Go to Robin Hood’s Fishing: Introduction

ROBIN HOOD AND QUEEN CATHERIN: NOTES

1 A sign that this ballad is a literary invention is that the robbing of the king's "receivers" occurs in Parker's A True Tale of Robin Hood, see lines 129-36; this ballad appears to have been developed using that event as the motive for an archery competition.

6 This is presumably one of the Queen Katherines to whom Henry VIII was married. Munday's play is set at his court, while the Robin Hood games in which he was involved, mentioned by Hall in his Chronicle (see Knight, 1994, p. 110), were dated in 1510 and 1515, that is Henry's younger days when he was married to Catherine of Aragon. The ballad appears to refer to a queen of her authority and activity, rather than the young Catherine Howard, who was executed after being queen in 1540-42, or Catherine Parr who tended the aged Henry from 1543-47.

23 These are very large quantities of wine, though they may be thought of as sums of money; a courtier like Chaucer -- and like the Poet Laureate to the present day -- was rewarded with stipulated amounts of wine, which could be commuted into cash at recognized rates.

26 Dalum Lee is not a known place name: the closest resemblance is Dalham, a small town about five miles east of Newmarket in East Anglia, but Dallow Moor, in North Yorkshire, may be a more probable original, as many Robin Hood connected place-names come from this area.

32 This does not appear to be a reference to a specific person, though like other elements in the Robin Hood tradition, the surname is associated with Yorkshire, as in Stephen Patrington, Bishop of Chichester, who died in 1417.

35 While to travel post is associated with eighteenth-century activities, the OED records usages from the early sixteenth century; it means to have fresh horses "posted" at intervals, so the traveller, or the mail, can keep moving at a fast pace.

41 Stanza 14, lines 53-56 is written here out of place in the manuscript before stanza 11, lines 41-44, but the stanza numbers in the left margin give it correctly as 14, a sign of careful editorial checking after the scribes had completed their work.

51 Presumably he was resting his horse when he ran. The line is also in the Wood versions.

57 The manuscript has The, which may well be a scribal error for Then, but the scribes make few simple errors of that kind and it is likely that the original might have read Tho, the older form for Then.

60 The London location of the ballad's creation is suggested by the idea that Nottingham is in the far North. The city was usually regarded as the beginning of the northern or highland zone of England, but is effectively a Midland town, so this seems a rather extreme idea, perhaps meant as a local joke by the yeoman.
The manuscript reads contie, which is presumably an error for contrie, the form printed here, rather than a spelling for "county"; "the North county" is not a known phrase.

79 The earliest Wood version reads "London court" here which could be taken as a better, because harder, reading than "London towne," but, as it rhymes with "sport," that argument seems to have little force (though it is the first of the two rhyme-words).

86 Robin's sending of a Lincoln green mantle to the queen appears to be a conscious memory of the king's choice of such a robe in the Gest.

92 The manuscript reads Heel will, but there is a correction point below the second e of Heel. The scribe at first wrote a contracted form of "He will" and the editor presumably marked the error, as with the stanza misplacement at lines 53-56.

93 This stanza sounds like the traditional opening of a Robin Hood ballad; the action is beginning now after the explanatory preliminaries. It seems proper to mark this as a new fitt, though the manuscript has no such indication.

97 Robin's wearing of red both makes him stand out as leader in a way suitable to a generally gentrified context, but also links with a number of early references to red as the outlaw's color. To this day hunters often wear a bright color in order not to be shot themselves in the woods. The earliest texts do not mention the famous "Lincoln green" or its occasional variant "Kendal green." It could be that wearing green is a semi-pastoral reworking of an earlier tradition in which the outlaw's clothes were not described (unlike Chaucer's yeoman and his devil-forester in the Friar's Tale, who do wear green) or were a more probable bright color.

100 The word lovly is inserted above the line in the same scribal hand.

102 The manuscript reads sugar, an obvious error for silver. This suggests that the scribe is copying from an original written in a late gothic hand, when v was written somewhat like an elaborate g.

109 Scathlock is one of the older names of this outlaw; however, it is used in Munday and so is no sign of antiquity in this ballad.

