"Here lie his primer and his beads,
His bent bow and his arrows keen,
His good sword and his holy cross:
Now cast on flowers fresh and green;
"And as they fall, shed tears and say,
Wella, wella-day! wella, wella-day:
Thus cast ye flowers and sing,
And on to Wakefield take your way."
After his demise poor Marion is so tormented by her royal persecutor that she seeks refuge in Dunmow Abbey, where she is poisoned by the king's order. In each play the outlaw is extolled so highly, and made so admirable in every way, that in spite of the quaintness one is moved to honest admiration. His dying scene is most pathetic, and there is no doubt that the simple country audience would weep as though for a dearly loved friend.
The airs pertaining to the Robin Hood literature are merry in the extreme—delicious, sparkling waves of melody, to which thousands of country dances have been performed. They sprang from the heart, and even to-day, if offered to the public, might win popular success. All are "lusty fellows with good backbones", such as Shakespeare in his salad days must have listened to and admired. Gay, in his pastoral The Flights, gives a charming picture of Bowzybeus delighting the reapers with one of these ballads, ere falling asleep midst happy laughter.
In folklore are still preserved a few relics. "To go round by Robin Hood's barn" is to travel in a roundabout fashion, and "to sell Robin Hood's pennyworths", to sell much below value, as a generous robber might. His "feather" is the Traveller's Joy, his "hatband" the club-moss. His "men" or his "sheep" are the bracken, and his "wind" a wind that brings on a thaw. We are told that Robin could stand anything but a "tho wind". The Red Campion, the Ragged Robin, and the Herb Robert are known in several counties by his name. His greatest claim to popularity was that he took away the goods of none save rich men, never killed any person except in self-defence, charitably fed the poor, and was in short, as an old writer tells us, "the most humane and the prince of robbers".
WELBECK ABBEY
The present house of Welbeck was built upon the site of an abbey for Premonstratensian canons, which was begun in 1140. Nothing, however, remains of the old place save some stonework in the cellars and a few inner walls. A portion of the house dates from 1604; in an engraving from the great Duke of Newcastle's book on Horsemanship we find that it originally bore some resemblance to a French château. Charles the First and Henrietta Maria were entertained here—the house being placed at their disposal whilst their host occupied Bolsover Castle, some miles distant. Ben Jonson devised a masque entitled "Love's Welcome" for the royal amusement, and there was such feasting and show that it cost between fourteen and fifteen thousand pounds.
The Abbey is richly furnished, and contains one of the finest collections of pictures and miniatures in Europe, and a wealth of ancient manuscripts. The miniatures were gathered together in the early part of the eighteenth century by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. Of these treasures Mrs. Delany writes in 1756: "I have undertaken to set the miniatures of the Duchess of Portland [Lord Oxford's daughter and heiress] in order, as she does not like to trust them to anybody else, and for want of proper airing they are in danger of being spoiled. Such Petitots! such Olivers! such Coopers!" About that time the good lady describes an evening walk in park and gardens: "By the time we came in, the moon was risen to a great height, and we sat down in the great dining-room to contemplate its glory, and to talk of our friends, who in all likelihood were at that moment admiring its splendour as well as we". Later she confesses that Welbeck has a glare of grandeur, and that although she admires her Duchess when receiving princely honours and acquitting herself with dignity, she loves her best in her own private dressing-room!