B
a. Wood, 401, leaf 19 b. b. Garland of 1663, No 6. c. Garland of 1670, No 5. d. Pepys, II, 102, No 89.
1
Come, all you brave gallants, and listen a while,
With hey down, down, an a down
That are in the bowers within;
For of Robin Hood, that archer good,
A song I intend for to sing.
2
Upon a time it chancëd so
Bold Robin in forrest did spy
A jolly butcher, with a bonny fine mare,
With his flesh to the market did hye.
3
‘Good morrow, good fellow,’ said jolly Robin,
‘What food hast? tell unto me;
And thy trade to me tell, and where thou dost dwell,
For I like well thy company.’
4
The butcher he answered jolly Robin:
No matter where I dwell;
For a butcher I am, and to Notingham
I am going, my flesh to sell.
5
‘What is [the] price of thy flesh?’ said jolly Robin,
‘Come, tell it soon unto me;
And the price of thy mare, be she never so dear,
For a butcher fain would I be.’
6
‘The price of my flesh,’ the butcher repli’d,
‘I soon will tell unto thee;
With my bonny mare, and they are not dear,
Four mark thou must give unto me.’
7
‘Four mark I will give thee,’ saith jolly Robin,
‘Four mark it shall be thy fee;
Thy mony come count, and let me mount,
For a butcher I fain would be.’
8
Now Robin he is to Notingham gone,
His butcher’s trade for to begin;
With good intent, to the sheriff he went,
And there he took up his inn.
9
When other butchers they opened their meat,
Bold Robin he then begun;
But how for to sell he knew not well,
For a butcher he was but young.
10
When other butchers no meat could sell,
Robin got both gold and fee;
For he sold more meat for one peny
Than others could do for three.
11
But when he sold his meat so fast,
No butcher by him could thrive;
For he sold more meat for one peny
Than others could do for five.
12
Which made the butchers of Notingham
To study as they did stand,
Saying, surely he was some prodigal,
That had sold his father’s land.
13
The butchers they stepped to jolly Robin,
Acquainted with him for to be;
‘Come, brother,’ one said, ‘we be all of one trade,
Come, will you go dine with me?’
14
‘Accurst of his heart,’ said jolly Robin,
‘That a butcher doth deny;
I will go with you, my brethren true,
And as fast as I can hie.’
15
But when to the sheriff’s house they came,
To dinner they hied apace,
And Robin he the man must be
Before them all to say grace.
16
‘Pray God bless us all,’ said jolly Robin,
‘And our meat within this place;
A cup of sack so good will nourish our blood,
And so I do end my grace.
17
‘Come fill us more wine,’ said jolly Robin,
‘Let us merry be while we do stay;
For wine and good cheer, be it never so dear,
I vow I the reckning will pay.
18
‘Come, brother, be merry,’ said jolly Robin,
‘Let us drink, and never give ore;
For the shot I will pay, ere I go my way,
If it cost me five pounds and more.’
19
‘This is a mad blade,’ the butchers then said;
Saies the sheriff, He is some prodigal,
That some land has sold, for silver and gold,
And now he doth mean to spend all.
20
‘Hast thou any horn-beasts,’ the sheriff repli’d,
‘Good fellow, to sell unto me?’
‘Yes, that I have, good Master Sheriff,
I have hundreds two or three.
21
‘And a hundred aker of good free land,
If you please it to see;
And I’le make you as good assurance of it
As ever my father made me.’
22
The sheriff he saddled a good palfrey,
With three hundred pound in gold,
And away he went with bold Robin Hood,
His horned beasts to behold.
23
Away then the sheriff and Robin did ride,
To the forrest of merry Sherwood;
Then the sheriff did say, God bless us this day
From a man they call Robin Hood!
24
But when that a little further they came,
Bold Robin he chancëd to spy
A hundred head of good red deer,
Come tripping the sheriff full nigh.
25
‘How like you my hornd beasts, good Master Sheriff?
They be fat and fair for to see;’
‘I tell thee, good fellow, I would I were gone,
For I like not thy company.’
26
Then Robin he set his horn to his mouth,
And blew but blasts three;
Then quickly anon there came Little John,
And all his company.
27
‘What is your will?’ then said Little John,
‘Good master come tell it to me;’
‘I have brought hither the sheriff of Notingham,
This day to dine with thee.’
28
‘He is welcome to me,’ then said Little John,
‘I hope he will honestly pay;
I know he has gold, if it be but well told,
Will serve us to drink a whole day.’
29
Then Robin took his mantle from his back,
And laid it upon the ground,
And out of the sheriffeś portmantle
He told three hundred pound.
30
Then Robin he brought him thorow the wood,
And set him on his dapple gray:
‘O have me commended to your wife at home;’
So Robin went laughing away.
A.
12. bughe.
13. d in head has a tag to it: Furnivall.
64. 3. After 92, 174, 254, half a page gone.
134. 5.
154. 30ty
:.
173. 4.
183. 300li
:.
193. cacth: in thy.
201. 7.
243. 100d
:.
