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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....

'Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur.'
--MAJOR.


The Text.--There are seven texts of the Gest, to be distinguished as
follows:--
...

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...

'Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur.'
--MAJOR.


The Text.--There are seven texts of the Gest, to be distinguished as
follows:--
...

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 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 a combination of three, but mainly from a text which seems to have been sent to Percy in 1775. The other two are from Scottish tradition of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I have made a few chang...

'Ouvre ta port', Germin', c'est moi qu'est ton mari.'
'Donnez-moi des indic's de la premi're nuit,
Et par l' je croirai que vous et's mon mari.'

--Germaine.

...

The Text is taken from Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802), vol. i. pp. 72-79, omitting the tedious Part I. Another of many versions may be found in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xiii. p...

The Text is from Lovely Jenny's Garland, as given with emendations by Professor Child. There is also a curiously perverted version in Herd's manuscript, in which the verses require rearrangement before becoming intelligible....

The Text is taken almost entirely from a copy which was sent in 1780 to Bishop Percy by a Miss Fisher of Carlisle; in the last half of the first stanza her version gives, unintelligibly:
...

'He is weil kend, Johne of the Syde,
A greater theif did never ryde.'

Sir Richard Maitland.

...

The Text is that given (nearly literatim) by Buchan and Motherwell, and also in the MSS. of the latter.

...

The Text was derived from Mr. Biot Edmondston's memory of a ballad sung to him by an old man in Unst, Shetland. In the version sung, he notes, there were no stanzas to fill the obvious gap in the story after the first; but that...

Text.-- The Percy Folio is the sole authority for this excellent ballad, and the text of the MS. is therefore given here literatim, in preference to the copy served up 'with considerable corrections' by Percy in the Reliques. I...