111 Renett Browne is elsewhere unknown, though his Christian name is presumably a version of Reynold, a name which does occur at times as a minor figure or alias, including that of Little John in the Gest.

116 At this point the broadside texts begin to become confused about how many archers came with Robin and who they were. All but the last version of the Wood texts reads "yeomen three" here. Child felt that "yeomandry" as in the 1663 garland and the last Wood text must be right, and the Forresters' evidence supports his judgment. However, even Child (like all the versions except Forresters, and presumably except Percy, though it is too damaged to judge) appears to have misunderstood the outlaws' aliases, a confusion which seems based in thinking that Robin came with three archers, itself deriving from this misreading or mishearing of yeomandrie as "yeomen three."

137 As the action changes place here, it seems a natural break for a fitt. The manuscript has no sign of one, however. Finsbury Fields, as Child remarks, was an open area just north of the old City of London wall which was much used for archery practice (1965, III, 197-98).

141 In the Wood version, the name is given as Tepus; while this could well be seen as a harder reading, with priority over Tempest, the origins of both names seem obscure, and it seems best to use the Forresters version.

143 The manuscript reads not instead of the necessary nor.

157 Three hundred paces, or yards, is not one of the longer distances described as being within the range of a good longbowman, though it is improbable that targets could be hit with accuracy, let alone arrows or wands be split at that distance.

165 The Queen is seeking someone to lay a bet on her side, but without immediate success. However, when Robin asks the bishop to bet in line 185, he gives in at once -- presumably a sign of Robin's innate force. The wager on the archery contest remains a basic feature of the scene in whatever version.

173 Sir Richard Lee is the name of the knight Robin helps in the Gest.

176 All the Wood texts have "Goweres blood," which Child retains, while the Percy folio reads "Gawiins blood." The fact that Forresters also reads "Gowers blood" suggests either that Percy has adapted the name in the context of its own romance orientation, or that the source of Forresters shared an error with the ballads. It seems likely that the creator of the ballad would have referred to King Arthur's heroic nephew rather than the late-fourteenth-century poet John Gower. Though he was of knightly family and had a coat of arms, Gower was entirely intellectual in his activities; he might have been known in the seventeenth century from his role as Prologue to Shakespeare's Pericles, but the reference to him seems a characteristic piece of ballad-mongering confusion, and should be emended to "Gawains."

177 The Bishop of Hereford is Robin's opponent in a ballad that names them both in its title (Child no. 144). In the Percy version, the bishop refers to this episode at this point in the plot, but all other versions give the reference later (see line 249). The other ballad also appears in Forresters, but under the name Robin Hood and the Bishop; Child's ballad by that title has been reworked into Robin Hood and the Sheriff in Forresters. The fact that the bishop refers to the action of the ballad at lines 253-56 suggests that it might have been a partial source for Robin Hood and Queen Catherin. Hereford, though in rich countryside and in the turbulent Welsh borders, is not a major see, and there may be a particular bishop at the basis of the figure's role in the ballads. It is unlikely that William de Vere, courtier and bishop (1186-99) under Richard I, is the original, as this is the period used in gentrified texts which rarely retell robbery narratives. Peter de Aquabella, bishop from 1239-68, who was notoriously corrupt and whose money was in fact redistributed among the barons under Henry III, is a possible candidate, but most likely is Adam of Orleton, opponent of Edward II, who also became unpopular with Edward III; he seems the sort of mighty cleric who might have been lampooned in the ballads that were apparently in popular circulation by the mid-fourteenth century.

190 In making the bishop count out his purse, Robin's action is reminiscent of the ballads where he robs a wealthy churchman, and effectively the compiler of Robin Hood and Queen Catherin has added that motif to the "betting on the archery contest" structure.

192 The bishop's remark is unnecessarily vague: a noble was six shillings and eightpence, and three hundred of them are exactly one hundred pounds. The Wood version has precisely the same phrasing.

205 All the broadside versions of the ballad and Forresters here have "kings"; the Percy folio has queens, which must be correct (see line 161-62). The case is the same as with "Gawains" in line 176. It is surprising that no editor or compositor corrected this obvious error.