283. pro for for.
B. a.
Robin Hood and the Butcher. To the Tune of Robin Hood and the Begger.
At the end, T. R.
Colophon. London. Printed for F. Grove on Snow Hill. F. Grove printed 1620–55: Chappell.
124. hath sold.
b.
Robin Hood and the Butcher; shewing how he robbed the sheriff of Nottingham. To the Tune of Robin Hood and the Begger.
42. I do.
51. What is price.
104, 114. Then.
121. when misprinted for made.
124. had sold.
181. brother.
183. go on.
193. hath sold.
211. And an.
214. to me.
251. Sheriff wanting.
274. with me.
293. sheriffs.
c.
Title as in b.
2, 8, and after 8, burden: a hey.
51. is ye.
104, 114. Then.
124. had sold.
172. do wanting.
181. brother.
183. go on.
184. costs.
193. hath sold.
212. it please.
213. you wanting.
214. did me.
243. red wanting.
272. pray tell.
293. sheriffs.
d.
Robin Hood and the Butcher. To the Tune of Robin Hood and the Beggar.
Colophon. Printed for I. Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T. Passenger. 1670–86 (?).
Burden. From 21 on, With a hey (not With hey). Also after the fourth line, With a hey, &c.
11. ye.
12. this bower.
14. for wanting.
22. in the.
51. What’s the.
53. be it.
73. The.
83. a good.
91. butchers did open.
104. Then.
124. hath sold.
133. of a.
142. will deny.
153. Robin Hood.
164. do wanting.
172. be merry.
181. brothers.
184. pound or.
201. thou wanting: hornd: sheriff then said.
211. A hundred acres.
222. And with.
223. And wanting.
262. blew out.
271. will master said.
272. I pray you come.
273. hither wanting.
281. then wanting.
283. were it but.
294. five for three, wrongly, see 222.
301. he wanting: through.
123
ROBIN HOOD AND THE CURTAL FRIAR
A. ‘Robine Hood and Ffryer Tucke,’ Percy MS., p. 10; Hales and Furnivall, I, 26.
B. ‘The Famous Battel between Robin Hood and the Curtal Fryer.’ a. Garland of 1663, No 11. b.[[99]] Pepys, I, 78, No 37. c. Garland of 1670. d. Wood, 401, leaf 15 b. e. Pepys, II, 99, No 86. f. Douce, II, 184.
B also in the Roxburghe collection, III, 16.
B d was printed in Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1795, II, 58, corrected by b and compared with e; and in Evans’s Old Ballads, 1777–1784, I, 136, probably from the Aldermary garland.
The opening verses of A are of the same description as those with which Nos 117, 118, 119, and others begin. 1 has been corrupted, and 2 also, one would think, as there is no apparent reason for maids weeping and young men wringing hands in the merry month of May. In the first stanza,
But how many merry monthes be in the yeere?
There are 13 in May;
The midsummer moone is the merryest of all,
Next to the merry month of May.
month in the first and the fourth line might be changed to moon, to justify thirteen in the second, and to accord with moon in the third. For in May, in the second line, we may read, I say, or many say. The first stanza of No 140, B, runs:
There are twelve months in all the year,
As I hear many say;
But the merriest month in all the year
Is the merry month of May.
Nearly, or quite, one half of A has been torn from the manuscript, but there is no reason to suppose that the story differed much from that of B.
Upon Little John’s killing a hart at five hundred foot, Robin Hood exclaims that he would ride a hundred mile to find John’s match. Scadlock, with a laugh, says that there is a friar at Fountains Abbey who will beat both John and Robin, or indeed Robin and all his yeomen. Robin Hood takes an oath never to eat or drink till he has seen that friar. (Cf. No 30, I, 275, 279.) Robin goes to Fountains Abbey, and ensconces his men in a fern-brake. He finds the friar walking by the water, well armed, and begs [orders, B] the friar to carry him over.[[100]] The friar takes Robin on his back, and says no word till he is over; then draws his sword and bids Robin carry him back, or he shall rue it. Robin takes the friar on his back, and says no word till he is over; then bids the friar carry him over once more. The friar, without a word, takes Robin on his back, and when he comes to the middle of the stream throws him in. When both have swum to the shore, Robin lets an arrow fly, which the friar puts by with his buckler. The friar cares not for his arrows, though Robin shoots till his arrows are all gone. They take to swords, and fight with them for six good hours, when Robin begs the boon of blowing three blasts on his horn. The friar gives him leave to blow his eyes out: fifty bowmen come raking over the lea. The friar in turn asks a boon, to whistle thrice in his fist. Robin cares not how much he whistles: fifty good bandogs come raking in a row. Here there is a divergence. According to A, the friar will match every man with a dog, and himself with Robin. God forbid, says Robin; better be matched with three of the dogs than with thee. Stay thy tikes, and let us be friends. In B, two dogs go at Robin and tear his mantle from his back; all the arrows shot at them the dogs catch in their mouths. Little John calls to the friar to call off his dogs, and enforces his words by laying half a score of them dead on the plain with his bow. The friar cries, Hold; he will make terms. Robin Hood offers the friar clothes and fee to forsake Fountains Abbey for the green-wood. We must infer, as in the parallel case of the Pinder of Wakefield, that the offer is accepted.[[101]] But the Curtal Friar, like the Pinder again, plays no part in Robin Hood story out of his own ballad.
