Loxly, the name given to Robin in the present ballad, is, according to the Life in the Sloane MS., a town in Yorkshire, “or after others in Nottinghamshire,” where Robin was born. The ballad of Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, etc., following the same tradition, or invention, says “Locksly town in Nottinghamshire.” It appears from Spencer Hall’s Forester’s Offering, London, 1841, that there is a Loxley Chase near Sheffield, in Yorkshire, and a Loxley River too: Gutch, I, 75.
Finsbury field was long a noted place for the practice of archery. In the year 1498, says Stow, all the gardens which had continued time out of mind without Moorgate, to wit, about and beyond the lordship of Fensberry, were destroyed. And of them was made a plain field for archers to shoot in. Survey of London, 1598, p. 351, cited, with other things pertinent, by Ritson, Robin Hood, 1795, II, 86 f.
R. H. and the Shepherd, R. H. rescuing Will Stutly, and R. H.’s Delight, are directed to be sung to the tune of R. H. and Queen Katherine, B, and may therefore be inferred to be of later date. R. H.’s Progress to Nottingham is to be sung to “Bold Robin Hood,” and as this conjunction of words occurs several times in R. H. and Queen Katherine, and the burden and its disposition, in the Progress to Nottingham, are the same as in R. H. and Queen Katherine, “Bold Robin Hood” may indicate this present ballad. R. H. and Queen Katherine, C, is directed to be sung to the tune of The Pinder of Wakefield.
R. H.’s Chase is a sequel to R. H. and Queen Katherine.
Translated by Anastasius Grün, p. 172.
A
Percy MS., p. 15; Hales and Furnivall, I, 37.
1
Now list you, lithe you, gentlemen,
A while for a litle space,