IV. Maid Marian. None of the materials that constitute the more authentic history of Robin Hood, prove the existence of such a character in the shape of his mistress. There is a pretty French pastoral drama of the eleventh or twelfth century, entitled Le jeu du berger et de la bergere, in which the principal characters are Robin and Marion, a shepherd and shepherdess. Mr. Warton thought that our English Marian might be illustrated from this composition; but Mr. Ritson is unwilling to assent to this opinion, on the ground that the French Robin and Marion "are not the Robin and Marian of Sherwood." Yet Mr. Warton probably meant no more than that the name of Marian had been suggested from the above drama, which was a great favourite among the common people in France, and performed much about the season at which the May games were celebrated in England. The great intercourse between the countries might have been the means of importing this name amidst an infinite variety of other matters; and there is indeed no other mode of accounting for the introduction of a name which never occurs in the page of English history.[179] We have seen that the story of Robin Hood was, at a very early period, of a dramatic cast; and it was perfectly natural that a principal character should be transferred from one drama to another. It might be thought likewise that the English Robin deserved his Marian as well as the other. The circumstance of the French Marian being acted by a boy contributes to support the above opinion; the part of the English character having been personated, though not always, in like manner. Little, if any, stress can be laid on the authority of an old play cited by Mr. Steevens to prove that "Maid Marian was originally a name assumed by Matilda, the daughter of Robert Lord Fitzwater, while Robin Hood remained in a state of outlawry."[180] This is rather to be considered as a dramatic fiction, designed to explain a character the origin of which had been long forgotten.
Maid Marian not only officiated as the paramour of Robin Hood in the May games, but as the queen or lady of the May, who seems to have been introduced long before the games of Robin Hood. In the isle of Man they not only elected a queen of May, but likewise a queen of winter.[181] Gatherings for the May lady, as anciently for Robin Hood, were lately kept up at Cambridge, but in a corrupted form, the real occasion of this ceremony being, in all probability, quite unknown to the gatherers. There can be no doubt that the queen of the May is the legitimate representative of the Goddess Flora in the Roman festival.
The introduction of Robin Hood into the celebration of May probably suggested the addition of a king or lord of the May. In the year 1306 Robert Bruce caused himself to be crowned at Scone, and a second time by the hands of his mistress, the adulterous wife of the earl of Bowhan, who changed his name to David. It is reported that he said to his own wife on this occasion, "Yesterday we were but earl and countess, to day we are king and queen;" to which she replied, "True, you are now a summer king, but you may not chance to be a winter one." Matthew of Westminster has recorded this fact, and Holinshed, who copies him, makes the lady say, that "she feared they should prove but as a summer king and queen, such as in country townes the yong folks chose for sport to dance about may-poles." In 1557 there was a May game in Fenchurch-street, with a Lord and Lady of the May, and a morris dance.[182] Both these characters are introduced in a morris in Fletcher's play of The two noble kinsmen, Act. III.; and, in the Knight of the burning pestle, a grocer's apprentice personates a lord of the May dressed out in "scarves, feathers, and rings." He is made to deliver a speech from the conduit to the populace, of which this is a part:
"London, to thee I do present the merry month of May,
Let each true subject be content to hear me what I say:
For from the top of conduit-head, as plainly may appear,
I will both tell my name to you, and wherefore I came here.
My name is Rafe, by due descent, though not ignoble I,
Yet far inferiour to the flock of gracious grocery.
And by the common counsel of my fellows in the Strand,
With gilded staff, and crossed skarfe, the May lord here I stand."
A lord and lady are still preserved in some places where the Whitsun-ales continue to be celebrated, and perhaps in other morrises during the season of May.
To return to Maid Marian.—She was usually dressed according to the fashion of the time, as we may collect from the figures of her in Mr. Tollett's window, and Israel's engraving. In both the kirtle and petticoat are alike; and the pendent veil is supported by the hand. The English figure holds a flower, and has a fancy coronet as queen of the May. The other has apparently an apple in her hand, and her steeple head-dress is what was actually worn in the middle of the fifteenth century by queens and ladies of high rank. Barnaby Rich, who wrote in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., inveighing against the foppery of men's apparel, exclaims, "And from whence commeth this wearing, and this embroidering of long locks, this curiosity that is used amongst men, in frizeling and curling of their haire, this gentlewoman-like starcht bands, so be-edged and belaced, fitter for Maid Marion in a Moris dance, then for him that hath either that spirit or courage that shold be in a gentleman?"[183]
It appears that the Lady of the May was sometimes carried in procession on men's shoulders; for Stephen Batman, speaking of the Pope and his ceremonies, states that he is carried on the backs of four deacons, "after the maner of carying whytepot queenes in Western May games."[184] Her usual gait was nice and affected.[185] Thus in the description of the family visit to the royal guest, in the old ballad of The miller of Mansfield:
"And so they jetted down towards the king's hall:
The merry old miller, with his hands on his side;
His wife, like Maid Marian did mince at that tide."
But although the May-lady was originally a character of some delicacy and importance, she appears to have afterwards declined in both respects. In the time of Elizabeth she was visually represented by some smooth-faced and effeminate youth.[186] Falstaff tells the hostess, that "for womanhood Maid Marian may be the Deputy's wife of the ward to her;" meaning perhaps that she was as masculine in her appearance as the country clown who personated Maid Marian: and in Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas, Dorothea desires her brother to conduct himself with more gentleness towards his mistress, unless he would choose to marry Malkyn the May Lady; another allusion to the degraded state of Maid Marian, who is here assimilated to a vulgar drudge or scullion both in name and condition. But during the whole of her existence mirth and gaiety were her constant companions. The translator of The hospitall of incurable fooles, 1600, 4to, speaking of Acco, the old woman who became mad on beholding her ugliness in a mirror, says that "one while shee could be as merrie as Maid Marrian." Nor was this character, even in later times, uniformly vulgar. Every one will call to mind Nicholas Breton's pretty sonnet of Phyllida and Corydon, where the shepherdess,