| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
INTRODUCTION. ix |
||
|
ever is made of him in literature before the latter half of the reign of Edward the Third. " Rhymes of Robin Hood"1 are then spoken of by the author of Piers Ploughman, (assigned to about 1362,) as better known to idle fellows than pious songs, and from the manner of the allusion it is a just inference that such rhymes were at that time no novelties. The next notice is in "Wyntown's Scottish Chronicle, written about 1420, where the following lines occur—without any connection, and in the form of an entry—under the year 1283.
" Lytil Jhon and Kobyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude: lii Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this time thare trawale."2
At last we encounter Robin Hood in what may be called history; first of all in a passage of the
1 Sloth says:—
" I kan noght parfitly my pater-noster, As the preest it syngeth, But I kan rymes of Kobyn Hood, And Randolf erl of Chestre."
Wright's ed. v. 3275-8.
2 A writer in the Edinburgh Review, (July, 1847, p. 134,) has cited an allusion to Robin Hood, of a date intermediate between the passages from Wyntown, and the one about to be cited from Bower. In the year 1439, a petition was presented to Parliament against one Piers Venables of Aston, in Derbyshire, " who having no liflode, ne sufiiceante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that oountrie, like as it hadde be Rdbyn Hode and his meyni. Rot. Pari. v. 16. |
||