Maid Marian ........................................................................................................................................................1

Thomas Love Peacock.............................................................................................................................1

"The abbot, in his alb arrayed," stood at the altar in the abbeychapel of Rubygill, with all his plump, sleek,

rosy friars, in goodly lines disposed, to solemnise the nuptials of the beautiful Matilda Fitzwater, daughter of

the Baron of Arlingford, with the noble Robert FitzOoth, Earl of Locksley and Huntingdon. The abbey of

Rubygill stood in a picturesque valley, at a little distance from the western boundary of Sherwood Forest, in a

spot which seemed adapted by nature to be the retreat of monastic mortification, being on the banks of a fine

troutstream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding with excellent game. The bride, with her

father and attendant maidens, entered the chapel; but the earl had not arrived. The baron was amazed, and the

bridemaidens were disconcerted. Matilda feared that some evil had befallen her lover, but felt no diminution

of her confidence in his honour and love. Through the open gates of the chapel she looked down the narrow

road that wound along the side of the hill; and her ear was the first that heard the distant trampling of horses,

and her eye was the first that caught the glitter of snowy plumes, and the light of polished spears. "It is

strange," thought the baron, "that the earl should come in this martial array to his wedding;" but he had not

long to meditate on the phenomenon, for the foaming steeds swept up to the gate like a whirlwind, and the

earl, breathless with speed, and followed by a few of his yeomen, advanced to his smiling bride. It was then

no time to ask questions, for the organ was in full peal, and the choristers were in full voice.

The abbot began to intone the ceremony in a style of modulation impressively exalted, his voice issuing most

canonically from the roof of his mouth, through the medium of a very musical nose newly tuned for the

occasion. But he had not proceeded far enough to exhibit all the variety and compass of this melodious

instrument, when a noise was heard at the gate, and a party of armed men entered the chapel. The song of the

choristers died away in a shake of demisemiquavers, contrary to all the rules of psalmody. The organblower,

who was working his musical airpump with one hand, and with two fingers and a thumb of the other

insinuating a peepingplace through the curtain of the organgallery, was struck motionless by the double

operation of curiosity and fear; while the organist, intent only on his performance, and spreading all his

fingers to strike a swell of magnificent chords, felt his harmonic spirit ready to desert his body on being

answered by the ghastly rattle of empty keys, and in the consequent agitato furioso of the internal movements

of his feelings, was preparing to restore harmony by the segue subito of an appoggiatura con foco with the

corner of a book of anthems on the head of his neglectful assistant, when his hand and his attention together

were arrested by the scene below. The voice of the abbot subsided into silence through a descending scale of

longdrawn melody, like the sound of the ebbing sea to the explorers of a cave. In a few moments all was

silence, interrupted only by the iron tread of the armed intruders, as it rang on the marble floor and echoed

The leader strode up to the altar; and placing himself opposite to the abbot, and between the earl and Matilda,

in such a manner that the four together seemed to stand on the four points of a diamond, exclaimed, "In the

name of King Henry, I forbid the ceremony, and attach Robert Earl of Huntingdon as a traitor!" and at the

same time he held his drawn sword between the lovers, as if to emblem that royal authority which laid its

temporal ban upon their contract. The earl drew his own sword instantly, and struck down the interposing

weapon; then clasped his left arm round Matilda, who sprang into his embrace, and held his sword before her

with his right hand. His yeomen ranged themselves at his side, and stood with their swords drawn, still and

prepared, like men determined to die in his defence. The soldiers, confident in superiority of numbers,

paused. The abbot took advantage of the pause to introduce a word of exhortation. "My children," said he, "if

you are going to cut each other's throats, I entreat you, in the name of peace and charity, to do it out of the

"Sweet Matilda," said the earl, "did you give your love to the Earl of Huntingdon, whose lands touch the

"Neither to the earl nor his earldom," answered Matilda firmly, "but to Robert FitzOoth and his love."

"That I well knew," said the earl; "and though the ceremony be incomplete, we are not the less married in the

eye of my only saint, our Lady, who will yet bring us together. Lord Fitzwater, to your care, for the present, I

commit your daughter.Nay, sweet Matilda, part we must for a while; but we will soon meet under brighter

He kissed Matilda's lips, and consigned her to the baron, who glowered about him with an expression of

countenance that showed he was mortally wroth with somebody; but whatever he thought or felt he kept to

himself. The earl, with a sign to his followers, made a sudden charge on the soldiers, with the intention of

cutting his way through. The soldiers were prepared for such an occurrence, and a desperate skirmish

succeeded. Some of the women screamed, but none of them fainted; for fainting was not so much the fashion

in those days, when the ladies breakfasted on brawn and ale at sunrise, as in our more refined age of green tea

and muffins at noon. Matilda seemed disposed to fly again to her lover, but the baron forced her from the

chapel. The earl's bowmen at the door sent in among the assailants a volley of arrows, one of which whizzed

past the ear of the abbot, who, in mortal fear of being suddenly translated from a ghostly friar into a friarly

ghost, began to roll out of the chapel as fast as his bulk and his holy robes would permit, roaring "Sacrilege!"

with all his monks at his heels, who were, like himself, more intent to go at once than to stand upon the order

of their going. The abbot, thus pressed from behind, and stumbling over his own drapery before, fell suddenly

prostrate in the doorway that connected the chapel with the abbey, and was instantaneously buried under a

pyramid of ghostly carcasses, that fell over him and each other, and lay a rolling chaos of animated

rotundities, sprawling and bawling in unseemly disarray, and sending forth the names of all the saints in and

out of heaven, amidst the clashing of swords, the ringing of bucklers, the clattering of helmets, the twanging

of bowstrings, the whizzing of arrows, the screams of women, the shouts of the warriors, and the

vociferations of the peasantry, who had been assembled to the intended nuptials, and who, seeing a fair

setto, contrived to pick a quarrel among themselves on the occasion, and proceeded, with staff and cudgel,

to crack each other's skulls for the good of the king and the earl. One tall friar alone was untouched by the

panic of his brethren, and stood steadfastly watching the combat with his arms akembo, the colossal emblem

At length, through the midst of the internal confusion, the earl, by the help of his good sword, the staunch

valour of his men, and the blessing of the Virgin, fought his way to the chapelgate his bowmen closed

him inhe vaulted into his saddle, clapped spurs to his horse, rallied his men on the first eminence, and

exchanged his sword for a bow and arrow, with which he did old execution among the pursuers, who at last

thought it most expedient to desist from offensive warfare, and to retreat into the abbey, where, in the king's

name, they broached a pipe of the best wine, and attached all the venison in the larder, having first carefully

The friars, it may be well supposed, and such of the king's men as escaped unhurt from the affray, found their

spirits a cup too low, and kept the flask moving from noon till night. The peaceful brethren, unused to the

tumult of war, had undergone, from fear and discomposure, an exhaustion of animal spirits that required

extraordinary refection. During the repast, they interrogated Sir Ralph Montfaucon, the leader of the soldiers,

"A complication of offences," replied Sir Ralph, "superinduced on the original basis of foresttreason. He

began with hunting the king's deer, in despite of all remonstrance; followed it up by contempt of the king's

mandates, and by armed resistance to his power, in defiance of all authority; and combined with it the

resolute withholding of payment of certain moneys to the abbot of Doncaster, in denial of all law; and has

thus made himself the declared enemy of church and state, and all for being too fond of venison." And the

"A heinous offender," said a little round oily friar, appropriating the portion of pasty which Sir Ralph had left.

"The earl is a worthy peer," said the tall friar whom we have already mentioned in the chapel scene, "and the

"Why this is flat treason, brother Michael," said the little round friar, "to call an attainted traitor a worthy

"I pledge you," said brother Michael. The little friar smiled and filled his cup. "He will draw the long bow,"

"Don't talk of the long bow," said the abbot, who had the sound of the arrow still whizzing in his ear: "what

"So much the worse for the law then," said brother Michael. "The law will have a heavier miss of him than he

will have of the law. He will strike as much venison as ever, and more of other game. I know what I say: but

"What other game?" said the little friar. "I hope he won't poach among our partridges."

"Poach! not he," said brother Michael: "if he wants your partridges, he will strike them under your nose

"Surely, son Michael," said the abbot, "you do not mean to insinuate that the noble earl will turn freebooter?"

"A man must live," said brother Michael, "earl or no. If the law takes his rents and beeves without his

consent, he must take beeves and rents where he can get them without the consent of the law. This is the lex

"Truly," said Sir Ralph, "I am sorry for the damsel: she seems fond of this wild runagate."

"How a mad girl?" said brother Michael. "Has she not beauty, grace, wit, sense, discretion, dexterity,

"Learning!" exclaimed the little friar; "what has a woman to do with learning? And valour! who ever heard a

woman commended for valour? Meekness and mildness, and softness, and gentleness, and tenderness, and

humility, and obedience to her husband, and faith in her confessor, and domesticity, or, as learned doctors

call it, the faculty of stayathomeitiveness, and embroidery, and music, and pickling, and preserving, and the

whole complex and multiplex detail of the noble science of dinner, as well in preparation for the table, as in

arrangement over it, and in distribution around it to knights, and squires, and ghostly friars,these are

"She is the all in all," said brother Michael, "gentle as a ringdove, yet highsoaring as a falcon: humble

below her deserving, yet deserving beyond the estimate of panegyric: an exact economist in all superfluity,

yet a most bountiful dispenser in all liberality: the chief regulator of her household, the fairest pillar of her

hall, and the sweetest blossom of her bower: having, in all opposite proposings, sense to understand,

judgment to weigh, discretion to choose, firmness to undertake, diligence to conduct, perseverance to

accomplish, and resolution to maintain. For obedience to her husband, that is not to be tried till she has one:

for faith in her confessor, she has as much as the law prescribes: for embroidery an Arachne: for music a

Siren: and for pickling and preserving, did not one of her jars of sugared apricots give you your last surfeit at

"Call you that preserving?" said the little friar; "I call it destroying. Call you it pickling? Truly it pickled me.

"By canary," said brother Michael. "Canary is the only life preserver, the true aurum potabile, the universal

panacea for all diseases, thirst, and short life. Your life was saved by canary."

"Indeed, reverend father," said Sir Ralph, "if the young lady be half what you describe, she must be a

"She can fence," said the little friar, "and draw the long bow, and play at singlestick and quarterstaff."

"Yet mark you," said brother Michael, "not like a virago or a hoyden, or one that would crack a

servingman's head for spilling gravy on her ruff, but with such womanly grace and temperate selfcommand

as if those manly exercises belonged to her only, and were become for her sake feminine."

"You incite me," said Sir Ralph, "to view her more nearly. That madcap earl found me other employment

"The earl is a worthy peer," said brother Michael; "he is worth any fourteen earls on this side Trent, and any

seven on the other." (The reader will please to remember that Rubygill Abbey was north of Trent.)

"His mettle will be tried," said Sir Ralph. "There is many a courtier will swear to King Henry to bring him in

"The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble, Doth make a jest Of silken vest, That will through

"Plague on your lungs, son Michael," said the abbot; "this is your old coil: always roaring in your cups."

