2 news. It is a bird in the other versions. 4 a one. There are some two score ballads of Robin Hood, the oldest in a MS., of about 1450; and one of these, printed about 1500, is the Gest of Robyn Hode in 456 stanzas-apparently nothing less than a little popular epic, wrought from separate, episodic ballads. The material is of course much older, for in Piers Plowman, composed about 1377, we learn that Sloth knew "rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolf Earl of Chester" better than he did his paternoster. Robin is a ballad creation, the ideal champion of the common people against their secular and spiritual oppressors, and the embodiment of the old English love of fair play and the open air. • thickets. 7 coppices. 8 thrush? • of linden. 10 'It is noe cunning a knave to ken, And 18 a man but here him speake; 40 And itt were not for bursting of my bowe, Iohn, I wold thy head breake.' |