“King Henry would a progress ride;
Over the river Thames past he,
Upon a mountain top also
Did walk, some pleasure for to see.”
The first is a recomposition of the earlier ballad in the reign of James I. It makes a historical blunder. It supposes that Lord Charles Howard, who was not born till twenty-five years after the death of Andrew Barton, was sent against the pirate. The memory of the admiral who served against the Armada had eclipsed the fame of the earlier high admiral. The fact of this historic error existing in the ballad marks it as a late composition.
The second ballad is a still later recast, probably of the reign of Charles II. These two later versions would be all that we have, had not the popular memory held to the earliest and original ballad—because associated with a remarkably fine melody. Unhappily, it has retained but a few of the stanzas.
The Robin Hood ballads most fortunately escaped remodelling, and they retain the fresh character of the ancient ballad.
Ravenscroft preserved some ballads in his “Deuteromelia,” 1609. One begins:—
“Yonder comes a courteous knight