"Oh, what thee ails, thou drunken Butcher?"
Said his Wife, as he sank down;
"And what thee ails, thou drunken Butcher?"
Cried one-half of the Town.
"I have seen a Ghost, it hath raced my horse,
For three good miles and more;
And it vanished within the Churchyard wall,
As I sank down at the door."
"Beshrew thy heart, for a drunken beast!"
Cried his Wife, as she held him there;
"Beshrew thy heart, for a drunken beast,
And a coward, with heart of hare.
No Ghost hath raced thy horse to-night,
Nor evened his wit with thine:
The Ghost was thy shadow, thou drunken wretch!
I would the Ghost were mine."
A New Ballad of Robin Hood:
Shewing his Birth, Breeding, Valour and Marriage, at Titbury Bull-running: Calculated for the Meridian of Staffordshire but may serve for Derbyshire or Kent.
There are no series of ballads in our language so extensive or so popular as those relating to the noble outlaw, Robin Hood, and his "merry doings" in Sherwood Forest and its neighbourhood. Some of these relate immediately to Derbyshire; and many others might, from their allusions and the persons named in them, be claimed by that county. Some of his exploits are related to have been performed in Derbyshire; numerous places in that county are named after him; some of the relatives of his family resided within its confines; and last, though not least, his faithful friend and follower, Little John, is said not only to have been one of the sons of its soil, but to have died and been buried in the place of his birth.
That Robin Hood was a real and veritable personage seems to have been satisfactorily settled by the late Rev. Joseph Hunter, who discovered among the state papers some records wherein, besides the name being correctly given as "Robyn Hood," showed that that personage was in the King's service, and that he left it to travel;—doubtless into his favourite haunts in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire. Among the entries relating to Robin Hood, Mr. Hunter gleaned several which tallied curiously and conclusively with the circumstances of his early life as given in the "Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode," printed about the year 1489, by Wynken de Worde.[9]
The ballad which I here give, showing "his birth, breeding, valour, and marriage at Titbury Bull-running," I give from a curious old broad-sheet in my own collection. It is printed broad-way on the paper, and has a rude wood-cut of Robin Hood with his buckler and quarter staff, and Clorinda,—another name for Maid Marian,—with a tall hat, or like the Welsh fashion, and a bow in her hand, the entrance to the church in the back-ground. It bears the imprint, "Northampton: Printed by R. Raikes and W. Dicey." A black-letter copy is in the Roxburgh Collection in the British Museum, and it has also been reprinted by Evans and by Gutch. The ballad is "supposed to be related by the fiddler who played at their wedding."
Kind Gentlemen will you be patient a while,
Ay, and then you shall hear anon,
A very good Ballad of bold Robin Hood,
and of his Man, brave little John.
In Locksly Town,[10] in merry Nottinghamshire,
in merry sweet Locksly Town;
There bold Robin Hood, he was born and was bred,
bold Robin of famous Renown.