"I know what I say," said brother Michael; "there is often more sense in an old song than in a new homily.

The courtly pad doth amble, When his gay lord would ramble: But both may catch An awkward scratch, If

they ride among the bramble: The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble."

"Tall friar," said Sir Ralph, "either you shoot the shafts of your merriment at random, or you know more of

"Let my frock," said brother Michael, "answer for its own sins. It is worn past covering mine. It is too weak

for a shield, too transparent for a screen, too thin for a shelter, too light for gravity, and too threadbare for a

jest. The wearer would be naught indeed who should misbeseem such a wedding garment.

But wherefore does the sheep wear wool? That he in season sheared may be, And the shepherd be warm

The Earl of Huntingdon, living in the vicinity of a royal forest, and passionately attached to the chase from

his infancy, had long made as free with the king's deer as Lord Percy proposed to do with those of Lord

Douglas in the memorable hunting of Cheviot. It is sufficiently well known how severe were the forestlaws

in those days, and with what jealousy the kings of England maintained this branch of their prerogative; but

menaces and remonstrances were thrown away on the earl, who declared that he would not thank Saint Peter

for admission into Paradise, if he were obliged to leave his bow and hounds at the gate. King Henry (the

Second) swore by Saint Botolph to make him rue his sport, and, having caused him to be duly and formally

accused, summoned him to London to answer the charge. The earl, deeming himself safer among his own

vassals than among king Henry's courtiers, took no notice of the mandate. King Henry sent a force to bring

him, vi et armis, to court. The earl made a resolute resistance, and put the king's force to flight under a

shower of arrows: an act which the courtiers declared to be treason. At the same time, the abbot of Doncaster

sued up the payment of certain moneys, which the earl, whose revenue ran a losing race with his hospitality,

had borrowed at sundry times of the said abbot: for the abbots and the bishops were the chief usurers of those

days, and, as the end sanctifies the means, were not in the least scrupulous of employing what would have

been extortion in the profane, to accomplish the pious purpose of bringing a blessing on the land by rescuing

it from the frail hold of carnal and temporal into the firmer grasp of ghostly and spiritual possessors. But the

earl, confident in the number and attachment of his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money, which

he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not: a refusal which in those days was an act of

outlawry in a gentleman, as it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman having in our wiser

times a more liberal privilege of gentility, which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor. Thus

the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot concurred to subject the earl to the penalties of

outlawry, by which the abbot would gain his due upon the lands of Locksley, and the rest would be confiscate

to the king. Still the king did not think it advisable to assail the earl in his own stronghold, but caused a

diligent watch to be kept over his motions, till at length his rumoured marriage with the heiress of Arlingford

seemed to point out an easy method of laying violent hands on the offender. Sir Ralph Montfaucon, a young

man of good lineage and of an aspiring temper, who readily seized the first opportunity that offered of

recommending himself to King Henry's favour by manifesting his zeal in his service, undertook the charge:

Sir Ralph's curiosity was strongly excited by the friar's description of the young lady of Arlingford; and he

prepared in the morning to visit the castle, under the very plausible pretext of giving the baron an explanation

of his intervention at the nuptials. Brother Michael and the little fat friar proposed to be his guides. The

proposal was courteously accepted, and they set out together, leaving Sir Ralph's followers at the abbey. The

knight was mounted on a spirited charger; brother Michael on a large heavytrotting horse; and the little fat

friar on a plump softpaced galloway, so correspondent with himself in size, rotundity, and sleekness, that if

they had been amalgamated into a centaur, there would have been nothing to alter in their proportions.

"Do you know," said the little friar, as they wound along the banks of the stream, "the reason why laketrout

"A most heterodox remark," said brother Michael: "know you not, that in all nice matters you should take the

implication for absolute, and, without looking into the FACT WHETHER, seek only the reason why? But the

fact is so, on the word of a friar; which what layman will venture to gainsay who prefers a down bed to a

"The fact being so," said the knight, "I am still at a loss for the reason; nor would I undertake to opine in a

matter of that magnitude: since, in all that appertains to the good things either of this world or the next, my

reverend spiritual guides are kind enough to take the trouble of thinking off my hands."

"Spoken," said brother Michael, "with a sound Catholic conscience. My little brother here is most profound

in the matter of trout. He has marked, learned, and inwardly digested the subject, twice a week at least for

fiveandthirty years. I yield to him in this. My strong points are venison and canary."

"The good qualities of a trout," said the little friar, "are firmness and redness: the redness, indeed, being the

The rose on the nose doth all virtues disclose: For the outward grace shows That the inward overflows, When

"Now," said the little friar, "as is the firmness so is the redness, and as is the redness so is the shyness."

"Marry why?" said brother Michael. "The solution is not physicalnatural, but physicalhistorical, or

naturalsuperinductive. And thereby hangs a tale, which may be either said or sung:

The damsel stood to watch the fight By the banks of Kingslea Mere, And they brought to her feet her own

She knelt by him his wounds to bind, She washed them with many a tear: And shouts rose fast upon the wind,

"Oh! let not," he said, "while yet I live, The cruel foe me take: But with thy sweet lips a last kiss give, And

Around his neck she wound her arms, And she kissed his lips so pale: And evermore the war's alarms Came

She drew him to the lake's steep side, Where the red heath fringed the shore; She plunged with him beneath

Their true blood mingled in Kingslea Mere, That to mingle on earth was fain: And the trout that swims in that

"Thus you see how good comes of evil, and how a holy friar may fare better on fastday for the violent death

of two lovers two hundred years ago. The inference is most consecutive, that wherever you catch a

redfleshed trout, love lies bleeding under the water: an occult quality, which can only act in the stationary

waters of a lake, being neutralised by the rapid transition of those of a stream."

"Do you not see?" said brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The

infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes

him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best

The little friar stopped. He seemed suddenly struck with an awful thought, which caused a momentary

pallescence in his rosy complexion; and after a brief hesitation, he turned his galloway, and told his

"The lady Matilda," said the little friar, "can draw the longbow. She must bear no goodwill to Sir Ralph; and

if she should espy him from her tower, she may testify her recognition with a clothyard shaft. She is not so

infallible a markswoman, but that she might shoot at a crow and kill a pigeon. She might peradventure miss

"Mass," said the little friar, "but there is such a fear, and very strong too. You who have it not may keep your

way, and I who have it shall take mine. I am not just now in the vein for being picked off at a long shot." And

saying these words, he spurred up his fourfooted better half, and galloped off as nimbly as if he had had an

"Is this lady Matilda, then, so very terrible a damsel?" said Sir Ralph to brother Michael.

"By no means," said the friar. "She has certainly a high spirit; but it is the wing of the eagle, without his beak

or his claw. She is as gentle as magnanimous; but it is the gentleness of the summer wind, which, however

lightly it wave the tuft of the pine, carries with it the intimation of a power, that, if roused to its extremity,

"From the warmth of your panegyric, ghostly father," said the knight, "I should almost suspect you were in

"So I am," said the friar, "and I care not who knows it; but all in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am, as it

were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant, I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar militant. I

would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me black with an iron flail, before I would

knock under in her cause. Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your soldiership, the earl is her

liege lord, and she is his liege lady. I am her father confessor and ghostly director: I have taken on me to

show her the way to the next world; and how can I do that if I lose sight of her in this? seeing that this is but

the road to the other, and has so many circumvolutions and ramifications of byeways and beaten paths (all

more thickly set than the true one with fingerposts and milestones, not one of which tells truth), that a

traveller has need of some one who knows the way, or the odds go hard against him that he will ever see the

"But there must surely be some reason," said Sir Ralph, "for father Peter's apprehension."

"None," said brother Michael, "but the apprehension itself; fear being its own father, and most prolific in

selfpropagation. The lady did, it is true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother, for

reprimanding her in that she would go hunting amornings instead of attending matins. She cut short the

thread of his eloquence by sportively drawing her bowstring and loosing an arrow over his head; he

waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for many months. I thought he had forgotten it:

but let that pass. In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had liked the chaunt of the

choristers better than the cry of the hounds: yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and

reciprocally fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove. Had either been less sylvan, the

other might have been more saintly; but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark, nor reverence

vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy. They are twin plants of the forest, and are identified with its

For the slender beech and the sapling oak, That grow by the shadowy rill, You may cut down both at a single

But this you must know, that as long as they grow Whatever change may be, You never can teach either oak

The knight and the friar arriving at Arlingford Castle, and leaving their horses in the care of lady Matilda's

groom, with whom the friar was in great favour, were ushered into a stately apartment, where they found the

baron alone, flourishing an enormous carvingknife over a brother baronof beef with as much

vehemence of action as if he were cutting down an enemy. The baron was a gentleman of a fierce and

choleric temperament: he was lineally descended from the redoubtable Fierabras of Normandy, who came

over to England with the Conqueror, and who, in the battle of Hastings, killed with his own hand

fourandtwenty Saxon cavaliers all on a row. The very excess of the baron's internal rage on the preceding

day had smothered its external manifestation: he was so equally angry with both parties, that he knew not on

which to vent his wrath. He was enraged with the earl for having brought himself into such a dilemma

without his privily; and he was no less enraged with the king's men for their very unseasonable intrusion. He

could willingly have fallen upon both parties, but, he must necessarily have begun with one; and he felt that

on whichever side he should strike the first blow, his retainers would immediately join battle. He had

therefore contented himself with forcing away his daughter from the scene of action. In the course of the

evening he had received intelligence that the earl's castle was in possession of a party of the king's men, who

had been detached by Sir Ralph Montfaucon to seize on it during the earl's absence. The baron inferred from

this that the earl's case was desperate; and those who have had the opportunity of seeing a rich friend fall

suddenly into poverty, may easily judge by their own feelings how quickly and completely the whole moral

being of the earl was changed in the baron's estimation. The baron immediately proceeded to require in his

daughter's mind the same summary revolution that had taken place in his own, and considered himself

exceedingly illused by her noncompliance. The lady had retired to her chamber, and the baron had passed

a supperless and sleepless night, stalking about his apartments till an advanced hour of the morning, when

hunger compelled him to summon into his presence the spoils of the buttery, which, being the intended array

of an uneaten wedding feast, were more than usually abundant, and on which, when the knight and the friar

entered, he was falling with desperate valour. He looked up at them fiercely, with his mouth full of beef and

his eyes full of flame, and rising, as ceremony required, made an awful bow to the knight, inclining himself

forward over the table and presenting his carvingknife en militaire, in a manner that seemed to leave it

doubtful whether he meant to show respect to his visitor, or to defend his provision: but the doubt was soon

cleared up by his politely motioning the knight to be seated; on which the friar advanced to the table, saying,

"For what we are going to receive," and commenced operations without further prelude by filling and

drinking a goblet of wine. The baron at the same time offered one to Sir Ralph, with the look of a man in

whom habitual hospitality and courtesy were struggling with the ebullitions of natural anger. They pledged

each other in silence, and the baron, having completed a copious draught, continued working his lips and his

throat, as if trying to swallow his wrath as he had done his wine. Sir Ralph, not knowing well what to make

of these ambiguous signs, looked for instructions to the friar, who by significant looks and gestures seemed to

advise him to follow his example and partake of the good cheer before him, without speaking till the baron

should be more intelligible in his demeanour. The knight and the friar, accordingly, proceeded to refect

themselves after their ride; the baron looking first at the one and then at the other, scrutinising alternately the

serious looks of the knight and the merry face of the friar, till at length, having calmed himself sufficiently to

speak, he said, "Courteous knight and ghostly father, I presume you have some other business with me than

to eat my beef and drink my canary; and if so, I patiently await your leisure to enter on the topic."

"Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in obedience to my royal master, King Henry, I have been the unwilling

instrument of frustrating the intended nuptials of your fair daughter; yet will you, I trust, owe me no

displeasure for my agency herein, seeing that the noble maiden might otherwise by this time have been the

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the baron; "very exceedingly obliged. Your solicitude for my

daughter is truly paternal, and for a young man and a stranger very singular and exemplary: and it is very

kind withal to come to the relief of my insufficiency and inexperience, and concern yourself so much in that

"You misconceive the knight, noble baron," said the friar. "He urges not his reason in the shape of a

preconceived intent, but in that of a subsequent extenuation. True, he has done the lady Matilda great

"How, great wrong?" said the baron. "What do you mean by great wrong? Would you have had her married

to a wild flybynight, that accident made an earl and nature a deerstealer? that has not wit enough to eat

venison without picking a quarrel with monarchy? that flings away his own lands into the clutches of rascally

friars, for the sake of hunting in other men's grounds, and feasting vagabonds that wear Lincoln green, and

would have flung away mine into the bargain if he had had my daughter? What do you mean by great

"Right!" exclaimed the baron: "what right has any man to do my daughter right but myself? What right has

any man to drive my daughter's bridegroom out of the chapel in the middle of the marriage ceremony, and

turn all our merry faces into green wounds and bloody coxcombs, and then come and tell me he has done us

"But he has," said the baron, "he has done both, and I will maintain it with my glove."

"And I," said the baron, "will concede nothing in honour: I will concede nothing in honour to any man."

"Neither will I, Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in that sense: but hear me. I was commissioned by the king

to apprehend the Earl of Huntingdon. I brought with me a party of soldiers, picked and tried men, knowing

that he would not lightly yield. I sent my lieutenant with a detachment to surprise the earl's castle in his

absence, and laid my measures for intercepting him on the way to his intended nuptials; but he seems to have

had intimation of this part of my plan, for he brought with him a large armed retinue, and took a circuitous

route, which made him, I believe, somewhat later than his appointed hour. When the lapse of time showed me

that he had taken another track, I pursued him to the chapel; and I would have awaited the close of the

ceremony, if I had thought that either yourself or your daughter would have felt desirous that she should have

"Who said, sir," cried the baron, "that we were desirous of any such thing? But truly, sir, if I had a mind to

the devil for a soninlaw, I would fain see the man that should venture to interfere."

"That would I," said the friar; "for I have undertaken to make her renounce the devil."

"She shall not renounce the devil," said the baron, "unless I please. You are very ready with your

undertakings. Will you undertake to make her renounce the earl, who, I believe, is the devil incarnate? Will

"Will I undertake," said the friar, "to make Trent run westward, or to make flame burn downward, or to make

"So then," said the baron, "a girl's mind is as hard to change as nature and the elements, and it is easier to

make her renounce the devil than a lover. Are you a match for the devil, and no match for a man?"

"My warfare," said the friar, "is not of this world. I am militant not against man, but the devil, who goes

"Oh! does he so?" said the baron: "then I take it that makes you look for him so often in my buttery. Will you

cast out the devil whose name is Legion, when you cannot cast out the imp whose name is Love?"

"Marriages," said the friar, "are made in heaven. Love is God's work, and therewith I meddle not."

"God's work, indeed!" said the baron, "when the ceremony was cut short in the church. Could men have put

them asunder, if God had joined them together? And the earl is now no earl, but plain Robert FitzOoth:

"He may atone," said the friar, "and the king may mollify. The earl is a worthy peer, and the king is a

"He cannot atone," said Sir Ralph. "He has killed the king's men; and if the baron should aid and abet, he will

"Will I?" said the baron; "not while I have a drop of blood in my veins. He that comes to take them shall first

serve me as the friar serves my flasks of canary: he shall drain me dry as hay. Am I not disparaged? Am I not

outraged? Is not my daughter vilified, and made a mockery? A girl halfmarried? There was my butler

brought home with a broken head. My butler, friar: there is that may move your sympathy. Friar, the

"I fear," said Sir Ralph, "the young lady must be much distressed and discomposed."

"Not a whit, sir," said the baron. "She is, as usual, in a most provoking imperturbability, and contradicts me

"I had hoped," said Sir Ralph, "that I might have seen her, to make my excuse in person for the hard necessity

Are you mad, or what are you, that you squeak out your catches without mitigation or remorse of voice?

Matilda, not dreaming of visitors, tripped into the apartment in a dress of forest green, with a small quiver by

her side, and a bow and arrow in her hand. Her hair, black and glossy as the raven's wing, curled like

wandering clusters of dark ripe grapes under the edge of her round bonnet; and a plume of black feathers fell

back negligently above it, with an almost horizontal inclination, that seemed the habitual effect of rapid

motion against the wind. Her black eyes sparkled like sunbeams on a river: a clear, deep, liquid radiance, the

reflection of ethereal fire, tempered, not subdued, in the medium of its living and gentle mirror. Her lips

were half opened to speak as she entered the apartment; and with a smile of recognition to the friar, and a

courtesy to the stranger knight, she approached the baron and said, "You are late at your breakfast, father."

"I am not at breakfast," said the baron. "I have been at supper: my last night's supper; for I had none."

"I did not go to bed supperless," said the baron: "I did not go to bed at all: and what are you doing with that

"Ahunting!" said the baron. "What, I warrant you, to meet with the earl, and slip your neck into the same

"Not he," said the baron: "he will undertake nothing but where the devil is a party concerned."

"Yes, I will," said the friar: "I will undertake any thing for the lady Matilda."

"Why, father," said Matilda, "if you coop me up here in this odious castle, I shall pine and die like a lonely

"No," said the baron, "the lonely swan does not die on the pool. If there be a river at hand, she flies to the

"But," said Matilda, "you may send with me any, or as many, of your grooms as you will."

"My grooms," said the baron, "are all false knaves. There is not a rascal among them but loves you better than

"Surely," said Matilda, "it is not villany to love me: if it be, I should be sorry my father were an honest man."

The baron relaxed his muscles into a smile. "Or my lover either," added Matilda. The baron looked grim

"For your lover," said the baron, "you may give God thanks of him. He is as arrant a knave as ever poached."

"What, for hunting the king's deer?" said Matilda. "Have I not heard you rail at the forest laws by the hour?"

"Did you ever hear me," said the baron, "rail myself out of house and land? If I had done that, then were I a

"My lover," said Matilda, "is a brave man, and a true man, and a generous man, and a young man, and a

"How can he be an honest man," said the baron, "when he has neither house nor land, which are the better

"They are but the husk of a man," said Matilda, "the worthless coat of the chesnut: the man himself is the

"The man is the grape stone," said the baron, "and the pulp of the melon. The house and land are the true

"He will never want house or land," said Matilda, "while the meeting boughs weave a green roof in the wood,

"Vert and venison! vert and venison!" exclaimed the baron. "Treason and flat rebellion. Confound your

smiling face! what makes you look so goodhumoured? What! you think I can't look at you, and be in a

passion? You think so, do you? We shall see. Have you no fear in talking thus, when here is the king's

liegeman come to take us all into custody, and confiscate our goods and chattels?"

"Nay, Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "you wrong me in your report. My visit is one of courtesy and excuse,

"There it is," said the baron: "every one takes a pleasure in contradicting me. Here is this courteous knight,

who has not opened his mouth three times since he has been in my house except to take in provision, cuts me

"Oh! I cry you mercy, sir knight," said Matilda; "I did not mark you before. I am your debtor for no slight

"Pardon me, gentle lady," said Sir Ralph. "Had I known you before yesterday, I would have cut off my right

"Oh sir," said Matilda, "a good man may be forced on an ill office: but I can distinguish the man from his

duty." She presented to him her hand, which he kissed respectfully, and simultaneously with the contact

thirtytwo invisible arrows plunged at once into his heart, one from every point of the compass of his

"But I will lock you in a turret," said the baron, "where you shall only see light through a loophole."

"But through that loophole," said Matilda, "will I take my flight, like a young eagle from its eerie; and, father,

while I go out freely, I will return willingly: but if once I slip out through a loophole" She paused a

The love that follows fain Will never its faith betray: But the faith that is held in a chain Will never be found

The melody acted irresistibly on the harmonious propensities of the friar, who accordingly sang in his turn,

For hark! hark! hark! The dog doth bark, That watches the wild deer's lair. The hunter awakes at the peep of

the dawn, But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone, And the hunter knows not where.

Then follow, oh follow! the hounds do cry: The red sun flames in the eastern sky: The stag bounds over the

hollow. He that lingers in spirit, or loiters in hall, Shall see us no more till the evening fall, And no voice but

the echo shall answer his call: Then follow, oh follow, follow: Follow, oh follow, follow!

During the process of this harmony, the baron's eyes wandered from his daughter to the friar, and from the

friar to his daughter again, with an alternate expression of anger differently modified: when he looked on the

friar, it was anger without qualification; when he looked on his daughter it was still anger, but tempered by an

expression of involuntary admiration and pleasure. These rapid fluctuations of the baron's physiognomythe

habitual, reckless, resolute merriment in the jovial face of the friar, and the cheerful, elastic spirits that

played on the lips and sparkled in the eyes of Matilda,would have presented a very amusing combination

to Sir Ralph, if one of the three images in the group had not absorbed his total attention with feelings of

intense delight very nearly allied to pain. The baron's wrath was somewhat counteracted by the reflection that

his daughter's good spirits seemed to show that they would naturally rise triumphant over all

disappointments; and he had had sufficient experience of her humour to know that she might sometimes be

led, but never could be driven. Then, too, he was always delighted to hear her sing, though he was not at all

pleased in this instance with the subject of her song. Still he would have endured the subject for the sake of

the melody of the treble, but his mind was not sufficiently attuned to unison to relish the harmony of the bass.

The friar's accompaniment put him out of all patience, and"So," he exclaimed, "this is the way, you teach

my daughter to renounce the devil, is it? A hunting friar, truly! Who ever heard before of a hunting friar? A

"Under favour, bold baron," said the friar; but the friar was warm with canary, and in his singing vein; and he

Though I be now a grey, grey friar, Yet I was once a hale young knight: The cry of my dogs was the only

choir In which my spirit did take delight. Little I recked of matin bell, But drowned its toll with my clanging

horn: And the only beads I loved to tell Were the beads of dew on the spangled thorn.

