[101]. Like terms are assured the cook by John in the Gest, sts 170, 171, and offered the Tanner by Robin Hood, R. H. and the Tanner, st. 26. Cf. Adam Bell, sts 163–65.
The ‘Life’ in the Sloane MS., which is put not much before 1600, says: He procurd the Pynner of Wakefeyld to become one of his company, and a freyr called Muchel; though some say he was an other kynd of religious man, for that the order of freyrs was not yet sprung up.
[102]. Curtilarius (Old English curtiler) qui curtile curat aut incolit: Ducange.
[103]. I suppose that it must already have been pointed out that the story of King Ramiro, versified by Southey from the Portuguese, Poetical Works, 1838, VI, 122, is a variety of that of Solomon. There are curious points of resemblance between ‘R. H. rescuing Three Squires’ and the conclusion of the story of Solomon.
[104]. Dodsley’s Old Plays, 4th ed., by W. C. Hazlitt, VIII, 195, 232.
[105]. A very serious offence: see E. Peacock, Hales and Furnivall, Percy Folio Manuscript, I, lxii, note to p. 34.
[106]. Further on, Brathwayte alludes to a difference between Robin Hood and the Shoemaker of Bradford, which had been treated of by stage-poets. This refers to the fight that Robin Hood and George a Green have with the shoemakers, in chap. xii of the History (Thoms, p. 52 f), which is introduced into Robert Greene’s play (Dyce, p. 199 f), but only George does the fighting there. It is mere carelessness when Munday, ‘Downfall,’ etc., applies the name of George a Greene to the Shoemaker of Bradford (Hazlitt, as above, p. 151). In the same play and the same scene he makes Scathlock and Scarlet two persons.
[107]. Robin Hood Newly Revived (which, by the way, is in the same bad style as Robin Hood and Little John) is directed to be sung ‘to a delightful new Tune.’ The tune, as is seen from the burden, was that of Arthur a Bland, etc., called in Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon (the Second Part of Robin Hood Newly Revived) Robin Hood, or Hey down, down a down. The earliest printed copy of the air is preserved in the ballad-opera of The Jovial Crew, 1731 (Rimbault, in Gutch’s Robin Hood, II, 433, Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 391), and the song which is there sung to it has middle rhyme in the first line as well as the third, which is the case with no Robin Hood ballad except Robin Hood and the Peddlers.
Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which has the middle rhyme in the third line, is directed to be sung to Robin Hood Revived. Robin Hood and the Scotchman, as already said, has middle rhyme in the third line; so have The King’s Disguise, etc., R. H. and the Golden Arrow, R. H. and the Valiant Knight; but the tune assigned to the last is Robin Hood and the Fifteen Foresters, that is, Robin Hood’s Progress to Nottingham.
It ought to be added that Robin Hood Newly Revived is found in the Garland of 1663, in company with R. H. and the Bishop, R. H. and the Butcher, etc., and that Robin Hood and Little John is not there; but I do not consider this circumstance sufficient to offset the probability in favor of the supposition, that by Robin Hood and the Stranger is meant Robin Hood and Little John.