97. Here is.
103. might thou.
104. stare.
124
THE JOLLY PINDER OF WAKEFIELD
A. a. Wood, 402, leaf 43. b. Garland of 1663, No 4. c. Garland of 1670, No 3. d. Pepys, II, 100, No 87 a. e. Wood, 401, leaf 61 b.
B. Percy MS., p. 15; Hales and Furnivall, I, 32.
Printed in Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1795, II, 16, from one of Wood’s copies, “compared with two other copies in the British Museum, one in black letter:” Evans, Old Ballads, 1777, 1784, I, 99.
There is another copy in the Roxburghe collection, III, 24, and there are two in the Bagford.
‘A ballett of Wakefylde and a grene’ is entered to Master John Wallye and Mistress Toye, 19 July, 1557–9 July, 1558: Stationers’ Registers, Arber, I, 76.
The ballad is one of four, besides the Gest, that were known to the author of the Life of Robin Hood in Sloane MS., 715, which dates from the end of the seventeenth century. It is thoroughly lyrical, and therein “like the old age,” and was pretty well sung to pieces before it ever was printed. A snatch of it is sung, as Ritson has observed, in each of the Robin Hood plays, The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, by Anthony Munday, and The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, by A. Munday and Henry Chettle, both printed in 1601.