Frank Sidgwick

Argument.--For a jest, the king disguises himself and his men once more, this time in Lincoln green, which he purchases off Robin Hood. The whole party proceeds to Nottingham, where the appearance of so many green mantles causes a general flight of the inhabitants. The king, however, reveals himself, and after a feast, pardons the knight. / Robin dwells in the king's court for fifteen months, at the end of which time he has spent much money, and has lost all his men except Little John and Scathlock. He therefore begs the king's leave to go on a pilgrimage to a shrine of St. Mary Magdalen in Barnsdale, and the king consents, but allows him only seven nights' absence. Robin comes to the greenwood, and shoots a great hart; and on blowing his horn, seven score yeomen come and welcome him back, and he dwells two-and-twenty years in the greenwood. In the end he was betrayed by his kinswoman, the Prioress of Kirkesly Abbey, and her lover, Sir Roger of Doncaster. / It has been suggested (by Professor Brandl) that the episode of the king's disguise in green is an intentional variation of the episode in the Third Fytte, where the Sheriff of Nottingham is forced to wrap himself in a green mantle. In any case it is probable that most of this Eighth Fytte is the work of the compiler of the ; possibly even the delightful verses (stt. 445-6) in which the joy of greenwood life overcomes Robin.

Argument.--The story now returns to the Sheriff of Nottingham, and relates how he offered a prize for the best archer in the north. Robin Hood, hearing of this match, determines to go to it, and to test the sheriff's faith to his oath (see the Third Fytte, stt. 202-4). Robin wins the prize, and is starting home to the greenwood, when the sheriff recognises and attacks him, but is beaten off by a shower of arrows. Robin and his men retire, shooting as they go, until they come to a castle. Here dwells the knight to whom Robin had lent the money--'Sir Richard at the Lee.' He takes in Robin and his men, and defies the sheriff; Robin, he says, shall spend forty days with him. / This fytte is no doubt based on some single lost ballad of a shooting-match at which Robin was victorious, and at which the Sheriff of Nottingham attempted in vain to arrest him. But the compiler of the has carefully linked it to the preceding fyttes by such references as Robin's determination to try the sheriff's faith (st. 287), which is made clear in stt. 296-8; and the identification of the knight whose castle protects Robin and his men with the knight to whom the money had been lent (stt. 310-312). / THE FIFTH FYTTE

'Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur.' / --MAJOR. / The Text.--There are seven texts of the , to be distinguished as

Argument.--Robin Hood will not dine until he has 'his pay,' and he therefore sends Little John with Much and Scarlok to wait for an 'unketh gest.' They capture a monk of St. Mary Abbey, and Robin Hood makes him disgorge eight hundred pounds. The monk, we are told, was on his way to London to take proceedings against the knight. / In due course the knight, who was left at the end of the second fytte at the wrestling-match, arrives to pay his debt to Robin Hood; who, however, refuses to receive it, saying that Our Lady had discharged the loan already. / The admirable, naïvely-told episode of Our Lady's method of repaying money lent on her security, is not without parallels, some of which Child points out (III. 53-4).

Argument.--The knight goes to York to pay down his four hundred pounds to the abbot of St. Mary Abbey, who has retained the services of the high justice of England 'with cloth and fee,' an offence defined as conspiracy by statutes of the first three Edwards. The knight, pretending he has not brought the money, requests an extension of time; but the abbot will not hear of it, and is supported in his refusal by the justice: the knight's lands will be forfeited. The justice advises the abbot (117, etc.) to give the knight a sum to 'make a release' and prevent subsequent legal difficulties. The knight brings the matter to an end by paying down the four hundred pounds, saying that had the abbot been more courteous, he should have had interest on the loan. / The knight returns to his home in Wyresdale, and saves up the sum to be repaid to Robin Hood. As he sets out for Barnsdale with a goodly company, he finds a great wrestling-match taking place at Wentbridge,[1] which delays him a while. / The word 'frembde' (138.3) is now obsolete except in Scots and north-country dialect, and is spelled in various ways. It occurs more than once in Chaucer, and twice in Sidney's . 'Fremit,' the common Scots form, may be found in Burns. More recently, it appears in books of Westmoreland, Cumberland, or Northumberland dialect. Cp. Mrs. Gaskell, : 'There's a fremd man i' t' house.' It means 'foreign' or 'strange.'

