[94]. A few verses are wanting at the end. The “met-yard” of the last line is one of the last things we should think Robin would care for.
[95]. It seemed to me at one time that there was a direction to shoot an arrow to determine the place of a grave also in No 16, A 3, I, 185.
Now when that ye hear me gie a loud cry,
Shoot frae thy bow an arrow, and there let me lye.
But upon considering the corresponding passage in 16 B, C, and in 15 B, the idea seems rather to be, that the arrow is to leave the bow at the moment when the soul shoots from the body.
[96]. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 46, who cites B 17, 18. Mr Ralston observes that most of the so-styled Robber Songs of the Russians are reminiscences of the revolt of the Don Cossacks against Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich. Stenka Razín, the chief of the insurgents, after setting for several years the forces of the Tsar at defiance, was put to a cruel death in 1672: p. 45, as above.
[97]. The personage may have been varied in the broadside ballads to catch the pence of tanners, tinkers, and the rest; or possibly some member of the respective fraternities might do this for the glory of his craft. A parallel case seems to be afforded by the well-known German ballad, ‘Der Zimmergesell und die junge Markgräfin,’ which is also sung of a journeyman shoemaker, tailor, locksmith, etc.; as remarked by A. Grün, Robin Hood, Ein Balladenkranz, p. 47 f.
[98]. Fricke, Die Robin-Hood-Balladen, p. 20 f, suggests a ballad of Robin Hood and the Sheriff (How Robin took revenge for the sheriff’s setting a price on his head), which may have been blended with another, of the Rescue of a Knight, to form the sixth fit of The Gest; and points to st. 329 of the Gest, ‘Robyn Hode walked in the forest,’ etc., as the probable beginning of such a ballad.
[99]. b would have taken precedence of a, having been printed earlier (1607–41), but I am at liberty only to collate Pepys copies. The Wood copies of Robin Hood ballads are generally preferable to the Pepys.
[100]. “A wet weary man,” A 71, should probably be “wel weary.” Why should R. H. be wet? And if wet, he may as well be a little wetter.