[591] The accounts of Croscombe, Somerset, contain yearly entries of receipts from ‘Roben Hod’s recones’ from 1476 to 1510, and again in 1525 (Hobhouse, 1 sqq.). At Melton Mowbray the amount raised by the ‘lord’ was set aside for mending the highways (Kelly, 65).
[592] Lysons, Environs, i. 225. Mention is made of ‘Robin Hood,’ ‘the Lady,’ ‘Maid Marion,’ ‘Little John,’ ‘the Frere,’ ‘the Fool,’ ‘the Dysard,’ ‘the Morris-dance.’
[593] Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii. 216.
[594] C. Kerry, History of St. Lawrence, Reading, 226. ‘Made Maryon,’ ‘the tree’ and ‘the morris-dance,’ are mentioned.
[595] L. H. T. Accounts, ii. 377.
[596] Stowe, Survey (1598), 38. He is speaking mainly of the period before 1517, when there was a riot on ‘Black’ May-day, and afterwards the May-games were not ‘so freely used as before.’
[597] Appendix E (vi).
[598] Cf. Representations.
[599] Bower (†1437), Scotichronicon (ed. Hearne), iii. 774 ‘ille famosissimus sicarius Robertus Hode et Litill-Iohanne cum eorum complicibus, de quibus stolidum vulgus hianter in comoediis et tragoediis prurienter festum faciunt, et, prae ceteris romanciis, mimos et bardanos cantitare delectantur.’ On the ambiguity of ‘comoediae’ and ‘tragoediae’ in the fifteenth century, cf. ch. xxv.
[600] Gairdner, Paston Letters, iii. 89; Child, v. 90; ‘W. Woode, whyche promysed ... he wold never goo ffro me, and ther uppon I have kepyd hym thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham, and now, when I wolde have good horse, he is goon into Bernysdale, and I withowt a keeper.’ The Northumberland Household Book, 60, makes provision for ‘liveries for Robin Hood’ in the Earl’s household.