ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER
The Text is modernised, as far as is possible, from a MS. of about 1500 in the University Library at Cambridge (Ee. 4, 35). The ballad was first printed therefrom by Ritson in his Robin Hood (1795), vol. i. p. 81, on the whole very accurately, and with a few necessary emendations. He notes that the scribe was evidently ‘a vulgar and illiterate person’ who ‘irremediably corrupted’ the ballad. In several places, however, a little ingenuity will restore a lost rhyme.
The Story, of an outlaw disguising himself in order to gain information from his enemies, is common to the legends of Hereward the Saxon, Wallace, Eustace the monk, and Fulk Fitz Warine, the first three of whom assumed the guise of a potter at one time or another.
The ballad of Robin Hood and the Butcher is a tale similar to this; and part of the Play of Robin Hood is based on this ballad (see Introduction, p. xxiii.).