And go with me?
Two liveries will I give thee every year,
And forty crowns shall be thy fee.
George welcomes Robin to his house, offering him wafer-cakes, beef, mutton, and veal. (Dyce, II, 196 f.)
The scene in the play is found in the prose history of George a Green, London, 1706, of which a copy is known, no doubt substantially the same, of the date 1632. The Pinner here fells ‘Slathbatch,’ Little John, and the Friar, before his bout with Robin. See Thoms, A Collection of Early Prose Romances, II, 44–47, and the prefaces, p. viii ff, p. xviii f, for more about the popularity of the Pinner’s story.
Wakefield is in the West Riding of the county of York.
Richard Brathwayte, in a poetical epistle “to all true-bred northerne sparks of the generous society of the Cottoneers,” Strappado for the Divell, 1615 (cited by Ritson, Robin Hood, ed. 1795, I, xxvii-ix), speaks of
The Pindar’s valour, and how firme he stood
In th’ townes defence gainst th’ rebel Robin Hood;
How stoutly he behav’d himselfe, and would,