The baron was going to storm, but the friar paused, and Matilda sang in repetition,

Little I reck of matin bell, But drown its toll with my clanging horn: And the only beads I love to tell Are the

And then she and the friar sang the four lines together, and rang the changes upon them alternately.

An archer keen I was withal, As ever did lean on greenwood tree; And could make the fleetest roebuck fall, A

good three hundred yards from me. Though changeful time, with hand severe, Has made me now these joys

"Are you mad?" said the baron. "Are you insane? Are you possessed? What do you mean? What in the devil's

The baron's pentup wrath had accumulated like the waters above the dam of an overshot mill. The

pondhead of his passion being now filled to the utmost limit of its capacity, and beginning to overflow in

the quivering of his lips and the flashing of his eyes, he pulled up all the flashboards at once, and gave loose

to the full torrent of his indignation, by seizing, like furious Ajax, not a messy stone more than two modern

men could raise, but a vast dish of beef more than fifty ancient yeomen could eat, and whirled it like a coit, in

"Nay father," said Matilda, taking the baron's hand, "do not harm the friar: he means not to offend you. My

gaiety never before displeased you. Least of all should it do so now, when I have need of all my spirits to

As she spoke the last words, tears started into her eyes, which, as if ashamed of the involuntary betraying of

her feelings, she turned away to conceal. The baron was subdued at once. He kissed his daughter, held out his

hand to the friar, and said, "Sing on, in God's name, and crack away the flasks till your voice swims in

canary." Then turning to Sir Ralph, he said, "You see how it is, sir knight. Matilda is my daughter; but she

The friar had often had experience of the baron's testy humour; but it had always before confined itself to

words, in which the habit of testiness often mingled more expression of displeasure than the internal feeling

prompted. He knew the baron to be hot and choleric, but at the same time hospitable and generous;

passionately fond of his daughter, often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact. The early

attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon had given the baron no serious reason to interfere

with her habits and pursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover; and not being overburdened

with orthodoxy, that is to say, not being seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was necessary to

preserve him from excommunication, confiscation, and philotheoparoptesism,[1] he was not sorry to

encourage his daughter's choice of her confessor in brother Michael, who had more jollity and less hypocrisy

than any of his fraternity, and was very little anxious to disguise his love of the good things of this world

under the semblance of a sanctified exterior. The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had

been accustomed to the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio, which was usually charmed into silence

by some sudden turn in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore naturally calculated, as far as

their wild spirits calculated at all, on the same effects from the same causes. But the circumstances of the

preceding day had made an essential alteration in the case. The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had

received, that the earl's offence was past remission: which would have been of less moment but for the awful

fact of his castle being in the possession of the king's forces, and in those days possession was considerably

more than eleven points of the law. The baron was therefore convinced that the earl's outlawry was infallible,

and that Matilda must either renounce her lover, or become with him an outlaw and a fugitive. In proportion,

therefore, to the baron's knowledge of the strength and duration of her attachment, was his fear of the

difficulty of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, which he had never before

discouraged, now presented itself to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness gave him hope on

the one hand by indicating a spirit superior to all disappointments, it was suspicious to him on the other, as

arising from some latent certainty of being soon united to the earl. All these circumstances concurred to

render their songs of the vanished deer and greenwood archery and Yoicks and Harkaway, extremely

malapropos, and to make his anger boil and bubble in the cauldron of his spirit, till its more than ordinary

But as it sometimes happens, from the might Of rage in minds that can no farther go, As high as they have

mounted in despite In their remission do they sink as low, To our bold baron did it happen so.[2]

[2] Of these lines all that is not in italics belongs to Mr. Wordsworth: Resolution and Independence.

For his discobolic exploit proved the climax of his rage, and was succeeded by an immediate sense that he

had passed the bounds of legitimate passion; and he sunk immediately from the very pinnacle of opposition

to the level of implicit acquiescence. The friar's spirits were not to be marred by such a little incident. He was

halfinclined, at first, to return the baron's compliment; but his love of Matilda checked him; and when the

baron held out his hand, the friar seized it cordially, and they drowned all recollection of the affair by

The friar, having stayed long enough to see every thing replaced on a friendly footing, rose, and moved to

take his leave. Matilda told him he must come again on the morrow, for she had a very long confession to

Sir Ralph, on reaching the abbey, drew his followers together, and led them to Locksley Castle, which he

found in the possession of his lieutenant; whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold it in safe

keeping in the king's name, and proceeded to London to report the results of his enterprise.

Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion, and swore by Saint ThomasaBecket

(whom he had himself translated into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would give the

castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought

in the mind of the knight. The eyes of the fair huntress of Arlingford had left a wound in his heart which only

she who gave could heal. He had seen that the baron was no longer very partial to the outlawed earl, but that

he still retained his old affection for the lands and castle of Locksley. Now the lands and castle were very fair

things in themselves, and would be pretty appurtenances to an adventurous knight; but they would be doubly

valuable as certain passports to the father's favour, which was one step towards that of the daughter, or at

least towards obtaining possession of her either quietly or perforce; for the knight was not so nice in his love

as to consider the lady's free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being, by any means whatever, the lord of

Locksley and Arlingford, and the husband of the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades of futurity a

vista very tempting to a soldier of fortune. He set out in high spirits with a chosen band of followers, and beat

up all the country far and wide around both the Ouse and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposed to

second his diligence, for no vestige whatever could he trace of the earl. His followers, who were only paid

with the wages of hope, began to murmur and fall off; for, as those unenlightened days were ignorant of the

happy invention of paper machinery, by which one promise to pay is satisfactorily paid with another promise

to pay, and that again with another in infinite series, they would not, as their wiser posterity has done, take

those tenders for true pay which were not sterling; so that, one fine morning, the knight found himself sitting

on a pleasant bank of the Trent, with only a solitary squire, who still clung to the shadow of preferment,

The knight did not despair because of the desertion of his followers: he was well aware that he could easily

raise recruits if he could once find trace of his game; he, therefore, rode about indefatigably over hill and

dale, to the great sharpening of his own appetite and that of his squire, living gallantly from inn to inn when

his purse was full, and quartering himself in the king's name on the nearest ghostly brotherhood when it

happened to be empty. An autumn and a winter had passed away, when the course of his perlustations

brought him one evening into a beautiful sylvan valley, where he found a number of young women weaving

garlands of flowers, and singing over their pleasant occupation. He approached them, and courteously

"Hospitality!" said one of the young women; "you have not far to seek for that. Do you not know that you are

"So far from it," said the knight, "that I never heard the name of GamwellHall before."

"Never heard of GamwellHall?" exclaimed all the young women together, who could as soon have dreamed

"Indeed, no," said Sir Ralph; "but I shall be very happy to get rid of my ignorance."

"And so shall I," said his squire; "for it seems that in this case knowledge will for once be a cure for hunger,

"And why are you so busy, my pretty damsels, weaving these garlands?" said the knight.

"Why, do you not know, sir," said one of the young women, "that tomorrow is Gamwell feast?"

"Oh! sir," said his informant, "then you will have something to see, that I can tell you; for we shall choose a

Queen of the May, and we shall crown her with flowers, and place her in a chariot of flowers, and draw it

with lines of flowers, and we shall hang all the trees with flowers, and we shall strew all the ground with

flowers, and we shall dance with flowers, and in flowers, and on flowers, and we shall be all flowers."

"That you will," said the knight; "and the sweetest and brightest of all the flowers of the May, my pretty

"And there will be all sorts of Maygames, and there will be prizes for archery, and there will be the knight's

ale, and the foresters' venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap

with his fife and tabor, and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with his bagpipe, and how

I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!" added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding from the

A tall athletic young man approached, to whom the rustic maidens courtesied with great respect; and one of

them informed Sir Ralph that it was young Master William Gamwell. The young gentleman invited and

conducted the knight to the hall, where he introduced him to the old knight his father, and to the old lady his

mother, and to the young lady his sister, and to a number of bold yeomen, who were laying siege to beef,

brawn, and plum pie around a ponderous table, and taking copious draughts of old October. A motto was

an injunction which Sir Ralph and his squire showed remarkable alacrity in obeying. Old Sir Guy of Gamwell

gave Sir Ralph a very cordial welcome, and entertained him during supper with several of his best stories,

enforced with an occasional slap on the back, and pointed with a peg in the ribs; a species of vivacious

eloquence in which the; old gentleman excelled, and which is supposed by many of that pleasant variety of

the human spectes, known by the name of choice fellows and comical dogs, to be the genuine tangible shape

Old Sir Guy of Gamwell, and young William Gamwell, and fair Alice Gamwell, and Sir Ralph Montfaucon

and his squire, rode together the next morning to the scene of the feast. They arrived on a village green,

surrounded with cottages peeping from among the trees by which the green was completely encircled. The

whole circle was hung round with one continuous garland of flowers, depending in irregular festoons from

the branches. In the centre of the green was a Maypole hidden in boughs and garlands; and a multitude of

roundfaced bumpkins and cherrychecked lasses were dancing around it, to the quadruple melody of

Scrapesqueak, Whistlerap, Trumtwang, and Muggledrone: harmony we must not call it; for, though they had

agreed to a partnership in point of tune, each, like a true painstaking man, seemed determined to have his

time to himself: Muggledrone played allegretto, Trumtwang allegro, Whistlerap presto, and Scrapesqueak

prestissimo. There was a kind of mathematical proportion in their discrepancy: while Muggledrone played the

tune four times, Trumtwang played it five, Whistlerap six, and Scrapesqueak eight; for the latter completely

distanced all his competitors, and indeed worked his elbow so nimbly that its outline was scarcely

While the knight was delighting his eyes and ears with these pleasant sights and sounds, all eyes were turned

in one direction; and Sir Ralph, looking round, saw a fair lady in green and gold come riding through the

trees, accompanied by a portly friar in grey, and several fair damsels and gallant grooms. On their nearer

approach, he recognised the lady Matilda and her ghostly adviser, brother Michael. A party of foresters

arrived from another direction, and then ensued cordial interchanges of greeting, and collisions of hands and

lips, among the Gamwells and the newcomers,"How does my fair coz, Mawd?" and "How does my sweet

coz, Mawd?" and "How does my wild coz, Mawd?" And "Eh! jolly friar, your hand, old boy:" and "Here,

honest friar:" and "To me, merry friar:" and "By your favour, mistress Alice:" and "Hey! cousin Robin:" and

"Hey! cousin Will:" and "Od's life! merry Sir Guy, you grow younger every year," as the old knight shook

them all in turn with one hand, and slapped them on the back with the other, in token of his affection. A

number of young men and women advanced, some drawing, and others dancing round, a floral car; and

having placed a crown of flowers on Matilda's head, they saluted her Queen of the May, and drew her to the

A hogshead of ale was abroach under an oak, and a fire was blazing in an open space before the trees to roast

the fat deer which the foresters brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series of bowling,

coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning, wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and

cudgelplaying or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued. The conqueror was to be rewarded

with a golden arrow from the hand of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till the

close of the feast. This stimulated the knight's emulation: young Gamwell supplied him with a bow and

arrow, and he took his station among the foresters, but had the mortification to be outshot by them all, and

to see one of them lodge the point of his arrow in the golden ring of the centre, and receive the prize from the

hand of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on him with particular grace. The jealous knight scrutinised the

successful champion with great attention, and surely thought he had seen that face before. In the mean time

the forester led the lady to the station. The luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless

grace of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand, and adjusting the arrow with her right, advancing

her left foot, and gently curving her beautiful figure with a slight motion of her head that waved her black

feathers and her ringleted hair, she drew the arrow to its head, and loosed it from her open fingers. The arrow

struck within the ring of gold, so close to that of the victorious forester that the points were in contact, and the

feathers were intermingled. Great acclamations succeeded, and the forester led Matilda to the dance. Sir

Ralph gazed on her fascinating motions till the torments of baffled love and jealous rage became

unendurable; and approaching young Gamwell, he asked him if he knew the name of that forester who was

"Robin, I believe," said young Gamwell carelessly; "I think they call him Robin."

