most being the Mass of Our Lady; and for the love of her he had laid down the rule that he would on no account attack any travelling party in which there was any woman. It is another principle that he will not attack any husbandman or good yeoman, or injure any knight or squire who showed himself a good fellow, that is, reciprocated with them in the courtesy with which they conducted their operations.

Bishops and Archbishops were fair game, and Robin instructed his men, above all things, never to forget the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, from whom we are therefore to understand that he had early received some molestation in his free-booting career; the scenes of some of his deeds having lain in the Forest of Sherwood, which is in Nottinghamshire.

When to this we add the possession of remarkable skill in handling the bow, we have the proper image of the hero presented to us. An outlaw, in the prime of life, concealing himself in the thickets of Barnsdale, where, from his hiding-place, he could at any time sally forth to surprise an unsuspecting traveller on the Watling Street, as the ballad-writer calls the ancient, doubtless the Roman highway, which crosses Barnsdale. Special proof of any particular person having secreted himself in those fastnesses, for the purpose of protection and of having opportunities of plundering travellers, cannot perhaps now be produced; but that Barnsdale, like Gadshill, was so infested in the days of the Edwards, may be proved by a single piece of contemporary evidence. In the last year of the reign of King Edward the First, the Bishops of St. Andrew's

and Glasgow, and the Abbot of Scone were conveyed, at the King's charge, from Scotland to Winchester. In this journey they had a guard, sometimes of eight archers, sometimes of twelve; but when they had got as far south as Daventry, they had no archers at all in attendance, and proceeded without a guard, in three days, from thence to Winchester. But when they passed from Pontefract to Tickhill, the guard had been increased to the number of twenty archers, and the reason given in the account of the expenses of their journey, for this addition to the cost of the conveyance, is given in the two words propter Barnsdale, which could be understood by the authorities to whom they accounted, in no other way than that there was more than common danger in traversing that wood.a Robin sends his companions to the Sayles, and directs them to wait by Watling Street:

And walke up to the Sayles,

And so to Watlynge Strete.

There is in these few words something which impresses a person acquainted with the district with the conviction of the reality of these events, for the Sayles is a place hardly known. There is a family of the name seated at Wentbridge, but Sayles as a name of a place has passed almost entirely from the public recollection, nor would it be found, it is believed, in any map of Yorkshire. Yet most undoubtedly there

a I incline, for reasons which will afterwards be given, to think this a little too early for Robin Hood, but the two Bishops and the Abbot were precisely of the class of persons whom Robin thought his most lawful prey.

was once a place so called in Barnsdale or close to it. It was a very small tenancy of the Manor of Pontefract, being not more than the tenth of a knight's fee. How therefore it came to be seized upon by the writer of this ballad can hardly be otherwise accounted for than by the fact that it had the reputation of having been really one of the speculatoria of the outlaw who had inhabited those regions.a

It is not long before they descry a person on the Watling Street, a knight on horseback; to whom with very little ceremony they introduce themselves. The knight was pursuing his journey heavy with grief. They invite him to dine with Robin Hood, a name with which the knight is familiar, and not quite at his ease when he hears it pronounced. He acts, however, courteously, speaks respectfully of their master, but would decline the invitation to dinner, as his plans were laid to dine at Blythe or Doncaster. They give

a The introduction of The Sayles might be used for another purpose; viz., to show that the writer of this ballad, whoever he was, had an intimate acquaintance with the country of which he was writing; for none but such a person would have introduced the name of a place so utterly obscure as Sayles. Doncaster, any writer might well know, and even Adwick, Owston, Hampole, Skelbrook, BurghWallis, Campsal, Smeaton, or Wentbridge, but hardly Sayles. Sayles occurs, it may be observed, as a place in the neighbourhood of Barnsdale, in the account of the Aid for knighting the Black Prince, 20 Edward III. It was then in the hands of Richard, son of Adam de Sayles, who paid four shillings. Again, in Bernard's Survey of that Honour, 1577, Thomas de Brayton, who had also possessions at Campsal, had held a tenement in Sayles as one-tenth of a knight's fee, which was afterwards in the possession of Holmes, and at the date of the Survey in the hands of William, son of Richard Fletcher, of Campsal. The latest editor of the Robin Hood Ballads would substitute some other name for it.

him no choice; and he accompanies them to Robin's lodge. There he is courteously received, and they all sit down to a sumptuous banquet, bread and wine, numbles of the deer, swan, pheasants, water-fowl, and all kinds of small birds. The knight puts on the appearance of great satisfaction, and promises that when he returns into those parts he will requite the hospitality he has received. The scene now begins to change: from pleasure they proceed to business: Robin wanted no dinner from any man, but still it was never the use in England for a poor yeoman to pay for a knight's dinner. The knight then understands what is meant, and he makes known his poverty. threadbare apparel had bespoken it, and it is proved by the discovery that ten shillings is the whole amount he possesses. When satisfied that there was no concealment, Robin interrogates him as to what had reduced him to so low a state.

Tell me one word, said Robyn,

And counsell shall it be:

I trow thou werte made a knight of forse

Or elles of yeomanry.

His

This stanza is remarkable for containing a reference. to one of the old grievances of the people of England. In the reign of Henry the Third, and his son, and grandson, the compelling persons, some of them of no great estate, to take upon them the honour of knighthood, or pay a large sum to be excused, was felt as a heavy oppression. Robin puts more home questions; and inquires if he has been brought low by his bad husbandry, or by any licentious excesses.

The knight declares that he is chargeable with nothing of the kind; that his ancestors have been knights thereabouts for a hundred winters, and that his neighbours well knew that he could once despend £400 a-year. Now all is gone, said he. My eldest son, when he was just twenty, slew a knight and an esquire of Lancashire; and to raise money for his defence, I have sold all my goods, and put my whole estate in pledge to the abbot of St. Mary, near York, for £400, which is to be repaid to-morrow, or all my lands are gone; and as I am quite unable to pay it, my lands are about to pass from my family; and as for myself, I am fleeing the country, and mean to journey as far as Palestine.

Robin is greatly moved at this recital of the knight's sorrows; and finding that he is deserted by all his friends, determines that he will himself find him the means to redeem his lands; when Little John, with an alacrity which is nothing checked by some counter-suggestions of Much, counts out £400 from the treasury, and delivers them to the knight, together with new clothing and another horse; and Little John goes himself as a "knave" (servant), to attend upon him.

And here ends the first Fytte, but not the ballad.

The second Fytte relates more to the knight, than the courteous and bountiful outlaws. It opens with the knight and Little John on their way to York; and after the first four stanzas the scene changes to St. Mary's Abbey, and we are presented with the abbot in a conclave of his monks, reminding them that this