“If thou doest the feat,” quoth the Baron, “rest assured I shall keep my promise.”
For the task he had set bold Robin was, as the Baron well knew, a thousand times more difficult than that of shooting at the Picking Rods.
Robin Hood conversed awhile with Friar Tuck, and then the whole company moved off to the summit of Werneth Low. The stone, or rock, as it should more properly be called, was a huge mass almost the height of a man. It had occupied its position on the summit of Werneth since the world was created. A round half-dozen of the Baron’s retainers failed to lift it. But Robin Hood, casting aside his jerkin, and baring his brawny arm, raised the great stone slowly aloft, and then, with one mighty throw, cast it out westward towards the sunset, and, amid a wild shout of triumph, it disappeared in the distance.
They afterwards found the stone in the bed of the River Tame, near the woods of Arden, and, under the name of “Robin Hood’s Stone” it remains in that same spot to this day.
“THE ROBIN HOOD STONE.”
Now there are some who profess to believe that no mortal power could cast that stone so great a distance, and they explain the event by supposing that Robin was in league with the good fairies, who gave him strength to lift the stone, and then, (invisible to men) flew away with it, and dropped it in the Tame. And perhaps these people may be right.
Be that as it may, there is no record to show that the bold bad Baron disbelieved in Robin’s powers, and we may take it for granted that the lovely maiden was duly released, that she married the lad of her choice, and that they lived happy ever afterwards, as they certainly deserved to do.
It is asserted by some that there was a much smaller stone near the great Robin Hood Stone on Werneth Low, and that Little John afterwards threw this stone in the direction of the one thrown by Robin. The second stone, being lighter, travelled a few yards further than the first, but the throw being not so skilful the stone was broken in several pieces by the fall. It lies to this day near the Robin Hood Stone in the waters of the River Tame, and it still retains the name of that giant forester Little John.