“Of whom the foolish vulgar in comedies and tragedies make lewd entertainment, and are delighted to hear the jesters and minstrels sing them above all other ballads:” Ritson, whose translation may pass. Ritson rightly observes that comedies and tragedies here are not to be understood as plays. Then follows this abstract of one of the ‘tragedies.’
“De quo etiam quædam commendabilia recitantur, sicut patuit in hoc, quod cum ipse quondam in Barnisdale, iram regis et fremitum principis declinans, missam, ut solitus erat, devotissime audiret, nec aliqua necessitate volebat interrumpere officium, quadam die, cum audiret missam, a quodam vicecomite et ministris regis, eum sæpius perprius infestantibus, in illo secretissimo loco nemorali ubi missæ interfuit exploratus, venientes ad eum qui hoc de suis perceperunt ut omni annisu fugeret suggesserunt. Quod, ob reverentiam sacramenti, quod tunc devotissime venerabatur, omnino facere recusavit. Sed, ceteris suis ob metum mortis trepidantibus, Robertus, in tantum confisus in eum quem coluit, inveritus, cum paucis qui tunc forte ei affuerunt inimicos congressus eos de facili devicit, et, de eorum spoliis ac redemptione ditatus, ministros ecclesiæ et missas in majore veneratione semper et de post habere præelegit, attendens quod vulgariter dictum est:
Hunc deus exaudit qui missam sæpius audit.”
Scotichronicon, ed. Goodall, II, 104.
[39]. Major was in extreme old age in 1524: see Moir’s Wallace, I, iv. “Robertus Hudus Anglus et Paruus Ioannes, latrones famatissimi in nemoribus latuerunt, solum opulentorum virorum bona diripientes. Nullum nisi eos inuadentem, vel resistentem pro suarum rerum tuitione, occiderunt Centum sagittarios ad pugnam aptissimos Robertus latrociniis aluit, quos 400 viri fortissimi inuadere non audebant. Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur. Fœminam nullam opprimi permisit, nec pauperum bona surripuit, verum eos ex abbatum bonis ablatis opipare pauit.” Historia Maioris Britanniæ, fol. 55 b.
It will be observed that Wyntoun, Bower, and Mair are Scots.
[40]. Because comic and not heroic, and because Robin is put at a disadvantage. In the other ballads Robin Hood is “evermore the best.” Though there is humor in the Gest, it is kept well under, and never lowers Robin’s dignity.
[41]. The only one of these ballads entered in the Stationers’ Registers, or known to have been printed, at a date earlier than the seventeenth century is No 124, ‘Of Wakefylde and a Grene,’ 1557–58.
The earliest known copy of Robin Hood’s Garland is one in the Bodleian Library, Wood, 79, printed for W. Gilbertson, 1663. This contains seventeen ballads. An edition of 1670, in the same library, Douce, H. 80, for Coles, Vere and Wright, omits the first of these, a version of Robin Hood and Queen Katherine which is found nowhere else. There is an edition, printed by J. M. for J. Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, among Pepys’s Penny Merriments, vol. iii, and Gutch had a copy, printed for the same, to which he gives the date 1686. Garlands of the eighteenth century increase the number of ballads to twenty-seven.
[42]. In the Stationers’ Registers, 1562–63, Arber, I, 204, ‘a ballett of Robyn Hod’ is licensed to John Alde. The best one would expect of this would be a better copy of some later broadside. ‘Robyn Hode in Barnysdale stode’ is the first line of a mock-song introduced into the Morality of the Four Elements (which alludes to the discovery of America “within this xx. yere”): Halliwell, Percy Society, vol. xxii, p. 51. It is mentioned (“As R. H.,” etc.) in Udall’s translation of Erasmi Apothegmata, 1542: Hazlitt, Handbook, pp 513 f. This line, Ritson observes, has been repeatedly cited, singularly enough, in law-cases (and always misquoted: in Barnwood stood, in Barnwell stood, upon Greendale stood): Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1832, I, lxxxix ff. We find “Robyn stode in Bernesdale,” Gest, 31; also, “As Robin Hood in the forest stood,” No 138, 21; “When Robin Hood in the greenwood stood,” No 141, 11, both texts very much later than the interlude. It is not strictly necessary to assume, as Ritson does, that the line belongs to a lost ballad; it may be from some older text of one that we have.