble, and his true name Robert Fitzooth.”] In “an olde and auncient pamphlet,” which Grafton the chronicler had seen, it was written that “This man discended of a noble parentage.”
The Sloane MS. says “He was of parentage;” and though the material word is illegible, the sense evidently requires noble. So, likewise, the Harleian note: “It is said that he was of noble blood.” Leland also has expressly termed him “nobilis”. The following account of his family will be found sufficiently particular. Ralph Fitzothes, or Fitzooth, a Norman, who had come over to England with William Rufus, married Maud or Matilda, daughter of Gilbert de Gaunt, Earl of Kyme and Lindsey, by whom he had two sons: Philip, afterward Earl of Kyme, that earldom being part of his mother’s dowry, and William.⁹
Philip the elder died without issue; William was a ward to Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in whose household he received his education, and who, by the king’s express command, gave him in marriage to his own niece, the youngest of the three daughters of the celebrated Lady Roisia de Vere, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Guisnes in Normandy, and lord high chamberlain of England under Henry I, and of Adeliza, daughter to Richard de Clare, Earl of Clarence and Hertford, by Payn de Beauchamp, baron of Bedford, her second husband. The offspring of this marriage was our hero, Robert Fitzooth, commonly called Robin Hood.