"Then I can tell you," said Sir Ralph, "he is the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, on whose head is set so large a

"If I should call on them in the king's name," said Sir Ralph, "think you they would aid and assist?"

"I have King Henry's commission," said the knight, "to apprehend this earl that was. How would you advise

"I would advise you," said young Gamwell, "to take yourself off without delay, unless you would relish the

taste of a volley of arrows, a shower of stones, and a hailstorm of cudgelblows, which would not be turned

Sir Ralph's squire no sooner heard this, and saw by the looks of the speaker that he was not likely to prove a

false prophet, than he clapped spurs to his horse and galloped off with might and main. This gave the knight a

good excuse to pursue him, which he did with great celerity, calling, "Stop, you rascal." When the squire

fancied himself safe out of the reach of pursuit, he checked his speed, and allowed the knight to come up with

him. They rode on several miles in silence, till they discovered the towers and spires of Nottingham, where

the knight introduced himself to the sheriff, and demanded an armed force to assist in the apprehension of the

outlawed Earl of Huntingdon. The sheriff, who was willing to have his share of the prize, determined to

accompany the knight in person, and regaled him and his man with good store of the best; after which, they,

"God's my life," said the sheriff, as they rode along, "I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate. I

much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin, be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered

himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring to apprehend I have fallen divers times into

disasters. He has gotten together a band of disinherited prodigals, outlawed debtors, excommunicated

heretics, elder sons that have spent all they had, and younger sons that never had any thing to spend; and with

these he kills the king's deer, and plunders wealthy travellers of fivesixths of their money; but if they be

The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure of the abbot of Doubleflask (which some

grave historians have related of the abbot of Saint Mary's, and others of the bishop of Hereford): how the

abbot, returning to his abbey in company with his high selerer, who carried in his portmanteau the rents of the

abbeylands, and with a numerous train of attendants, came upon four seeming peasants, who were roasting

the king's venison by the king's highway: how, in just indignation at this flagrant infringement of the forest

laws, he asked them what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine: how he ordered them to be

seized and bound, and led captive to Nottingham, that they might know wildflesh to have been destined by

Providence for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for the base hunger of unqualified knaves: how they

prayed for mercy, and how the abbot swore by Saint Charity that he would show them none: how one of them

thereupon drew a bugle horn from under his smockfrock and blew three blasts, on which the abbot and his

train were instantly surrounded by sixty bowmen in green: how they tied him to a tree, and made him say

mass for their sins: how they unbound him, and sate him down with them to dinner, and gave him venison

and wildfowl and wine, and made him pay for his fare all the money in his high selerer's portmanteau, and

enforced him to sleep all night under a tree in his cloak, and to leave the cloak behind him in the morning:

how the abbot, light in pocket and heavy in heart, raised the country upon Robin Hood, for so he had heard

the chief forester called by his men, and hunted him into an old woman's cottage: how Robin changed dresses

with the old woman, and how the abbot rode in great triumph to Nottingham, having in custody an old

woman in a green doublet and breeches: how the old woman discovered herself: how the merrymen of

Nottingham laughed at the abbot: how the abbot railed at the old woman, and how the old woman outrailed

the abbot, telling him that Robin had given her food and fire through the winter, which no abbot would ever

do, but would rather take it from her for what he called the good of the church, by which he meant his own

laziness and gluttony; and that she knew a true man from a false thief, and a free forester from a greedy

"Thus you see," added the sheriff, "how this villain perverts the deluded people by making them believe that

those who tithe and toll upon them for their spiritual and temporal benefit are not their best friends and

fatherly guardians; for he holds that in giving to boors and old women what he takes from priests and peers,

he does but restore to the former what the latter had taken from them; and this the impudent varlet calls

distributive justice. Judge now if any loyal subject can be safe in such neighbourhood."

While the sheriff was thus enlightening his companion concerning the offenders, and whetting his own

indignation against them, the sun was fast sinking to the west. They rode on till they came in view of a

bridge, which they saw a party approaching from the opposite side, and the knight presently discovered that

the party consisted of the lady Matilda and friar Michael, young Gamwell, cousin Robin, and about

halfadozen foresters. The knight pointed out the earl to the sheriff, who exclaimed, "Here, then, we have

him an easy prey;" and they rode on manfully towards the bridge, on which the other party made halt.

"Who be these," said the friar, "that come riding so fast this way? Now, as God shall judge me, it is that false

knight Sir Ralph Montfaucon, and the sheriff of Nottingham, with a posse of men. We must make good our

The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff and the knight, advancing in the front of the

cavalcade, called on the lady, the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters, to deliver up that falsetraitor,

Robert, formerly Earl of Huntingdon. Robert himself made answer by letting fly an arrow that struck the

ground between the fore feet of the sheriff's horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing, and lodged the

sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time, the fair Matilda favoured the knight with an arrow in his right arm,

that compelled him to withdraw from the affray. His men lifted the sheriff carefully up, and replaced him on

his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and zeal urged on to the assault with his fifty men at his

heels, some of whom were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters and Matilda; while the

friar, with an eightfoot staff, dislodged the sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all the vigour of the

church militant on earth, in spite of his ejaculations of "Hey, friar Michael! What means this, honest friar?

Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy friar!"till Matilda interposed, and delivered the battered sheriff to the care

of the foresters. The friar continued flourishing his staff among the sheriff's men, knocking down one,

breaking the ribs of another, dislocating the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of a fourth, cracking the

skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the river, till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole

bones, clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives, under a farewell volley of arrows.

Sir Ralph's squire, meanwhile, was glad of the excuse of attending his master's wound to absent himself from

the battle; and put the poor knight to a great deal of unnecessary pain by making as long a business as

possible of extracting the arrow, which he had not accomplished when Matilda, approaching, extracted it with

great facility, and bound up the wound with her scarf, saying, "I reclaim my arrow, sir knight, which struck

where I aimed it, to admonish you to desist from your enterprise. I could as easily have lodged it in your

"It did not need," said the knight, with rueful gallantry; "you have lodged one there already."

"If you mean to say that you love me," said Matilda, "it is more than I ever shall you: but if you will show

your love by no further interfering with mine, you will at least merit my gratitude."

The knight made a wry face under the double pain of heart and body caused at the same moment by the

material or martial, and the metaphorical or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a declaration

more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put in any such claim to the lady's gratitude as would bar

all hopes of her love: he therefore remained silent; and the lady and her escort, leaving him and the sheriff to

the care of the squire, rode on till they came in sight of Arlingford Castle, when they parted in several

directions. The friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him they heard his voice through

A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff, That is both stoure and stiff, Is all a good friar can needs desire To

shrive a proud sheriffe. And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so Of the forester's greenwood game, Wilt be

in no haste thy time to waste In seeking more taste of the same: Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well,

Matilda had carried her point with the baron of ranging at liberty whithersoever she would, under her positive

promise to return home; she was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence by means of an

obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with

other barbarisms, but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her, that he could not

The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had

taken all possible precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that they might cause the

interruption of her greenwood liberty; and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler,

being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions, and regaled the baron with a long story of the

The baron was one morning, as usual, cutting his way valorously through a rampart of cold provision, when

his ears were suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth, and looking from his castle wall,

he perceived a large party of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on the warder in the

king's name to lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda's order.

The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as

"The sheriff of Nottingham," said one, "lies in bed grievously bruised, and many of his men are wounded,

and several of them slain; and Sir Ralph Montfaucon, knight, is sore wounded in the arm; and we are charged

to apprehend William Gamwell the younger, of Gamwell Hall, and father Michael of Rubygill Abbey, and

Matilda Fitzwater of Arlingford Castle, as agents and accomplices in the said breach of the king's peace."

"Breach of the king's fiddlestick!" answered the baron. "What do you mean by coming here with your cock

and bull, stories of my daughter grievously bruising the sheriff of Nottingham? You are a set of vagabond

rascals in disguise; and I hear, by the bye, there is a gang of thieves that has just set up business in Sherwood

Forest: a pretty presence, indeed, to get into my castle with force and arms, and make a famine in my buttery,

and a drought in my cellar, and a void in my strong box, and a vacuum in my silver scullery."

"Lord Fitzwater," cried one, "take heed how you resist lawful authority: we will prove ourselves"

"You will prove yourselves arrant knaves, I doubt not," answered the baron; "but, villains, you shall be more

grievously bruised by me than ever was the sheriff by my daughter (a pretty tale truly!), if you do not

By this time the baron's men had flocked to the battlements, with longbows and crossbows, slings and

stones, and Matilda with her bow and quiver at their head. The assailants, finding the castle so well defended,

deemed it expedient to withdraw till they could return in greater force, and rode off to Rubygill Abbey, where

they made known their errand to the father abbot, who, having satisfied himself of their legitimacy, and

conned over the allegations, said that doubtless brother Michael had heinously offended; but it was not for the

civil law to take cognizance of the misdoings of a holy friar; that he would summon a chapter of monks, and

pass on the offender a sentence proportionate to his offence. The ministers of civil justice said that would not

do. The abbot said it would do and should; and bade them not provoke the meekness of his catholic charity to

lay them under the curse of Rome. This threat had its effect, and the party rode off to GamwellHall, where

they found the Gamwells and their men just sitting down to dinner, which they saved them the trouble of

eating by consuming it in the king's name themselves, having first seized and bound young Gamwell; all

which they accomplished by dint of superior numbers, in despite of a most vigorous stand made by the

The baron, meanwhile, after the ministers of justice had departed, interrogated Matilda concerning the alleged

fact of the grievous bruising of the sheriff of Nottingham. Matilda told him the whole history of Gamwell

feast, and of their battle on the bridge, which had its origin in a design of the sheriff of Nottingham to take

"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "and I guess who that forester was; but truly this friar is a desperate fellow. I did not

think there could have been so much valour under a grey frock. And so you wounded the knight in the arm.

