He shott him into the ‘backe’-syde.[276]
V. A TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD: OR,
A briefe touch of the life and death of that renowned outlaw Robert earl of Huntingdon, vulgarly called Robin Hood, who lived and dyed in A. D. 1198,[277] being the 9th year of king Richard the first, commonly called Richard Cœur de Lyon.
Carefully collected out of the truest writers of our English Chronicles: and published for the satisfaction of those who desire truth from falshood.
BY MARTIN PARKER. {127}
This poem, given from an edition in black letter printed for I. Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, 1686, remaining in the curious library left by Anthony a Wood, appears to have been first entered on the hall-book of the Stationers’ Company the 29th of February 1631.
Martin Parker was a great writer of ballads, several of which, with his initials subjoined, are still extant in the Pepysian and other collections. (See “Ancient Songs,” 1829, ii. p. 263.) Dr. Percy mentions a little miscellany intitled, “The garland of withered roses, by Martin Parker, 1656.” The editor has, likewise, seen “The nightingale warbling forth her own disaster, or the rape of Philomela: newly written in English verse by Martin Parker, 1632;” and, on the 24th of November 1640, Mr. Oulton enters at Stationers’ Hall “a book called The true story of Guy earle of Warwicke, in prose, by Martyn Parker.”
At the end of this poem the author adds “The epitaph which the prioress of the monastry of Kirkslay in Yorkshire set over Robin Hood, which,” he says, “(as is before mentioned) was to be read within these hundred years, though in old broken English, much to the same sence and meaning.” He gives it thus:
“Decembris quarto die, 1198. anno regni Richardi primi 9.