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 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 Text is from Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs (1769), which is almost identical with a copy in Johnson's Museum. Another variant, also given in the Museum, was contributed by Burns, who made it shorter and more dramati...
Ther herde I pleyen on an harpe That souned bothe wel and sharpe, Orpheus ful craftely, And on his syde, faste by, Sat the harper Orion, And Eacides Chiron, And other harpers many oon,...
The Text of the ballad is here given from Kinloch's MSS., where it is in the handwriting of John Hill Burton when a youth. The text of the song Waly, waly, I take from Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany. The song and the ballad have...
The Text is from the Glenriddell MSS., and is the one on which Sir Walter Scott based the version given in the Border Minstrelsy. Byron notes in the preface to Childe Harold that 'the good-night in the beginning of the first ca...