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

In green-wood stood.

With his back against a tree;

He fell flat

Into a cow-plat,

And all besh—n was he

[66] It is possible that, amid these absurdities, there may be other lines of the old song of Robin Hood, which is the only reason for reviving them.

“O sleepst thou, or wakst thou, Jeffery Cooke?”

occurs, likewise, in a medley of a similar description, in Pammelia 1609.

[67] In “Heraclitus ridens, or a discourse between Jest and Earnest,” a periodical paper against the Whigs, published in 1681, and collected and republished in 1713 (No. 34), Jest begins singing:

“Bills, bows, and axes, quoth Robin Hood,