208 The later Wood versions here read thy knee and the earliest has thy nee. This is a possibly aural error for the reading on which Percy and Forresters agree, thyn eye (spelled in Percy as ee). Presumably this refers to a proverbial sign of a supreme archer -- he could shoot out a woodcock's eye.

209 Only Forresters has a clear account of how the shooting match is resolved; the other texts omit entirely the king's archers, and also name Robin and Midge as such but leave Clifton in alias, so it sounds as if he (not in them known to be Little John) might be the king's archer. But the confusion does not seem to have been caused primarily by cutting: the Forresters sequence is only one stanza longer.

216 This appears to be the first instance of "splitting the arrow" in the Robin Hood myth; modern versions have all descended from the scene in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in Chapter 13 when Locksley splits the arrow of Hubert, the king's archer. As there is no sign that Scott knew the Forresters manuscript, and the resemblance is so close between the two incidents, there would seem to have been a common source for the two, but it is not known.

222 In the Wood version it is Robin who shoots underhand, as a result of the text being condensed, but this appears to mean "below the target," and indicates a failure.

223 Clifton suddenly appears in the text in the Wood versions, to split the wand. The aliases are thoroughly confusing and the Percy folio is much too damaged to be of any help. Child thought he was Will Scarlett (1965, III, 197). Forresters has made things clear: Clifton is Little John (see line 105).

223 A "bearded" arrow carried longer feathers as flights and so could give more accuracy, though it required more power; it is appropriate for the giant archer Little John. Note that his achievement is the more traditional one of "splitting the wand"; in some of the very early ballads his archery skill seems greater than Robin's, but here "splitting the arrow" seems to give Robin precedence.

224 The manuscript reads williow.

225 Will appears to shoot fourth, score a bullseye, and clinch victory. Even Forresters does not have a very clear account of what happens here, though at least we know the order of shooting.

235-36 The king's notion that Robin has been killed in a gateway in the north sounds like a vague reference to the fighting in Adam Bell, lines 310-67. However, the manuscript reads "Pallarsgate" as if this were a place-name like Harrogate. If the original were "palace gate," as seems most likely (the Wood version), then the Forresters reading is probably an aural error, itself an interesting sign of the transmission of the text. But it is just conceivable that there was some other version of Robin's death occurring not at Kirklees (or its erroneous version Birklees) but somewhere sounding like "Pallarsgate" which was simplified in transmission into "palace gate." This is highly speculative, however, and the Wood reading is accepted. It is curious that the phrase "pallace gate" occurs in Adam Bell at line 449, but the context is different.

241 The king offers generous terms to the outlaws: they can travel freely for forty days in either direction without being taken, and have a parole of eighty days (one hundred and twenty in the Wood versions) for their pleasure in between.

249 Although the bishop takes his name from the ballad Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford, he actually refers to an incident in the different ballad Robin Hood and the Bishop, which has an almost identical stanza, lines 89-92. The latter does not appear in Forresters, though the former does -- under the title Robin Hood and the Bishop, because Child's Robin Hood and the Bishop, no. 143, the one adapted in this stanza, has been reworked as Robin Hood and the Sheriff and does not use the "tying up" stanza.

252 The texts divide on tense here: Forresters and the two earliest versions of the Wood text omit "have" in this line. The others, including the Percy folio version, have the past tense; this is probably chance, as "have bet" is an easy change from the present tense, and there is no other sign of the later Wood texts having any access to Percy's version.

257 The Percy folio and the Wood texts read and if here (an if, the more correct form, in the second of Wood's versions). Forresters' simple "if" is one of its few signs of being smoother and possibly editorial compared with the Wood texts and must be taken as a free variation. There is no need to emend Forresters.

261 The manuscript reads No nay, no nay (possibly the second is no-nay), and while it is conceivable that the Wood reading Now nay, now nay is a simplification of this highly emphatic negative, it seems more likely that the Forresters' scribe, near the end of the long ballad, simply misremembered his source (if it was written in a late-Gothic hand as suggested above, he could hardly misread it, as in that script w was a very emphatic letter).