Go to Robin Hood and the Pedlars: Introduction

A TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD: NOTES

3 The adjective stately has interesting possibilities, both implying a formal style and also suggesting a concern with the state.

5 Both early texts read Robbin here, as later; it is not clear why Child emends to Robin; he does not do so in later instances.

6 Both of the earliest editions read That to begin this line; it makes a better variation with Which beginning line 7; the later 1686 edition which Child consulted also reads That, and he does not explain the origin of what seems an inferior reading in Which.

9-12 Parker, like the gentrifying chroniclers, combines Robin's popularity with his elevated status, as if the two are intimately connected.

24 Bod. reads loved against BL lov'd.

27 Though the longbow was no longer a serious weapon of the battlefield, regular practice in archery was urged on all male town dwellers in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

28 BL spells excercise but Bod. is correct.

29 This reason for Robin's downfall is ultimately drawn from Grafton.

33 The abbot is in the Gest, but there he is antagonistic to the knight, not Robin. Here begins Parker's relentless portrayal of Catholic clerics as the real enemies of Robin Hood, a theme already outlined strongly in Munday's Downfall.

39 The noun cutters implies both swordsmen and robbers: purse-cutters.

49 The northern location of the outlaws is a consistent theme throughout this period. It presumably the reflects difficulties London experienced in controlling the north throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

68 A remarkable and unique assertion about Robin's anti-clerical ferocity, co-existing bizarrely with the outlaw's gentle and kinde qualities in the next few lines. In Robin Hood's Golden Prize he makes the priests swear celibacy, lines 87-90, but that is hardly a parallel.

80 BL reads wisht but Bod. has the correct wish, which Child also prints.

96 A mark was thirteen shillings and four pence; the sum taken was eight thousand pounds.

97-100 There is a clear resemblance to Robin Hood and the Bishop, which is not recorded until later than A True Tale, but was no doubt in circulation.

103 In the first editions the word is is spelt ar--; the 1686 edition spells the word out fully. On villains being forced to ride backwards, face-to-arse, see Thomas Hahn and Richard W. Kaeuper, "Text and Context: Chaucer's Friar's Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5 (1983), 67-101.

130 The fact that Robin here attacks the "king's receivers" complicates the politics of the ballad; this is a survival from the late medieval combination of king and abbot as forces ranged against the outlaws, and presumably this causes the withdrawal of sympathy from Robin at the end of the ballad. He is a hero for robbing and even castrating clerics, but tackling the king is another matter. It is interesting that Parker, however, did not completely emasculate his story in this respect, and the Robin Hood figure, not dreading law (line 135), finally poses the author with something of a challenge as well. This episode appears to have stimulated the start of Robin Hood and Queen Catherin.

152 Bod.'s venson is metrically a little better than BL's venison.

183 The 1686 edition has he kept, which appears to be a compositor's error.

211-12 Parker imagines the outlaw's crimes in vivid contemporary terms; for parallels see Richard Head, The English Rogue (1650).

229 It is more normal to say "up" if a journey is going north. The idea of a place's importance conveying height is still found in the idiom of "going down" from Oxford, whatever the direction.

233 Arrows often have goose-feather flights, so the term is used metonymically of the arrow itself.

250 The model being used here is the political disturbances of the late medieval period, like that led by "Robin of Redesdale" in 1469, when Sir John Conyers deliberately chose an outlaw-like name for his quite serious rising; another instance was led by "Robin of Holderness" in the same year.

253-54 Parker explains Robin's main support through his elite qualities -- a sign of his reworking of the politics of the tradition.

263 Bod.'s i'th' is a little more precise than BL's ith', as is also the case in line 323.

282 There is a general resemblance to the end of Robin Hood's Fishing, but a closer one perhaps, to the social self-reclamation attempted by donations to charity, especially founding alms-houses by many rich and violent men in the period -- a particularly vivid and surviving set of examples are to be found in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

287-88 The statement apparently disavows the notion of penance through good works as in Catholic doctrine and moves towards the Reformation idea of those who were "elect" were the only true Christians.