Argument.--The king, coming with a great array to Nottingham to take Robin Hood and the knight, and finding nothing but a great scarcity of deer, is wondrous wroth, and promises the knight's lands to any one who will bring him his head. For half a year the king has no news of Robin; at length, at the suggestion of a forester, he disguises himself as an abbot and five of his men as monks, and goes into the greenwood. He is met and stopped by Robin Hood, gives up forty pounds to him, and alleges he is a messenger from the king. Thereupon Robin entertains him and his men on the king's own deer, and the outlaws hold an archery competition, Robin smiting those that miss. At his last shot, Robin himself misses, and asks the abbot to smite him in his turn. The abbot gives him such a buffet that Robin is nearly felled; on looking more closely, he recognises the king, of whom he and his men ask pardon on their knees. The king grants it, on condition that they will enter his service. Robin agrees, but reserves the right to return to the greenwood if he mislikes the court. / This fytte is based on the story, extremely common and essentially popular, especially in England, of a meeting between a king in disguise and one of his subjects. Doubtless there was a ballad of Robin Hood and the king; but the only one we possess, , is a late and a loose paraphrase of this fytte and the next. The commonest stories and ballads of this type in English are ( Tanner), , , and . Usually the point of the story is the lack of ceremony displayed by the subject, and the royal good-humour and largesse of the king. / There is only an arbitrary division between Fyttes VII. and VIII.; and one or two other points will be discussed in introducing the next and last fytte.

Argument.--The Sheriff of Nottingham secures the assistance of the High Sheriff, and besets the knight's castle, accusing him of harbouring the king's enemies. The knight bids him appeal to the king, saying he will 'avow' ( make good or justify) all he has done, on the pledge of all his lands. The sheriffs raise the siege and go to London, where the king says he will be at Nottingham in two weeks and will capture both the knight and Robin Hood. The sheriff returns home to get together a band of archers to assist the king; but meanwhile Robin has escaped to the greenwood. However, the sheriff lies in wait for the knight, captures him and takes him bound to Nottingham. The knight's lady rides to Robin and begs him to save her lord; whereupon Robin and his men hasten to Nottingham, kill the sheriff, release the knight, and carry him off to the greenwood. / The latter episode--of Robin's release, at the request of his wife, of a knight taken captive by the sheriff--comes probably from a separate ballad: tells a similar story. This the compiler of the has apparently woven in with the story of the previous fyttes, though he has not done so very thoroughly (, the inconsistency of Robin's question to the knight's wife, 'What man hath your lord i-take?' with his knowledge of the knight's defiance of the sheriff). The compiler has also neatly prepared the way for the introduction of the seventh and eighth fyttes by the knight's appeal to the king; but, having done so, he has apparently forgotten the king's undertaking to come to Nottingham, and has allowed the sheriff to anticipate that plan and capture the knight without assistance. / THE SIXTH FYTTE

Argument.--The narrative of the knight's loan is for the moment dropped, in order to relate a gest of Little John, who is now (81.2) the knight's 'knave' or squire. Going forth 'upon a mery day,' Little John shoots with such skill that he attracts the attention of the Sheriff of Nottingham (who is here and elsewhere the type of Robin Hood's enemies), and enters his service for a year under the name of Reynold Greenleaf. While the sheriff is hunting, Little John fights his servants, robs his treasure-house, and escapes back to Robin Hood with 'three hundred pound and more.' He then bethinks him of a shrewd wile, and inveigles the sheriff to leave his hunting in order to see a right fair hart and seven score of deer, which turn out to be Robin and his men. Robin Hood exacts an oath of the sheriff, equivalent to an armistice; and he returns home, having had his fill of the greenwood. / THE THIRD FYTTE / 144.

The Text is from a broadside of the seventeenth century from the press of Coles, Vere, Wright, and Clarke, now preserved in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library. / The Story of this ballad is one of the common class of riddle-ballads. Some of these riddles are found also in . / It is not clear why in 18.1 'poyson is greener than the grass.' In (17.1) it is 'death' that is greener than the grass, which is equally inexplicable. A variant of the latter gives 'virgus' [= verjuice], a kind of vinegar, which obviously means 'green juice.' It is possible that this might come to be regarded as a synonym for 'poyson'; and the next step is to substitute 'death' for 'poyson.'

The Text.--The earliest complete text, here given, was printed by William Copland between 1548 and 1568: there are extant two printed fragments, one printed by John Byddell in 1536, and the other in a type older than Copland's. Later, there are two editions printed by James Roberts in 1605; and finally a MS. text in the Percy Folio (c. 1650). / Copland's text is obviously full of faults, and in emendations I have mostly followed Child. / The Story, lively and admirably told, contains little extrinsic interest, except in William's feat of shooting the apple from his son's head. This is inevitably associated with the legend of William Tell, which is told in the White Book of Obwalden, written about 1470; but similar stories can be found in the Icelandic Saga of Dietrich of Bern (about 1250) and in Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote his Danish History about the year 1200. Three or four other versions of the story are to be found in German and Scandinavian literature before the date of our ballad; but they all agree in two points which are missing in the English ballad--the shot is compulsory, and the archer reserves another arrow for purposes of revenge in case he misses his mark. William of Cloudesly volunteers a difficult and risky feat out of bravado.