The Text of this half-carol, half-ballad is taken from the Sloane MS. 2593, whence we get Saint Stephen and King Herod and other charming pieces like the well-known carol, 'I syng of a mayden.' It is written in eight long lines...
The Text.--The earliest complete text, here given, was printed by William Copland between 1548 and 1568: there are extant two printed fragments, one printed by John Byddell in 1536, and the other in a type older than Copland's....
Argument.--For a jest, the king disguises himself and his men once more, this time in Lincoln green, which he purchases off Robin Hood. The whole party proceeds to Nottingham, where the appearance of so many green mantles cause...
Argument.--The story now returns to the Sheriff of Nottingham, and relates how he offered a prize for the best archer in the north. Robin Hood, hearing of this match, determines to go to it, and to test the sheriff's faith to h...
Argument.--Robin Hood will not dine until he has 'his pay,' and he therefore sends Little John with Much and Scarlok to wait for an 'unketh gest.' They capture a monk of St. Mary Abbey, and Robin Hood makes him disgorge eight h...
Argument.--The knight goes to York to pay down his four hundred pounds to the abbot of St. Mary Abbey, who has retained the services of the high justice of England 'with cloth and fee,' an offence defined as conspiracy by statu...
Argument.--The king, coming with a great array to Nottingham to take Robin Hood and the knight, and finding nothing but a great scarcity of deer, is wondrous wroth, and promises the knight's lands to any one who will bring him ...
Argument.--The Sheriff of Nottingham secures the assistance of the High Sheriff, and besets the knight's castle, accusing him of harbouring the king's enemies. The knight bids him appeal to the king, saying he will 'avow' (i.e....
Argument.--The narrative of the knight's loan is for the moment dropped, in order to relate a gest of Little John, who is now (81.2) the knight's 'knave' or squire. Going forth 'upon a mery day,' Little John shoots with such sk...
The Text is from a broadside of the seventeenth century from the press of Coles, Vere, Wright, and Clarke, now preserved in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library.
The Text is from Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (1763). It was not included in the first edition (1724-1727), nor until the ninth edition in 1740, when to the original three volumes there was added a fourth, in which this ...
The Text is from Sharpe's Ballad Book. A parody of this ballad, concerning an episode of the end of the seventeenth century, shows it to have been popular not long after its making. In England it has become a nursery rhyme (see...
The Text is from several broadsides and chap-books, but mainly depends on a stall-copy entitled The Song of Bewick and Grahame, approximately dated 1740. Sir Walter Scott considered this ballad 'remarkable, as containing probab...
The Texts are taken respectively from Alexander Fraser Tytler's Brown MS., and from Herd's MSS., vol. i. fol. 49, where it is stated that a verse is wanting.
The Text is given from the Jamieson-Brown MS. It was first printed by Scott, with the omission of the second stanza--perhaps justifiable--and a few minor changes. He notes that he had seen a copy printed on a single sheet....
The Text is from a broadside in the Bagford collection (i. 65); other broadsides, very similar, are to be found in the Pepys, Roxburghe, and other collections. The ballad has often been reprinted; and more than one oral version...