You are a wild girl, Mawd,a chip of the old block, Mawd. A wild girl, and a wild friar, and three or four

foresters, wild lads all, to keep a bridge against a tame knight, and a tame sheriff, and fifty tame varlets; by

this light, the like was never heard! But do you know, Mawd, you must not go about so any more, sweet

Mawd: you must stay at home, you must ensconce; for there is your tame sheriff on the one hand, that will

take you perforce; and there is your wild forester on the other hand, that will take you without any force at all,

Mawd: your wild forester, Robin, cousin Robin, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, that beats and binds

bishops, spreads nets for archbishops, and hunts a fat abbot as if he were a buck: excellent game, no doubt,

but you must hunt no more in such company. I see it now: truly I might have guessed before that the bold

outlaw Robin, the most courteous Robin, the new thief of Sherwood Forest, was your lover, the earl that has

been: I might have guessed it before, and what led you so much to the woods; but you hunt no more in such

company. No more May games and Gamwell feasts. My lands and castle would be the forfeit of a few more

such pranks; and I think they are as well in my hands as the king's, quite as well."

"You know, father," said Matilda, "the condition of keeping me at home: I get out if I can, and not on parole."

"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "if you can; very true: watch and ward, Mawd, watch and ward is my word: if you

The baron would have gone on in this way for an hour; but the friar made his appearance with a long oak

Drink and sing, and eat and laugh, And so go forth to battle: For the top of a skull and the end of a staff Do

"Ho! ho! friar!" said the baron"singing friar, laughing friar, roaring friar, fighting friar, hacking friar,

thwacking friar; cracking, cracking, cracking friar; jokecracking, bottlecracking, skullcracking friar!"

"And ho! ho!" said the friar,"bold baron, old baron, sturdy baron, wordy baron, long baron, strong baron,

mighty baron, flighty baron, mazed baron, crazed baron, hacked baron, thwacked baron; cracked, cracked,

"What do you mean," said the baron, "bully friar, by calling me hacked and thwacked?"

"Were you not in the wars?" said the friar, "where he who escapes untracked does more credit to his heels

than his arms. I pay tribute to your valour in calling you hacked and thwacked."

"I never was thwacked in my life," said the baron; "I stood my ground manfully, and covered my body with

my sword. If I had had the luck to meet with a fighting friar indeed, I might have been thwacked, and soundly

too; but I hold myself a match for any two laymen; it takes nine fighting laymen to make a fighting friar."

For I must seek some hermit cell, Where I alone my beads may tell, And on the wight who that way fares

Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs, Levy a toll, levy a toll, Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs."

"This is the matter," said the friar: "my holy brethren have held a chapter on me, and sentenced me to seven

years' privation of wine. I therefore deemed it fitting to take my departure, which they would fain have

prohibited. I was enforced to clear the way with my staff. I have grievously beaten my dearly beloved

brethren: I grieve thereat; but they enforced me thereto. I have beaten them much; I mowed them down to the

right and to the left, and left them like an illreaped field of wheat, ear and straw pointing all ways, scattered

in singleness and jumbled in masses; and so bade them farewell, saying, Peace be with you. But I must not

tarry, lest danger be in my rear: therefore, farewell, sweet Matilda; and farewell, noble baron; and farewell,

sweet Matilda again, the alpha and omega of father Michael, the first and the last."

"Farewell, father," said the baron, a little softened; "and God send you be never assailed by more than fifty

"Doubt it not," said the friar, "though flooded Trent were between us, and fifty devils guarded the bridge."

A page had been brought up in GamwellHall, who, while he was little, had been called Little John, and

continued to be so called after he had grown to be a foot taller than any other man in the house. He was full

seven feet high. His latitude was worthy of his longitude, and his strength was worthy of both; and though an

honest man by profession, he had practiced archery on the king's deer for the benefit of his master's

household, and for the improvement of his own eye and hand, till his aim had become infallible within the

range of two miles. He had fought manfully in defence of his young master, took his captivity exceedingly to

heart, and fell into bitter grief and boundless rage when he heard that he had been tried in Nottingham and

sentenced to die. Alice Gamwell, at Little John's request, wrote three letters of one tenour; and Little John,

having attached them to three blunt arrows, saddled the fleetest steed in old Sir Guy of Gamwell's stables,

mounted, and rode first to Arlingford Castle, where he shot one of the three arrows over the battlements; then

to Rubygill Abbey, where he shot the second into the abbeygarden; then back past GamwellHall to the

borders of Sherwood Forest, where he shot the third into the wood. Now the first of these arrows lighted in

the nape of the neck of Lord Fitzwater, and lodged itself firmly between his skin and his collar; the second

rebounded with the hollow vibration of a drumstick from the shaven sconce of the abbot of Rubygill; and the

third pitched perpendicularly into the centre of a venison pasty in which Robin Hood was making incision.

Matilda ran up to her father in the court of Arlingford Castle, seized the arrow, drew off the letter, and

concealed it in her bosom before the baron had time to look round, which he did with many expressions of

rage against the impudent villain who had shot a blunt arrow into the nape of his neck.

"But you know, father," said Matilda, "a sharp arrow in the same place would have killed you; therefore the

"Considerate, with a vengeance!" said the baron. "Where was the consideration of sending it at all? This is

some of your forester's pranks. He has missed you in the forest, since I have kept watch and ward over you,

The abbot of Rubygill picked up the missilemissive or messenger arrow, which had rebounded from his

shaven crown, with a very unghostly malediction on the sender, which he suddenly checked with a pious and

consolatory reflection on the goodness of Providence in having blessed him with such a thickness of skull, to

which he was now indebted for temporal preservation, as he had before been for spiritual promotion. He

opened the letter, which was addressed to father Michael; and found it to contain an intimation that William

"And I wish," said the abbot, "father Michael were to be hanged with him: an ungrateful monster, after I had

rescued him from the fangs of civil justice, to reward my lenity by not leaving a bone unbruised among the

Robin Hood extracted from his venison pasty a similar intimation of the evil destiny of his cousin, whom he

The sheriff of Nottingham, though still sore with his bruises, was so intent on revenge, that he raised himself

from his bed to attend the execution of William Gamwell. He rode to the august structure of retributive

Themis, as the French call a gallows, in all the pride and pomp of shrievalty, and with a splendid retinue of

Young Gamwell was brought forth with his arms pinioned behind him; his sister Alice and his father, Sir

Guy, attending him in disconsolate mood. He had rejected the confessor provided by the sheriff, and had

insisted on the privilege of choosing his own, whom Little John had promised to bring. Little John, however,

had not made his appearance when the fatal procession began its march; but when they reached the place of

"Sheriff," said young Gamwell, "let me not die with my hands pinioned: give me a sword, and set any odds of

your men against me, and let me die the death of a man, like the descendant of a noble house, which has

"No, no," said the sheriff; "I have had enough of setting odds against you. I have sworn you shall be hanged,

"Then God have mercy on me," said young Gamwell; "and now, holy friar, shrive my sinful soul."

"Let me see this friar," said the sheriff: "if he be the friar of the bridge, I had as lief have the devil in

"The friar of the bridge," said Little John, "as you very well know, sheriff, was father Michael of Rubygill

Young Gamwell stood at the foot of the ladder. The friar approached him, opened his book, groaned, turned

up the whites of his eyes, tossed up his arms in the air, and said "Dominus vobiscum." He then crossed both

his hands on his breast under the folds of his holy robes, and stood a few moments as if in inward prayer. A

deep silence among the attendant crowd accompanied this action of the friar; interrupted only by the hollow

tone of the deathbell, at long and dreary intervals. Suddenly the friar threw off his holy robes, and appeared

a forester clothed in green, with a sword in his right hand and a horn in his left. With the sword he cut the

bonds of William Gamwell, who instantly snatched a sword from one of the sheriff's men; and with the horn

he blew a loud blast, which was answered at once by four bugles from the quarters of the four winds, and

"Treason! treason!" cried the sheriff. Old Sir Guy sprang to his son's side, and so did Little John; and the four

setting back to back, kept the sheriff and his men at bay till the bowmen came within shot and let fly their

arrows among the sheriff's men, who, after a brief resistance, fled in all directions. The forester, who had

personated the friar, sent an arrow after the flying sheriff, calling with a strong voice, "To the sheriff's left

arm, as a keepsake from Robin Hood." The arrow reached its destiny; the sheriff redoubled his speed, and,

with the one arrow in his arm, did not stop to breathe till he was out of reach of another.

The foresters did not waste time in Nottingham, but were soon at a distance from its walls. Sir Guy returned

with Alice to GamwellHall; but thinking he should not be safe there, from the share he had had in his son's

rescue, they only remained long enough to supply themselves with clothes and money, and departed, under

the escort of Little John, to another seat of the Gamwells in Yorkshire. Young Gamwell, taking it for granted

that his offence was past remission, determined on joining Robin Hood, and accompanied him to the forest,

where it was deemed expedient that he should change his name; and he was rechristened without a priest, and

The baron was inflexible in his resolution not to let Matilda leave the castle. The letter, which announced to

her the approaching fate of young Gamwell, filled her with grief, and increased the irksomeness of a privation

which already preyed sufficiently on her spirits, and began to undermine her health. She had no longer the

consolation of the society of her old friend father Michael: the little fat friar of Rubygill was substituted as the

castle confessor, not without some misgivings in his ghostly bosom; but he was more allured by the sweet

savour of the good things of this world at Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe of the lady Matilda,

which nevertheless was so excessive, from his recollection of the twang of the bowstring, that he never

ventured to find her in the wrong, much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of penance, as was the

occasional practice of holy confessors, with or without cause, for the sake of pious discipline, and what was

in those days called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges of the few who happened to have

any, at the expense of the swinish multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and being

shot at for the benefit of their betters, which is obviously not the meaning of social order in our more

enlightened times: let us therefore be grateful to Providence, and sing Te Deum laudamus in chorus with the

The little friar, however, though he found the lady spotless, found the butler a great sinner: at least so it was

conjectured, from the length of time he always took to confess him in the buttery.

Matilda became every day more pale and dejected: her spirit, which could have contended against any

strenuous affliction, pined in the monotonous inaction to which she was condemned. While she could freely

range the forest with her lover in the morning, she had been content to return to her father's castle in the

evening, thus preserving underanged the balance of her duties, habits, and affections; not without a hope that

the repeal of her lover's outlawry might be eventually obtained, by a judicious distribution of some of his

forest spoils among the holy fathers and saints thatweretobe,pious proficients in the ecclesiastic art

equestrian, who rode the conscience of King Henry with doublecurb bridles, and kept it well in hand when it

showed mettle and seemed inclined to rear and plunge. But the affair at Gamwell feast threw many additional

difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of this hope; and very shortly afterwards King Henry the

Second went to make up in the next world his quarrel with ThomasaBecket; and Richard Coeur de Lion

made all England resound with preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many zealous adventurers,

who eagerly flocked under his banner in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil, which they

called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations,

was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, which he appropriated immediately to his own

purposes, and sold to the highest bidder. Now, as the repeal of the outlawry would involve the restitution of

the estates to the rightful owner, it was obvious that it could never be expected from that most legitimate and

most Christian king, Richard the First of England, the archcrusader and antijacobin by excellence, the

very type, flower, cream, pink, symbol, and mirror of all the Holy Alliances that have ever existed on earth,

excepting that he seasoned his superstition and love of conquest with a certain condiment of romantic

generosity and chivalrous selfdevotion, with which his imitators in all other points have found it convenient

to dispense. To give freely to one man what he had taken forcibly from another, was generosity of which he

was very capable; but to restore what he had taken to the man from whom he had taken it, was something that

wore too much of the cool physiognomy of justice to be easily reconcileable to his kingly feelings. He had,

besides, not only sent all King Henry's saints about their business, or rather about their nobusiness their

faineantisebut he had laid them under rigorous contribution for the purposes of his holy war; and having

made them refund to the piety of the successor what they had extracted from the piety of the precursor, he

compelled them, in addition, to give him their blessing for nothing. Matilda, therefore, from all these

circumstances, felt little hope that her lover would be any thing but an outlaw for life.

