Go to Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow: Introduction

ROBIN HOOD'S BIRTH, BREEDING, VALOUR, AND MARRIAGE: FOOTNOTE

1 cold pear pies / With clotted cream and honey

ROBIN HOOD'S BIRTH, BREEDING, VALOUR, AND MARRIAGE: NOTES

5 Locksly is here located in Nottinghamshire, which does not seem historically to be an option. Near Sheffield in Yorkshire is the usual location for this place which the Sloane Life, c. 1600, is the first to link to the hero, but it does also mention other possible origins for the hero in Nottinghamshire which may have led to the error here.

11 Two miles and an inch is, according to Child, the longest of the feats of archery in the Robin Hood tradition: he comments on this in his "Index of Matters and Literature" (1965, V, 471), under the rubric "not to be taken seriously."

12 The Pinder did not in fact meet Robin's father in the ballad bearing his name. It is not clear if "he" in the next line refers to the Pinder or to Robin's father; it hardly seems important in this fast moving piece of name-juggling.

18 Sir Guy of Warwick is the hero of a major medieval romance, but he also became well-known in less elevated forms and continued to appear in chap-book stories into the nineteenth century.

21 For Gamwell see the discussion of Robin Hood and Will Scarlet; this family name came, through the mediation of Peacock in Maid Marian, into the mainstream of the Victorian novel. It plays a major part in Pierce Egan's 1840 Robin Hood and Little John and also in Alexandre Dumas's Robin Hood, Prince des Voleurs of 1872.

32 The fact that it is Christmas Eve marks a strong departure from the normal Robin Hood tradition; this is a festal Christmas ballad, not an early summer adventure.

35 Unusual and quite pantomime-like in effect is the fact that Robin wears light blue and his mother Lincoln green. The elements of the outlaw ballads are no longer understood, but are being deployed for merely theatrical effect.

41 basket-hilt sword. A sword with an openwork metal protection for the hand around the hilt.

61 March beer. According to the OED, a strong beer brewed in March; it would be especially strong by Christmas, as here.

62 Child emends be sung to "he sing," but this is in none of the texts and seems unnecessary.

65 The Roxburghe text reads Mustards, braun, but Child accepts the Pepys texts which read "Mustard and braun." This seems a false simplification, however, because the mustard would have been served with both the brawn (pork roast) and the roast beef and so should not be linked to the brawn by "and."

78 Child follows the Pepys texts with "gentleman, yeoman" but Roxburghe's plural makes good sense, and there seems no reason to emend.

97 There is no explanation of why Robin might have all these yeomen in Sherwood forest, since he is a respectable member of local gentry society.

105 Clorinda, or Clarinda, becomes a favorite name for Robin's partner in the moderately gentrified ballad operas of the eighteenth century.

108 The buskin is the chopine or high-heeled knee boot which was associated with tragic plays; it is a mark of Clorinda's dignity.

118 Child prefers "O" from the Pepys texts, but there seems no reason to emend Roxburghe's Oh.

119-20 The fierce skill Clorinda displays here is not unlike the dedicated hunting of Maid Marian in Ben Jonson's The Sad Shepherd.

120 Titbury day. The annual celebration and fair day at Titbury.

125 we. The ballad apparently is being sung by a local bard in the company of the foresters (an Allin a Dale type?), who joins in the feast (line 135). Later, in line 175, he claims to be king of the fidlers, who saw it all. The first-person device such as this is unusual in the ballads. See note to line 175.

149 All the existing texts have "motion" which Child retains. However, this reading seems most improbable, and the obvious emendation is notion.

152 Roxburghe reads "be merry," but the Pepys texts' be married seems to make much more sense in the context of the priest in the previous line.

159 Child prefers to start the line with "Go" as in the Pepys texts, but this seems both unnecessary and, with go in the previous line, clumsy.

161 The implication might be that Staffordshire miles, like Irish miles, might be unusually long, though this is not recorded elsewhere; when "Staffordshire" is used as a colloquial epithet it usually refers to blows with a club, or staff, as in "Staffordshire Law," martial or directly violent law. It is conceivable that the phrase here suggests "very dangerous miles."

171 Child prints "good" from the Pepys texts after them, but it seems unnecessary for sense or meter and is, as in the Roxburghe text, omitted here.

175 It is unusual in ballads for the narrator to be so visible (see note to line 125), but this feature appears to fit the eclectic and somewhat art-oriented character of this particular version.

184 Arthur-a-Bradly. A popular song about a young hero; may be the same as "Arthur a Bland," the tune of which is thought to have been used for several Robin Hood ballads. See Dobson and Taylor, 1976, p. 166.

194 Dubbridge is not a recorded place in Britain; the closest might seem to be Dudbridge in Gloucestershire, but the West Midlands have no real connection with the later Robin Hood tradition. North Yorkshire, on the other hand, is often represented in the myth, and the source here could be a number of Dub- place names in that area such as Dub Cote and Dub Garth. Apart from their credible location, these have the same unusual structure as Dubbridge: dubh is Gaelic for "black" or "dark" and these two names, like Dubbridge, combine the Celtic epithet with a non-Celtic location.

205 The Roxburghe text reads "the" which must at this stage be a compositor's error, not a dialect form of they.

206 The texts differ in this line: Roxburghe has the garlands placed at the bride's bed, while Pepys has "on the bride's head." The choice is between the awkwardly repeated rhyme in Roxburghe and the rather bizarre idea of Clorinda wearing what seem to be thirty-four garlands on her head. Child prefers the latter, as in a number of other cases selecting Pepys for no good reason. It seems more likely that Pepys is edited for rhyme without remembering how many yeomen there are, rather than that Roxburghe is in error 3/4 its clumsiness does in fact make it the harder reading, and is retained here.

217 The reference to the king and his hope of heirs would seem to place this soon after the restoration in 1661 when a substantial number of Robin Hood texts of a non-radical character were produced; see the comments in the Introduction to Robin Hood and his Crew of Souldiers.