58.
But he could neither so fast go,
Nor away so fast run,
But Little John, with an arrow broad,
Did cleave his heart in twain.
ROBIN HOOD’S DEATH
The Text is modernised from the Percy Folio MS. (c. 1650). At two points, after 8.3 and 18.2, half a page of the MS., or about nine stanzas, is missing—torn out and ‘used by maids to light the fire’ in Humphry Pitt’s house, where Percy discovered the volume (see Introduction, First Series, xxxix.). At the end another half-page is lacking, but Child thinks that it represents only a few verses. He also indicates a lacuna after st. 4, though none appears in the MS.
The Story of this version, mutilated as it is, agrees in its main incidents with that given at the end of the Gest (stt. 451-455). Another variant, Robin Hood’s Death and Burial, extant in two or three eighteenth-century ‘Garlands,’ but none the less of good derivation, gives no assistance at either hiatus, and we are left with a couple of puzzles.
The opening of the ballad, stt. 1-6, should be compared with Robin Hood and the Monk, stt. 6-10, where Much takes Will Scarlett’s place. Robin, shooting for a penny with Little John along the way, comes to a black water with a plank across it, and an old woman on the plank is cursing Robin Hood. He has been already reminded by Scarlett that he has a yeoman foe at Kirklees; but neither the banning of the witch, nor the weeping of others (‘We,’ 9.3), presumably women, deter him. The explanation of the witch is lost.
Having arrived at Kirklees and submitted to being bled, Robin at length suspects treason, and hints as much to Little John. The latter may be indoors with his master, or, as Child thinks, calling to Robin through a window from below. Here the second hiatus occurs; and when the ballad resumes, we can only guess that st. 19 is Robin’s final retort after an altercation with somebody, presumably Red Roger, who is perhaps the ‘yeoman’ referred to by Will Scarlett. A final difficulty is raised by the word ‘mood’ in st. 23; but Child’s emendation is not improbable, and Robin himself realises that he must take his ‘housel’ in an irregular way.