Robin Hood / A collection of all the ancient poems, songs, and ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English outlaw. To which are prefixed historical anecdotes of his life.

by Unknown

III. THE JOLLY PINDER OF WAKEFIELD, WITH ROBIN HOOD, SCARLET, AND JOHN.

From an old black letter copy in Anthony a Wood’s collection, compared with two others in the British Museum, one in black letter. It should be sung “To an excellent tune,” which has not been recovered.

Several lines of this ballad are quoted in the two old plays of the “Downfall” and “Death of Robert, Earle of Hun­ting­ton,” 1601, 4to, b. l., but acted many years before. It is also alluded to in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, act i. scene 1, and again in his Second Part of King Henry IV., act v. scene 3.

In 1557 certain “ballets” are entered on the books of the Stationers’ Company “to John Wallye and Mrs. Toye,” one of which is entitled “Of wakefylde and a grene:” meaning apparently the ballad here reprinted. {167}

In Wakefield there lives a jolly pindèr,

In Wakefield all on a green,

In Wakefield all on a green :

There is neither knight nor squire, said the pindèr,

Nor baron that is so bold,

Nor baron that is so bold,