e. Douce Fragment, No 16: Bodleian Library.[[29]]
f. ‘A Mery Geste of Robyn Hoode,’ etc., London, Wyllyam Copland, n. d.: British Museum, C. 21. c.
g. ‘A Merry Iest of Robin Hood,’ etc., London, printed for Edward White, n. d.: Bodleian Library, Z. 3. Art. Seld., and Mr Henry Huth’s library.
The best qualified judges are not agreed as to the typographical origin of a: see Dickson, Introduction of the Art of Printing into Scotland, Aberdeen, 1885, pp 51 ff, 82 ff, 86 f. Mr Laing had become convinced before his death that he had been wrong in assigning this piece to the press of Chepman and Myllar. The date of b may be anywhere from 1492 to 1534, the year of W. de Worde’s death. Of c Ritson says, in his corrected preface to the Gest, 1832, I, 2: By the favor of the Reverend Dr Farmer, the editor had in his hands, and gave to Mr Douce, a few leaves of an old 4to black letter impression by the above Wynken de Worde, probably in 1489, and totally unknown to Ames and Herbert. No reason is given for this date.[[30]] I am not aware that any opinion has been expressed as to the printer or the date of d, e. W. Copland’s edition, f, if his dates are fully ascertained, is not earlier than 1548. Ritson says that g is entered to Edward White in the Stationers’ books, 13 May, 1594. “A pastorall plesant commedie of Robin Hood & Little John, &c,” is entered to White on the 14th of May of that year, Arber, II, 649: this is more likely to have been a play of Robin Hood.
a, b, f, g, are deficient at 71, 3391, and misprinted at 49, 50, repeating, it may be, the faults of a prior impression. a appears, by internal evidence, to be an older text than b.[[31]] Some obsolete words of the earlier copies have been modernized in f, g,[[32]], and deficient lines have been supplied. A considerable number of Middle-English forms remain[[33]] after those successive renovations of reciters and printers, which are presumable in such cases. The Gest may have been compiled at a time when such forms had gone out of use, and these may be relics of the ballads from which this little epic was made up; or the whole poem may have been put together as early as 1400, or before. There are no firm grounds on which to base an opinion.
No notice of Robin Hood has been down to this time recovered earlier than that which was long ago pointed out by Percy as occurring in Piers Plowman, and this, according to Professor Skeat, cannot be older than about 1377.[[34]] Sloth, in that poem, says in his shrift that he knows “rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf, erle of Chestre,”[[35]] though but imperfectly acquainted with his paternoster: B, passus v, 401 f, Skeat, ed. 1886, I, 166. References to Robin Hood, or to his story, are not infrequent in the following century.
In Wyntoun’s Chronicle of Scotland, put at about 1420, there is this passage, standing quite by itself, under the year 1283:
Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude
Waythmen ware commendyd gude;
In Yngilwode and Barnysdale