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“And Robin Hood he to the green wood,
And there he was taken ill.
And he sent for a monk, to let him blood
Who took his life away;
Now this being done, his archers did run,
It was not time to stay.”
At Kirklees, in Yorkshire, formerly a Benedictine nunnery, is a gravestone, near the park, under which it is said Robin Hood lies buried. There is the remains of an inscription on it, but it is quite illegible. Mr. Ralph Thoresby, in his “Ducatus Leodiensis,” gives the following as the epitaph:—
“Hear undernead dis laith stean
Laiz Robert Earl of Huntington,
Nea arcir ver az hie sa geude:
An piple kaud im Robin Heud.
Sic utlawz as hi, an iz men,
Wil England never sigh agen.
Obiit 24 kal. Dekembris, 1247.”
Some of his biographers have noticed him as earl of Huntingdon, but they are not borne out in this by any of the old ballads, this epitaph alone calling him by that title. All the learned antiquarians agree in giving no credence to the genuineness of the above composition, alleging, among other causes, the quaintness of the spelling, and the pace of the metre, as affording them strong grounds for suspicion.
However strongly the name and exploits of Robin Hood may have been impressed on our memories from the “oft told” nursery tales, yet we have lately had it in our power to become more intimately, and, as it were, personally acquainted with this great chieftain of outlaws, through the medium of the author of “Waverley,” who has introduced “friend Locksley” to the readers of his “Ivanhoe,” in such natural and glowing colours, as to render the forgetting him utterly impossible.
Henry Brandon.
Leadenhall-street.