293 An apparent reference back to the Gest, lines 51-52.

317-20 A curious prediction, and perhaps partial source, of the later play Robin Hood and his Crew of Souldiers in which Robin, in Nottingham in 1661, submits to the newly established king.

327 Renaissance, even Macchiavellian, counseling finds its way into the myth; the political drama has become much less direct than it used to be.

329 Bod. has one of its rare compositor's errors here, reading Kiug.

333-36 Seventeenth-century politics are shaping here the course of the medieval outlaw's career. Robin no longer has the instinctive support of his men.

345-46 Robin's death is introduced almost as brusquely as in the Gest and with the same effect of resolving an impasse in the plot.

352 BL has his here, which must be an error picked up from line 350.

365 This is the first mention of another hostile cleric in the death sequence: the Prioress is sometimes helped by a yeoman who is hostile to Robin, rather like Guy of Gisborne. See the end of the Gest.

373 In spite of his modernization of the politics and his containment of the hero, Parker is still story-teller enough to underline the essential mythic elements of the story. Whether he is international hero or social bandit, the central figure only comes to death through treachery of someone very close to him, though as in line 383, the tone soon changes.

374 Bod. reads Who, which seems preferable to BL's That.

405 Parker attempts to resolve a contradiction in the story: Robin is betrayed at Kirklees yet also remembered there. Parker has some of the instincts of a scholar, or at least a rationalizer.

409 Parker clearly invokes the scholarly quest for Robin Hood as found in Grafton, Camden, and Leland.

419 Bod. has cleare which loses the rhyme and must be an error.

425 The Gest says Robin dwelled in the green wood after leaving the court twenty yere and two. Perhaps thirteene is meant as an unluckier period.

427 The resemblance to the theme song of the 1950s British television series starring Richard Greene --"Feared by the bad, loved by the good" -- is presumably accidental.

429 Child reads impossible which he cites as the Bod. reading, and a correction to BL's unpossible. But Bod. actually also reads unpossible, which must be accepted.

431 There follows a curious passage, partly nostalgic for the heroic freedom of the past, partly anxious to assure readers of the security of the present. The Robin Hood tradition, it appears, has the power to test its transmitters.

442 BL and Child read dreampt, but Bod.'s dreamt is preferable.

448 The 1686 edition prints Especially but both early editions have the metrically slightly rougher Specially.

460 The meaning seems obscure. Does it imply that he "proved to be more prosperous than he ought to have done?" If so, then should might be a better reading, but the texts are unanimous for could. Or does it perhaps mean "he seemed more prosperous than he really was?" It is clear that Parker is here trying, as thoughout this passage, to moderate enthusiasm for the hero, and this seems to lead him into a lack of clarity.

463 It is not clear what Parker has in mind as our great and horrid crimes, but it adds to the sense of tension throughout this passage, and brings to a somewhat anxious climax the recurrent modernization of the Robin Hood story, as his actions hover between the anti-state violence and quasi-cavalier gentility.

470 Bod. has the slightly more accurate if 'twere, where BL reads if't were.

476 Child reads Hee'l but in fact both early editions have Hee'le.

478 BL has a comma after Bestowed, but Bod. does not; the latter seems the better reading.

480 To support his insistence on veracity, Parker appended the alleged epitaph from Kirklees: this was much copied, even translated into bogus Middle English and carved in stone. It appears to have been written by Parker on the basis of the remarks and hints given by Grafton and Camden; for a discussion, see Holt, 1989, pp. 41-42, and Knight, 1994, pp. 19-21:

Robert Earle of Huntington
Lies under this little stone.
No archer was like him so good:
His wildnesse named him Robbin Hood.
Full thirteene years, and something more,
These northerne parts he vexed sore.
Such out-lawes as he and his men
May England never know agen.