Robin Hood and the Friar, in both versions, is in a genuinely popular strain, and was made to sing, not to print. Verbal agreements show that A and B have an earlier ballad as their common source; but of this, one or the other has retained but little. I cannot think that B 33, 34 are of the original matter. It is a derogation from Robin Hood’s prowess that he should have his mantle torn from his back, and we may ask why the dogs do not catch Little John’s arrows as well as others.
Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was a Cistercian monastery, dating from the twelfth century. (It is loosely called a nunnery in A 4.) The friar is called “cutted” in A and “curtal” in B, and these words have been held to mean short-frocked, and therefore to make the friar a Franciscan. Staveley, The Romish Horseleech, speaking of the Franciscans, says at p. 214, Experience shews that in some countrys, where friers used to wear short habits, the order was presently contemned and derided, and men called them curtaild friers. Cited by Douce, Illustrations of Shakspere, I, 61. So, according to Douce, we may probably understand the curtal friar to be a curtailed friar, and in like manner of the curtal dogs. “Cutted” in A can signify nothing but short-frocked. In the title of that version, though not in the text, the friar is called Tuck, which means that he is “ytukked bye,” like Chaucer’s Friar John, but not that he wears a short frock. The friar in the play (see below) has a “long cote,” v. 46. But I apprehend that B has the older word in curtal, and that curtal is simply curtilarius, and applied to both friar and dogs because they had the care and keeping of the curtile, or vegetable garden, of the monastery.[[102]]
The title of A in the MS. is Robin Hood and Friar Tuck; from which it follows that the copyist, or some predecessor, considered the stalwart friar of Fountains Abbey to be one with the jocular friar of the May-games and the morris dance. But Friar Tuck, the wanton and the merry, like Maid Marian, owes his association with Robin Hood primarily to these popular sports, and not in the least to popular ballads. In the truly popular ballads Friar Tuck is never heard of, and in only two even of the broadsides, Robin Hood and Queen Katherine and Robin Hood’s Golden Prize, is he so much as named; in both no more than named, and in both in conjunction with Maid Marian.
‘The Play of Robin Hood,’ the first half of which is based on the present ballad, calls the friar Friar Tuck, and represents him accordingly. See the Appendix. He is also called Tuck in the play founded on Guy of Gisborne.
In Munday’s Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, Friar Tuck is by implication identified with the friar who fell into the well, Dodsley’s Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, VIII, 185; and Mr Chappell is consequently led to say, at p. 390 of his ‘Popular Music,’ that the ballad of the Friar in the Well was in all probability a tale of “Robin Hood’s fat friar.” Cavilling at this phrase of Shakspere’s only so far as to observe that the friar of the traditional Robin Hood ballad is as little fat as wanton, I need but say that the truth of the case had been already accurately expressed by Mr Chappell at p. 274 of his invaluable work: “the story is a very old one, and one of the many against monks and friars in which not only England, but all Europe, delighted.”
The boon to blow three blasts on his horn, B 25, is also asked by Robin of the Shepherd, No 134, st. 15. The reply made by the Shepherd, st. 16, is, If thou shouldst blow till tomorrow morn, I scorn one foot to flee. In R. H. Rescuing Three Squires, B 25, when Robin, disguised as a beggar, intimates to the sheriff that he may blow his horn, the answer is nearly the same as here: Blow till both thy eyes fall out. In No 127, st. 34 f, Robin asks a boon of the Tinker, without specifying what the boon is; the Tinker refuses; Robin blows his horn while the Tinker is not looking. In No 135, st. 16 f, Robin asks the three keepers to let him blow one blast on his horn, and they refuse. This boon of [three] blasts on a horn is not an important matter in these Robin Hood ballads, but it may be noticed as a feature of other popular ballads in which an actor is reduced to extremity: as in the Swedish ballad Stolts Signild, Arwidsson, II, 128, No 97, and the corresponding Signild og hendes Broder, Danske Viser, IV, 31, No 170, in both of which the answer to the request is, Blow as much as you will. So in a Russian bylina, when Solomon is to be hanged, he obtains permission three several times to blow his horn, and is told to blow as much as he will, and upon the third blast his army comes to the rescue: Rybnikof, II, No 52, Jagié, in Archiv für slavische Philologie, I, 104 ff; Miss Hapgood’s Epic Songs of Russia, p. 287 f; also F. Vogt, Salman und Morolf, p. 104, sts 494 ff.[[103]] Three cries take the place of three blasts, upon occasion: as in the case of the unhappy maid in the German forms of No 4, I, 32 ff, where also the maid is sometimes told to cry as much as she wants, and in Gesta Romanorum, Oesterley, cap. 108, p. 440.
B is translated by Anastasius Grün, p. 124.