Go to The Death of Robin Hood: Introduction

ROBIN HOOD'S FISHING: NOTES

1 The opening lines show familiarity with the "green wood" beginning common to a number of the outlaw ballads.

5 This unsurprising line replaces the highly unusual "lily leaf and elephant" in the Wood version ("lily-leaf and cowslip sweet" in the version printed by Dobson and Taylor [1976, p. 80]): although Forresters provides a structurally superior ballad, Wood's text may well have access to a different earlier tradition: its reading here seems unlikely to have been constructed by editorial processes. Forresters reading "nightengaal" seems unlikely to be a scribal error and may indicate that the source used here followed at least at times the practice of doubling vowels to indicate length.

7 In a number of ballads Robin separates from the outlaw band, but this is because of his sometimes rash adventurousness; the financial planning with which this ballad opens marks a major and mercantile-minded variation from the tone of earlier openings.

8 The manuscript reads follow.

17 The earliest Wood texts have with Robin; with is obviously a compositor's error for an abbreviated quoth (a sign of manuscript origin), and Child emends accordingly. Forresters here shows the quality of its detailed readings as well as its overall value.

19 The rapid leap from forest to Scarborough is in all the versions, and is not unlike the rapid transitions in some other ballads, which have at times led editors to think material is missing (e.g., see Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, lines 6-7).

24 The first letter of gray is not well written and appears to be corrected from, perhaps, the letter b, again indicating the possibility of a source in late gothic handwriting. It does not appear to be any other letter, certainly not sp from a notional "spray."

25 The a of came is overwritten, a sign of careful correction. The scribe first wrote the more familiar From whence come thou.

28 The locational surname "of the Lee" is very common, but it is used of the knight in the Gest, and recurs in Robin Hood and Queen Catherin, so it seems to be close to the outlaw in several ways. A "lee" was an open moor or untilled land, so just the place where an outlaw might be looking for game, animal or human; it is also, of course, a nautical term.

30 Presumably the widow is referring to the fisherman Simon in the New Testament, later known as Peter, as a model for Robin's behavior.

33 The widow has apparently inherited a fishing business from her husband; this was a common occurrence, and the techniques of business find their way into the outlaw myth here as they do in Robin Hood and the Potter.

36 Presumably yea is a variant spelling of "ye," not the idiom "yea well," meaning "very well," still heard in the USA.

44 wrang: the manuscript has a half-rhyme here; perhaps the source read lang (a northern form) in line 42. So too in lines 114 and 126.

49 The Wood versions, like Forresters, have bare lines, but Dobson and Taylor printed, from a garland of c. 1750, bate lines (1976, p. 181), though they state in a note it is a mistake in that garland. They feel that Robin throws in unbaited hooks in ignorance. Child proposes it was "wantonness" (1965, III, 211), suggesting a kind of tricksterish folly not unlike Robin's pricing policy in Robin Hood and the Potter.

57 The word in Forresters is clearly luske: "lubber" is what might be expected and appears in the Wood versions in about this position, though the narrative is a little different hereabouts.

60 The manuscript I weat for makes sense and is more metrical than the more grammatical I weat; it sounds like scribal padding, but should not be emended on that ground. The Wood versions have no parallel to this line.

64 suned is clearly the word in Forresters.

65 For Plumpton Park as a Robin Hood location, see the Gest, line 1426.

85 The manuscript has no noun after the in this line; it would seem that only "prize" or "gold" make sense, and the later is preferred because more familiar and so more easily dropped.

87 The phrase "go as" is understood after shall.

89 Wood's earliest text reads ship-hatch, which Child printed, but the plural as found in Forresters is more probable, even for a fairly small fishing boat.

126 The source's And might be thought an error for "an," which might fit better, but And makes sense and is retained.

128 The swallow tayle is an image of an arrow, with its feather flights having a shape at the rear not unlike a swallow's double-pointed tail.

136 MS: now. This does not make sense and might be an error for not.

148 MS: Tho. This needs emending to Thou.

155 In Wood Simon asks to be released and to have his "bent bow" in his hand. This is obviously a repetition from line 103, and makes no sense. The Wood version is heavily cut hereabouts, and the action quite lacks the lucid flow found in Forresters.

164 In Wood's version Robin finds twelve thousand pounds in gold, an improbably large sum.

173 Robin shares the spoils in the person of an outlaw leader. The Wood version shows him making this statement, but then has the ship's "master" say this "shall not be," but he must own it all himself. Robin seems to agree and merely says he will build "for the opprest . . . An habitation" -- presumably an alms-house.
But whereas Forresters allows Robin Hood and Queen Catherin to end in a somewhat argumentative mode, as Little John disagrees with the king and, it seems, Robin, the context here is much less strained than the Wood text.

184 The manuscript reads not with a correcting point under the t.