g.
Title as in b.
Printed for I. Wright, I. Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger. (1670–86?)
Agrees generally with f.
171. For yon.
149
ROBIN HOOD’S BIRTH, BREEDING, VALOR AND MARRIAGE
a. Roxburghe, I, 360, in The Ballad Society’s reprint, II, 440.
b. Pepys, II, 116, No 103. c. Pepys, II, 118, No 104.
Printed in Dryden’s Miscellany, VI, 346, ed. 1716; A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, I, 64; Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1795, II, 1 (a); Evans, Old Ballads, 1777, 1784, I, 86.
The jocular author of this ballad, who would certainly have been diverted by any one’s supposing him to write under the restraints of tradition, brings Adam Bell, Clim, and Cloudesly into company with Robin Hood’s father. So again the silly Second Part of Adam Bell in one of the copies, that of 1616. Robin Hood’s father’s bow, st. 3, carried two north-country miles and an inch. The son, then, was only half his father, though, in Ritson’s words, “Robin Hood and Little John have frequently shot an arrow a measured mile.”