The departure of King Richard from England was succeeded by the episcopal regency of the bishops of Ely

and Durham. Longchamp, bishop of Ely, proceeded to show his sense of Christian fellowship by arresting his

brother bishop, and despoiling him of his share in the government; and to set forth his humility and

lovingkindness in a retinue of nobles and knights who consumed in one night's entertainment some five

years' revenue of their entertainer, and in a guard of fifteen hundred foreign soldiers, whom he considered

indispensable to the exercise of a vigour beyond the law in maintaining wholesome discipline over the

refractory English. The ignorant impatience of the swinish multitude with these fruits of good living, brought

forth by one of the meek who had inherited the earth, displayed itself in a general ferment, of which Prince

John took advantage to make the experiment of getting possession of his brother's crown in his absence. He

began by calling at Reading a council of barons, whose aspect induced the holy bishop to disguise himself

(some say as an old woman, which, in the twelfth century, perhaps might have been a disguise for a bishop),

and make his escape beyond sea. Prince John followed up his advantage by obtaining possession of several

While John was conducting his operations at Nottingham, he rode at times past the castle of Arlingford. He

stopped on one occasion to claim Lord Fitzwater's hospitality, and made most princely havoc among his

venison and brawn. Now it is a matter of record among divers great historians and learned clerks, that he was

then and there grievously smitten by the charms of the lovely Matilda, and that a few days after he

despatched his travelling minstrel, or laureate, Harpiton,[3] (whom he retained at moderate wages, to keep a

journal of his proceedings, and prove them all just and legitimate), to the castle of Arlingford, to make

proposals to the lady. This Harpiton was a very useful person. He was always ready, not only to maintain the

cause of his master with his pen, and to sing his eulogies to his harp, but to undertake at a moment's notice

any kind of courtly employment, called dirty work by the profane, which the blessings of civil government,

namely, his master's pleasure, and the interests of social order, namely, his own emolument, might require. In

Il eut l'emploi qui certes n'est pas mince, Et qu'a la cour, ou tout se peint en beau, On appelloit etre l'ami du

prince; Mais qu'a la ville, et surtout en province, Les gens grossiers ont nomme maquereau.

Prince John was of opinion that the love of a prince actual and king expectant, was in itself a sufficient

honour to the daughter of a simple baron, and that the right divine or royalty would make it sufficiently holy

without the rite divine of the church. He was, therefore, graciously pleased to fall into an exceeding passion,

when his confidential messenger returned from his embassy in piteous plight, having been, by the baron's

order, first tossed in a blanket and set in the stocks to cool, and afterwards ducked in the moat and set again in

the stocks to dry. John swore to revenge horribly this flagrant outrage on royal prerogative, and to obtain

possession of the lady by force of arms; and accordingly collected a body of troops, and marched upon

Arlingford castle. A letter, conveyed as before on the point of a blunt arrow, announced his approach to

Matilda: and lord Fitzwater had just time to assemble his retainers, collect a hasty supply of provision, raise

the drawbridge, and drop the portcullis, when the castle was surrounded by the enemy. The little fat friar,

who during the confusion was asleep in the buttery, found himself, on awaking, inclosed in the besieged

Prince John sat down impatiently before Arlingford castle in the hope of starving out the besieged; but

finding the duration of their supplies extend itself in an equal ratio with the prolongation of his hope, he made

vigorous preparations for carrying the place by storm. He constructed an immense machine on wheels, which,

being advanced to the edge of the moat, would lower a temporary bridge, of which one end would rest on the

bank, and the other on the battlements, and which, being well furnished with stepping boards, would enable

his men to ascend the inclined plane with speed and facility. Matilda received intimation of this design by the

usual friendly channel of a blunt arrow, which must either have been sent from some secret friend in the

prince's camp, or from some vigorous archer beyond it: the latter will not appear improbable, when we

consider that Robin Hood and Little John could shoot two English miles and an inch pointblank,

The machine was completed, and the ensuing morning fixed for the assault. Six men, relieved at intervals,

kept watch over it during the night. Prince John retired to sleep, congratulating himself in the expectation that

another day would place the fair culprit at his princely mercy. His anticipations mingled with the visions of

his slumber, and he dreamed of wounds and drums, and sacking and firing the castle, and bearing off in his

arms the beautiful prize through the midst of fire and smoke. In the height of this imaginary turmoil, he

awoke, and conceived for a few moments that certain sounds which rang in his ears, were the continuation of

those of his dream, in that sort of halfconsciousness between sleeping and waking, when reality and

phantasy meet and mingle in dim and confused resemblance. He was, however, very soon fully awake to the

fact of his guards calling on him to arm, which he did in haste, and beheld the machine in flames, and a

furious conflict raging around it. He hurried to the spot, and found that his camp had been suddenly assailed

from one side by a party of foresters, and that the baron's people had made a sortie on the other, and that they

had killed the guards, and set fire to the machine, before the rest of the camp could come to the assistance of

The night was in itself intensely dark, and the firelight shed around it a vivid and unnatural radiance. On one

side, the crimson light quivered by its own agitation on the waveless moat, and on the bastions and buttresses

of the castle, and their shadows lay in massy blackness on the illuminated walls: on the other, it shone upon

the woods, streaming far within among the open trunks, or resting on the closer foliage. The circumference of

darkness bounded the scene on all sides: and in the centre raged the war; shields, helmets, and bucklers

gleaming and glittering as they rang and clashed against each other; plumes confusedly tossing in the crimson

light, and the messy light and shade that fell on the faces of the combatants, giving additional energy to their

John, drawing nearer to the scene of action, observed two young warriors fighting side by side, one of whom

wore the habit of a forester, the other that of a retainer of Arlingford. He looked intently on them both: their

position towards the fire favoured the scrutiny; and the hawk's eye of love very speedily discovered that the

latter was the fair Matilda. The forester he did not know: but he had sufficient tact to discern that his success

would be very much facilitated by separating her from this companion, above all others. He therefore formed

a party of men into a wedge, only taking especial care not to be the point of it himself, and drove it between

"If you would wear me, prince," said Matilda, "you must win me:" and without giving him time to deliberate

on the courtesy of fighting with the lady of his love, she raised her sword in the air, and lowered it on his

head with an impetus that would have gone nigh to fathom even that extraordinary depth of brain which

always by divine grace furnishes the interior of a headroyal, if he had not very dexterously parried the blow.

Prince John wished to disarm and take captive, not in any way to wound or injure, least of all to kill, his fair

opponent. Matilda was only intent to get rid of her antagonist at any rate: the edge of her weapon painted his

complexion with streaks of very unloverlike crimson, and she would probably have marred John's hand for

ever signing Magna Charta, but that he was backed by the advantage of numbers, and that her sword broke

short on the boss of his buckler. John was following up his advantage to make a captive of the lady, when he

was suddenly felled to the earth by an unseen antagonist. Some of his men picked him carefully up, and

When he recovered, he found Harpiton diligently assisting in his recovery, more in the fear of losing his place

than in that of losing his master: the prince's first inquiry was for the prisoner he had been on the point of

taking at the moment when his habeas corpus was so unseasonably suspended. He was told that his people

had been on the point of securing the said prisoner, when the devil suddenly appeared among them in the

likeness of a tall friar, having his grey frock cinctured with a swordbelt, and his crown, which whether it

were shaven or no they could not see, surmounted with a helmet, and flourishing an eightfoot staff, with

which he laid about him to the right and to the left, knocking down the prince and his men as if they had been

so many ninepins: in fine, he had rescued the prisoner, and made a clear passage through friend and foe, and

in conjunction with a chosen party of archers, had covered the retreat of the baron's men and the foresters,

Harpiton suggested that it would be desirable to sack the castle, and volunteered to lead the van on the

occasion, as the defenders were withdrawn, and the exploit seemed to promise much profit and little danger:

John considered that the castle would in itself be a great acquisition to him, as a stronghold in furtherance of

his design on his brother's throne; and was determining to take possession with the first light of morning,

when he had the mortification to see the castle burst into flames in several places at once. A piteous cry was

heard from within, and while the prince was proclaiming a reward to any one who would enter into the

burning pile, and elucidate the mystery of the doleful voice, forth waddled the little fat friar in an agony of

fear, out of the fire into the fryingpan; for he was instantly taken into custody and carried before Prince

"Are you the friar," said Prince John, in a terrible voice, "that laid me prostrate in battle, mowed down my

men like grass, rescued my captive, and covered the retreat of my enemies? And, not content with this, have

you now set fire to the castle in which I intended to take up my royal quarters?"

The little friar quaked like a jelly: he fell on his knees, and attempted to speak; but in his eagerness to

vindicate himself from this accumulation of alarming charges, he knew not where to begin; his ideas rolled

round upon each other like the radii of a wheel; the words he desired to utter, instead of issuing, as it were, in

a right line from his lips, seemed to conglobate themselves into a sphere turning on its own axis in his throat:

after several ineffectual efforts, his utterance totally failed him, and he remained gasping, with his mouth

open, his lips quivering, his hands clasped together, and the whites of his eyes turned up towards the prince

Several of the bystanders declared that he was not that friar. The little friar, encouraged by this patronage,

found his voice, and pleaded for mercy. The prince questioned him closely concerning the burning of the

castle. The little friar declared, that he had been in too great fear during the siege to know much of what was

going forward, except that he had been conscious during the last few days of a lamentable deficiency of

provisions, and had been present that very morning at the broaching of the last butt of sack. Harpiton groaned

in sympathy. The little friar added, that he knew nothing of what had passed since till he heard the flames

"Take him away, Harpiton," said the prince, "fill him with sack, and turn him out."

But what Harpiton thought a sad chance the little friar thought a merry one, and went bounding like a fat buck

An arrow, with a letter attached to it, was shot into the camp, and carried to the prince. The contents were

"Prince John,I do not consider myself to have resisted lawful authority in defending my castle against you,

seeing that you are at present in a state of active rebellion against your liege sovereign Richard: and if my

provisions had not failed me, I would have maintained it till doomsday. As it is, I have so well disposed my

combustibles that it shall not serve you as a strong hold in your rebellion. If you hunt in the chases of

Nottinghamshire, you may catch other game than my daughter. Both she and I are content to be houseless for

a time, in the reflection that we have deserved your enmity, and the friendship of CoeurdeLion.

