Go to Robin Hood and Allin a Dale: Introduction

ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN: FOOTNOTE

1 scot free: without paying his "scot" or shot, his bill

ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN: NOTES

3 Little John: the earliest references feature the two outlaws and do not clearly privilege Robin. Scottish play-games link the two on nearly equal terms, sometimes as equivalent to the Abbot and Prior of Bonacord. There is some connection between Little John and the Derbyshire Peak district (tradition places his huge grave at Hathersage), and there are two Little John (not Robin Hood) sites in Leicestershire in the Charnwood area, not far from Derbyshire. The surname Naylor, sometimes attached to him, derives from a confusion after a Colonel Naylor, in 1715, owned "Little John's bow" and wrote his name on it (Walker, 1952, p. 131). As a figure, Little John can be interpreted as the helpful giant of folklore, and it can be argued that as Robin is gentrified, John is steadily downgraded into the equivalent of a non-commissioned officer (Knight, 1994, pp. 83-84).

12 jest. Here would at first appear to mean "adventure" as in the title of the Gest, but the reference to a smile in the next line appears to redefine it as "humorous story."

25 The sudden meeting with the stranger is a normal part of a "Robin Hood meets his match" ballad.

50 Although the r and t are very similar, the Onley text clearly reads tough, Child's reading. Later texts read "rough."

54 Later texts read "the stranger reply'd" instead of to thy humor I yield.

64 Later texts read "both," like Onley's; Child reads each, perhaps for number agreement -- each goes.

65 Onley's text reads they'd, which is metrically superior to Child's they had.

73 Onley's all on a fire is metrically superior to Child's version, which omits the article a.

86 Then, then, to seems acceptable: Child edits to Then unto.

108 thee: later texts have Robin using the polite plural you to John in this line.

114 William Stutely is a name that appears occasionally in the tradition; one seven-teenth-century ballad describes the outlaw's rescue of him from the sheriff (Child, no. 141). Whether this is another form of Will Scathelock or Scarlet is not clear: in Munday there are two characters bearing those names, but not Stutely. Such name similarities and confusions are common in Arthurian romance as well.

125 Where Child ends the line with a full stop, the text has a comma and runs on into the next stanza -- perhaps a sign of its somewhat bookish character; line 129 has a colon and is much the same in effect, but there also Child has a full stop against the syntax.

143 Though Child prints the word as greenwood, the sources have green wood, which is not quite the same. The concept of a single entity called greenwood is really a nineteenth-century concept influenced by Keats and Peacock (see Knight, 1996, ch. 5).

146 Later texts emend the meter by providing 'squires; no doubt this was the pronunciation expected in Onley.

153 The mention of caves is a rare moment of realism: most ballads locate the outlaws simply in "the green wood," as if the weather was never hostile.