4523. wanting.
4524. For euill: they thee.
4553. good wanting.
Thus endeth the life of Robin hood.
118
ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE
‘Guye of Gisborne,’ Percy MS., p. 262; Hales and Furnivall, II, 227.
First printed in the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 1765, I, 74, and, with less deviation from the original, in the fourth edition, 1794, I, 81. Reprinted from the Reliques in Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1795, I, 114.
Robin Hood has had a dream that he has been beaten and bound by two yeomen, who have taken away his bow. He vows that he will have vengeance, and sets out in search of them with Little John. Robin and John shoot as they go, till they come to the greenwood and see a yeoman leaning against a tree, clad in a horse-hide, with head, tail, and mane. John proposes to go to the yeoman to ask his intentions. Robin considers this to be forward of John, and speaks so roughly to him that John parts company, and returns to Barnsdale. Things are in a bad way there: the sheriff of Nottingham has attacked Robin’s band; two have been slain; Scarlett is flying, and the sheriff in pursuit with seven score men. John sends an arrow at the pursuers, which kills one of them; but his bow breaks, and John is made prisoner and tied to a tree.
Robin learns from the man in horse-hide that he is seeking Robin Hood, but has lost his way. Robin offers to be his guide, and as they go through the wood proposes a shooting-match. Both shoot well, but Robin so much the better that the other breaks out into expressions of admiration, and asks his name. Tell me thine first, says Robin. “I am Guy of Gisborne;” “and I Robin Hood, whom thou long hast sought.” They fight fiercely for two hours; Robin stumbles and is hit, but invokes the Virgin’s aid, leaps up and kills Guy. He nicks Guy’s face so that it cannot be recognized, throws his own green gown over the body, puts on the horse-hide, and blows Guy’s horn. The sheriff hears in the sound tidings that Guy has slain Robin, and thinks it is Guy that he sees coming in the horse-hide. The supposed Guy is offered anything that he will ask, but will take no reward but the boon of serving the knave as he has the master. Robin hies to Little John, looses him, and gives him Sir Guy’s bow. The sheriff takes to flight, but cannot outrun John’s arrow, which cleaves his heart.
The beginning, and perhaps the development, of the story might have been more lucid but for verses lost at the very start. Robin Hood dreams of two yeomen that beat and bind him, and goes to seek them, “in greenwood where they be.” Sir Guy being one, the other person pointed at must of course be the sheriff of Nottingham (who seems to be beyond his beat in Yorkshire,[[81]] but outlaws can raise no questions of jurisdiction), in league with Sir Guy (a Yorkshireman, who has done many a curst turn) for the capture or slaying of Robin. The dream simply foreshadows danger from two quarters. But Robin Hood is nowhere informed, as we are, that the sheriff is out against him with seven score men, has attacked his camp, and taken John prisoner. He knows nothing of this so far on as stanza 453, where, after killing Guy, he says he will go to Barnsdale to see how his men are faring. Why then does he make his arrangements in stanzas 42–452, before he returns to Barnsdale, to pass himself off for Sir Guy? Plainly this device is adopted with the knowledge that John is a prisoner, and as a means of delivering him; which all that follows shows. Our embarrassment is the greater because we cannot point out any place in the story at which the necessary information could have been conveyed; there is no cranny where it could have been thrust in. It will not be enough, therefore, to suppose that verses have dropped out; there must also have been a considerable derangement of the story.