The "Bruce" of our author is a concoction from Barbour and a certain Book of Virgin Parchment, upon the same subject, by Peter Fenton, known only to Gordon, and, like Penardo, sets propriety at defiance, "Christ and Jupiter being with matchless indecorum grouped together:"[[3]] it, too, came originally from the press of Dort, 1615; again from that of James Watson, Edinburgh, 1718; and a third time, Glasgow, by Hall, 1753.
J. O.
Footnote 3:[(return)]
Irving's Scottish Poets.
ROBIN HOOD.
(Vol. vi., p. 597.)
Ireland, too, is associated with the fame of this renowned wood-ranger. This "pen-ultima Thule," which received and protected the refugees of Roman oppression and the victims of Saxon extermination, was looked to in later times as a sanctuary where crime might evade punishment; and in the Annals of Robin Hood this national commiseration was evinced.
"In the year 1189," writes Holinshed, "there ranged three robbers and outlaws in England, among which 'Robert' Hood and Little John were chieftains, of all thieves doubtless the most courteous. Robert, being betrayed at a nunnery in Scotland, called Bricklies, the remnant of the 'crue' was scattered, and every man forced to shift for himself; whereupon Little John was fain to flee the realm by sailing into Ireland, where he sojourned for a few days at Dublin. The citizens being 'doone' to understand the wandering outcast to be an excellent archer, requested him heartily to try how far he could shoot at random, who, yielding to their behest, stood on the bridge of Dublin and shot to a hillock in Oxmantown (thereafter called Little John's shot), leaving behind him a monument, rather by posterity to be wondered than possibly by any man living to be counterscored."—Description of Ireland, fol., p. 24.
The danger, however, of being taken drove Little John thence to Scotland, where, adds the annalist, "he died at a town or village called Moravie."