“A story of gallant brave Robin Hood
Unto you I will declare.”
Taking the rest for granted, they deal directly with Robin’s combats and escapes, his farcical adventures with bishops and beggars, his daring rescues; and in these, the quality that comes uppermost is the roguish humour which above all distinguishes him from the conventional knight of chivalry.
A single attempt to connect him with the romances—the late ballad of “Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon”—marks the difference of kind; for though Robin kills the prince, and John and Scadlock bag a giant apiece, they move like live men among shadows.
The children of the eighteenth century did not meet the outlaws of the “golden world”. They knew the Curtal Friar and Alan a Dale, and what happened when Robin Hood
“Weary of the Wood-side
And chasing of the fallow deer,”
tried his fortunes at sea. They had two ballads at least that varied old themes of the Geste, “Robin Hood and the Bishop” and “The King’s Disguise”. And Little John was their friend,—not of course, the old Little John who praised the season in the words of a poet; but “A jolly brisk blade right fit for the trade”, more like the scapegrace in a popular “History”.
Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1749, gave a mere collection of stories for the sequence of the Geste, and many chap-books copied it in prose; but a rough cadence is better than none, and Robin Hood was first praised in a ballad.