“He is set so hye,
In his hierarchy,
That in the chambre of stars
All matters there he mars;
Clapping his rod on the borde,
No man dare speake a word;
For he hath all the saying,
Without any renaying: {lxxxvii}
He rolleth in his recordes,
He saith, How say ye my lordes?
Is not my reason good?
Good even, good Robin Hood.” [70]
2. “Many men talk of Robin Hood that never shot in his bow.”
“That is, many discourse (or prate rather) of matters wherein they have no skill or experience. This proverb is now extended all over England, though originally of Nottinghamshire extraction, where Robin Hood did principally reside in Sherwood forest. He was an arch-robber, and withal an excellent archer; though surely the poet[71] gives a twang to the loose of his arrow, making him shoot one a cloth-yard long, at full forty score mark, for compass never higher than the breast, and within less than a foot of the mark. But herein our author hath verified the proverb, talking at large of Robin Hood, in whose bow he never shot” (Fuller’s Worthies, p. 315).
“One may justly wonder,” adds the facetious writer, “this archer did not at last hit the mark, I mean, come to the gallows for his many robberies.”
The proverb is mentioned, and given as above, by Sir Edward Coke in his 3d Institute, p. 197. See also Note [26]. It is thus noticed by Jonson in “The king’s entertainment at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, 1633:”
“This is . . . . . father Fitz-Ale, herald of Derby, &c.
He can fly o’er hills and dales,
And report you more odd tales
Of our out law Robin Hood,
That revell’d here in Sherewood,
And more stories of him show,
(Though he ne’er shot in his bow)
Than au’ men or believe, or know.”
{lxxxviii}
We likewise meet with it in Epigrams, &c., 1654:
“In Vertutem.
“Vertue we praise, but practice not her good,
(Athenian-like) we act not what we know;
So many men doe talk of Robin Hood,
Who never yet shot arrow in his bow.”
On the back of a ballad in Anthony a Wood’s collection he has written,