81.2 ‘knave,’ servant.
81.3 i.e., he shall stand for thee instead of a yeoman.
‘I shal thee lende Litell Johnn, my man,
For he shalbe thy knave;
In a yeman’s stede he may thee stande,
If thou greate nedë have.’
[ THE SECOND FYTTE (82-143)]
Argument.—The knight goes to York to pay down his four hundred pounds to the abbot of St. Mary Abbey, who has retained the services of the high justice of England ‘with cloth and fee,’ an offence defined as conspiracy by statutes of the first three Edwards (see Notes and Queries, First Series, vol. vi. p. 479). The knight, pretending he has not brought the money, requests an extension of time; but the abbot will not hear of it, and is supported in his refusal by the justice: the knight’s lands will be forfeited. The justice advises the abbot (117, etc.) to give the knight a sum to ‘make a release’ and prevent subsequent legal difficulties. The knight brings the matter to an end by paying down the four hundred pounds, saying that had the abbot been more courteous, he should have had interest on the loan.
The knight returns to his home in Wyresdale, and saves up the sum to be repaid to Robin Hood. As he sets out for Barnsdale with a goodly company, he finds a great wrestling-match taking place at Wentbridge,[2] which delays him a while.
The word ‘frembde’ (138.3) is now obsolete except in Scots and north-country dialect, and is spelled in various ways. It occurs more than once in Chaucer, and twice in Sidney’s Arcadia. ‘Fremit,’ the common Scots form, may be found in Burns. More recently, it appears in books of Westmoreland, Cumberland, or Northumberland dialect. Cp. Mrs. Gaskell, Sylvia’s Lovers: ‘There’s a fremd man i’ t’ house.’ It means ‘foreign’ or ‘strange.’