A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

Robin, like Fulk Fitz-Warine or Hereward, could play at any trade—a potter, a beggar, a shepherd, a fisherman. His band were mostly men who had forsaken some dull craft for this great game of hiding and hunting and robbery. In the midst of active enjoyment, they set themselves to redress the unequal balance of fortune; but they never doubted their own solid advantages over sheriffs and abbots,—the people who dwelt in towns and cloisters, and had forgotten how to play.

Early collectors of the eighteenth century found no ballads that echoed the sound of the greenwood:

“notes small

Of Byrdis mery syngynge”,

or that made pictures of the deer shadowed in green leaves; but there were imitations of the older songs, and the setting was always implied.

After 1765, there must have been children who knew the prelude to “Guy of Gisborne”, from Percy’s Reliques:

“When shaws been sheene and shradds full fayre,

And leaves both large and longe,

It is merrye walking in the fayre forrest,

To heare the small birdes songe.