Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7.
Tuck, (Friar), the “curtal friar of Fountain’s Abbey,” was the father confessor of Robin Hood. He is represented as a sleek-headed, pudgy, paunchy, pugnacious clerical Falstaff, very fat and self-indulgent, very humorous, and somewhat coarse. His dress was a russet habit of the Franciscan order, a red corded girdle with gold tassel, red stockings, and a wallet.
Sir Walter Scott, in his Ivanhoe, calls him the holy clerk of Copmanhurst, and describes him as a “large, strong-built man in a sackcloth gown and hood, girt with a rope of rushes.” He had a round, bullet head, and his close-shaven crown was edged with thick, stiff, curly black hair. His countenance was bluff and jovial, eyebrows black and bushy, forehead well-turned, cheeks round and ruddy, beard long, curly and black, form brawny (ch. xv.).
In the May-day morris-dance the friar is introduced in full clerical tonsure, with the chaplet of white and red beads in his right hand, a corded girdle about his waist, and a russet robe of the Franciscan order. His stockings red, his girdle red, ornamented with gold twist and a golden tassel. At his girdle hung a wallet for the reception of provisions, for “Walleteers” had no other food but what they received from begging. Friar Tuck was chaplain to Robin Hood, the May-king. (See Morris-Dance.)
In this our spacious isle, I think there is not one
But he hath heard some talk of Hood and Little John;
Of Tuck, the merry friar, which many a sermon made,
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade.
Drayton, Polyolbion, xxvi. (1622).
Tud (Morgan), chief physician of King Arthur.--The Mabinogion (“Geraint,” twelfth century).