[55]. It need hardly be remarked that the morris was neither an exclusively English dance nor exclusively a May-game dance. A Flemish morris, delineated in an engraving dated 1460–70, has for personages a lady, fool, piper, and six dancers: Douce, p. 446 f. In Robert Laneham’s description of a bride-ale at Kenilworth, 1575, there is a morris-dance, “according to the ancient manner,” in the which the parties are Maid Marian, the fool, and six dancers: Furnivall, Captain Cox, p. 22 f. A painting of about 1625 has a morris-dance of seven figures, a Maid Marian, fool, piper, hobby-horse, and three dancers. A tract, of Elizabeth’s time, speaks of “a quintessence, beside the fool and the Maid Marian, of all the picked youth, footing the morris about a Maypole,” to the pipe and tabor, and other music; and a poem of 1614 describes a country morris-dance of a fool, Maid Marian, hobby-horse, and piper: Ellis’s Brand, p. 206 f.
[56]. The well-to-do Codrus says to the starving Menalcas, who has been venting his spleen against “rascolde” rivals,
‘Yet would I gladly heare some mery fit
Of Maide Marian, or els of Robin Hood.’
Codrus is here only suggesting themes which would be agreeable to him. We are not to deduce from his words that there were ballads about Maid Marian. But if there had been, they would have been distinct from ballads about Robin Hood.
[57]. See Monmerqué et Michel, Théatre Français au Moyen Age, 1842, Notice sur Adam de la Halle, pp 27 ff, the songs, pp 31 ff, the play, pp 102 ff; Ducange, Robinetus. Henryson’s Robin and Ma’kyne was undoubtedly suggested by the French pastorals.
[58]. I must invoke the spirit of Ritson to pardon the taking of no very serious notice of Robin Hood’s noble extraction. The first mention of this seems to be in Grafton’s Chronicle, 1569. Grafton says: In an olde and auncient pamphlet I finde this written of the sayd Robert Hood. This man, sayth he, discended of a noble parentage; or rather, beyng of a base stocke and linage, was for his manhoode and chiualry aduaunced to the noble dignitie of an erle.... But afterwardes he so prodigally exceeded in charges and expences that he fell into great debt, by reason whereof so many actions and sutes were commenced against him, wherevnto he aunswered not, that by order of lawe he was outlawed, etc.: I, 221, ed. 1809. (Some such account furnished a starting-point for Munday.) Leland also, Ritson adds, has expressly termed him “nobilis” (Ro: Hood, nobilis ille exlex), Collectanea, I, 54, ed. 1770, and Warner, in Albion’s England (1586), p. 132, ed. 1612, calls him a “county”:
Those daies begot some mal-contents, the principall of whom
A countie was, that with a troop of yeomandry did roam.
Ritson also cites the Sloane MS., 715, “written, as it seems, toward the end of the sixteenth century;” and Harleian MS., 1233, which he does not date, but which is of the middle of the seventeenth century. Against the sixteenth-century testimony, so to call it, we put in that of the early ballads, all of which describe Robin as a yeoman, the Gest emphasizing the point.