The baron, with some of his retainers and all the foresters, halted at daybreak in Sherwood forest. The

foresters quickly erected tents, and prepared an abundant breakfast of venison and ale.

"Now, Lord Fitzwater," said the chief forester, "recognise your soninlaw that was to have been, in the

"And recognise your young friend Gamwell," said the second, "in the outlaw Scarlet."

"And Father Michael, of Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "in Friar Tuck, of Sherwood forest. Truly, I have a

chapel here hard by, in the shape of a hollow tree, where I put up my prayers for travellers, and Little John

"In the very best of company," said the friar, "in the high court of Nature, and in the midst of her own

nobility. Is it not so? This goodly grove is our palace: the oak and the beech are its colonnade and its canopy:

the sun and the moon and the stars are its everlasting lamps: the grass, and the daisy, and the primrose, and

the violet, are its manycoloured floor of green, white, yellow, and blue; the mayflower, and the woodbine,

and the eglantine, and the ivy, are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry: the lark, and the thrush, and

the linnet, and the nightingale, are its unhired minstrels and musicians. Robin Hood is king of the forest both

by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army: to say nothing of the free choice of his people, which

he has indeed, but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis of power. He holds his dominion over the forest, and its

horned multitude of citizendeer, and its swinish multitude or peasantry of wild boars, by right of conquest

and force of arms. He levies contributions among them by the free consent of his archers, their virtual

representatives. If they should find a voice to complain that we are 'tyrants and usurpers to kill and cook them

up in their assigned and native dwellingplace,' we should most convincingly admonish them, with point of

arrow, that they have nothing to do with our laws but to obey them. Is it not written that the fat ribs of the

herd shall be fed upon by the mighty in the land? And have not they withal my blessing? my orthodox,

canonical, and archiepiscopal blessing? Do I not give thanks for them when they are well roasted and

smoking under my nose? What title had William of Normandy to England, that Robin of Locksley has not to

merry Sherwood? William fought for his claim. So does Robin. With whom, both? With any that would or

will dispute it. William raised contributions. So does Robin. From whom, both? From all that they could or

can make pay them. Why did any pay them to William? Why do any pay them to Robin? For the same reason

to both: because they could not or cannot help it. They differ indeed, in this, that William took from the poor

and gave to the rich, and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor: and therein is Robin illegitimate;

though in all else he is true prince. Scarlet and John, are they not peers of the forest? lords temporal of

Sherwood? And am not I lord spiritual? Am I not archbishop? Am I not pope? Do I not consecrate their

banner and absolve their sins? Are not they state, and am not I church? Are not they state monarchical, and

am not I church militant? Do I not excommunicate our enemies from venison and brawn, and by 'r Lady,

when need calls, beat them down under my feet? The state levies tax, and the church levies tithe. Even so do

we. Mass, we take all at once. What then? It is tax by redemption and tithe by commutation. Your William

and Richard can cut and come again, but our Robin deals with slippery subjects that come not twice to his

exchequer. What need we then to constitute a court, except a fool and a laureate? For the fool, his only use is

to make false knaves merry by art, and we are true men and are merry by nature. For the laureate, his only

office is to find virtues in those who have none, and to drink sack for his pains. We have quite virtue enough

to need him not, and can drink our sack for ourselves." "Well preached, friar," said Robin Hood: "yet there is

one thing wanting to constitute a court, and that is a queen. And now, lovely Matilda, look round upon these

sylvan shades where we have so often roused the stag from his ferny covert. The rising sun smiles upon us

through the stems of that beechen knoll. Shall I take your hand, Matilda, in the presence of this my court?

Shall I crown you with our wildwood coronal, and hail you queen of the forest? Will you be the queen

"Not Matilda," said the friar: "the rules of our holy alliance require new birth. We have excepted in favour of

Little John, because he is great John, and his name is a misnomer. I sprinkle, not thy forehead with water, but

"Here is a pretty conspiracy," exclaimed the baron. "Why, you villanous friar, think you to nickname and

"Even so, bold baron," said the friar; "we are strongest here. Say you, might overcomes right? I say no. There

is no right but might: and to say that might overcomes right is to say that right overcomes itself: an absurdity

most palpable. Your right was the stronger in Arlingford, and ours is the stronger in Sherwood. Your right

was right as long as you could maintain it; so is ours. So is King Richard's, with all deference be it spoken;

and so is King Saladin's; and their two mights are now committed in bloody fray, and that which overcomes

will be right, just as long as it lasts, and as far as it reaches. And now if any of you know any just

"Fire and fury," said the friar, "are modes of that might which constitutes right, and are just impediments to

any thing against which they can be brought to bear. They are our good allies upon occasion, and would

"Father," said Matilda, "you know the terms of our compact: from the moment you restrained my liberty, you

renounced your claim to all but compulsory obedience. The friar argues well. Right ends with might. Thick

walls, dreary galleries, and tapestried chambers, were indifferent to me while I could leave them at pleasure,

but have ever been hateful to me since they held me by force. May I never again have roof but the blue sky,

nor canopy but the green leaves, nor barrier but the forestbounds; with the foresters to my train, Little John

to my page, Friar Tuck to my ghostly adviser, and Robin Hood to my liege lord. I am no longer lady Matilda

"Not my parentage," said Marian, "but my name indeed: do not all maids renounce it at the altar?"

"The altar!" said the baron: "grant me patience! what do you mean by the altar?"

"Pile green turf," said the friar, "wreathe it with flowers, and crown it with fruit, and we will show the noble

"Now, Little John," said the friar, "on with the cloak of the abbot of Doubleflask. I appoint thee my clerk:

"I wish you were all in full moat together," said the baron, "and smooth wall on both sides."

"Punnest thou?" said the friar. "A heinous antichristian offence. Why antichristian? Because anticatholic?

Why anticatholic? Because antiroman. Why antiroman? Because Carthaginian. Is not pun from Punic?

punica fides: the very quintessential quiddity of bad faith: doublevisaged: doubletongued. He that will

make a pun will I say no more. Fie on it. Stand forth, clerk. Who is the bride's father?"

"There is no bride's father," said the baron. "I am the father of Matilda Fitzwater."

"There is none such," said the friar. "This is the fair Maid Marian. Will you make a virtue of necessity, or will

you give laws to the flowing tide? Will you give her, or shall Robin take her? Will you be her true natural

"Stand back, sirrah Scarlet," said the baron. "My daughter shall have no father but me. Needs must when the

"No matter who drives," said the friar, "so that, like a welldisposed subject, you yield cheerful obedience to

"Mawd, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "will you then forsake your poor old father in his distress, with his

"Not so, father," said Marian; "I will always be your true daughter: I will always love, and serve, and watch,

and defend you: but neither will I forsake my plighted love, and my own liege lord, who was your choice

before he was mine, for you made him my associate in infancy; and that he continued to be mine when he

ceased to be yours, does not in any way show remissness in my duties or falling off in my affections. And

though I here plight my troth at the altar to Robin, in the presence of this holy priest and pious clerk, yet....

Father, when Richard returns from Palestine, he will restore you to your barony, and perhaps, for your sake,

your daughter's husband to the earldom of Huntingdon: should that never be, should it be the will of fate that

[4] And therefore is she called Maid Marian Because she leads a spotless maiden life And shall till Robin's

"I have sworn it," said Robin. "Should I expose her tenderness to the perils of maternity, when life and death

may hang on shifting at a moment's notice from Sherwood to Barnsdale, and from Barnsdale to the

seashore? And why should I banquet when my merry men starve? Chastity is our forest law, and even the

"Truly so," said the friar: "for temptation dwells with ease and luxury: but the hunter is Hippolytus, and the

The friar went through the ceremony with great unction, and Little John was most clerical in the intonation of

his responses. After which, the friar sang, and Little John fiddled, and the foresters danced, Robin with

Marian, and Scarlet with the baron; and the venison smoked, and the ale frothed, and the wine sparkled, and

the sun went down on their unwearied festivity: which they wound up with the following song, the friar

Oh! bold Robin Hood is a forester good, As ever drew bow in the merry greenwood: At his bugle's shrill

singing the echoes are ringing, The wild deer are springing for many a rood: Its summons we follow, through

And what eye hath e'er seen such a sweet Maiden Queen, As Marian, the pride of the forester's green? A

sweet gardenflower, she blooms in the bower, Where alone to this hour the wild rose has been: We hail her

in duty the queen of all beauty: We will live, we will die, by our sweet Maiden queen.

And here's a grey friar, good as heart can desire, To absolve all our sins as the case may require: Who with

courage so stout, lays his oakplant about, And puts to the rout all the foes of his choir: For we are his

And Scarlet cloth bring his good yewbough and string, Prime minister is he of Robin our king: No mark is

too narrow for little John's arrow, That hits a cock sparrow a mile on the wing; Robin and Marion, Scarlet,

Each a good liver, for wellfeathered quiver Doth furnish brawn, venison, and fowl of the river: But the best

game we dish up, it is a fat bishop: When his angels we fish up, he proves a free giver: For a prelate so lowly

Robin and Marion, Scarlet and Little John, Drink to them one by one, drink as ye sing: Robin and Marion,

Scarlet and Little John, Echo to echo through Sherwood shall fling: Robin and Marion, Scarlet and Little

The next morning Robin Hood convened his foresters, and desired Little John, for the baron's edification, to

read over the laws of their forest society. Little John read aloud with a stentorophonic voice.

"At a high court of foresters, held under the greenwood tree, an hour after sunrise, Robin Hood President,

William Scarlet VicePresident, Little John Secretary: the following articles, moved by Friar Tuck in his

capacity of Peer Spiritual, and seconded by Much the Miller, were unanimously agreed to.

"The principles of our society are six: Legitimacy, Equity, Hospitality, Chivalry, Chastity, and Courtesy.

"I. Our government is legitimate, and our society is founded on the one golden rule of right, consecrated by

the universal consent of mankind, and by the practice of all ages, individuals, and nations: namely, To keep

"II. Our government being legitimate, all our proceedings shall be legitimate: wherefore we declare war

against the whole world, and every forester is by this legitimate declaration legitimately invested with a

"IV. All such of the old laws of England as do not in any way interfere with, or militate against, the views of

this honourable assembly, we will loyally adhere to and maintain. The rest we declare null and void as far as

relates to ourselves, in all cases wherein a vigour beyond the law may be conducive to our own interest and

"I. The balance of power among the people being very much deranged, by one having too much and another

nothing, we hereby resolve ourselves into a congress or court of equity, to restore as far as in us lies the said

natural balance of power, by taking from all who have too much as much of the said too much as we can lay

our hands on; and giving to those who have nothing such a portion thereof as it may seem to us expedient to

"II. In all cases a quorum of foresters shall constitute a court of equity, and as many as may be strong enough

"III. All usurers, monks, courtiers, and other drones of the great hive of society, who shall be found laden

with any portion of the honey whereof they have wrongfully despoiled the industrious bee, shall be rightfully

despoiled thereof in turn; and all bishops and abbots shall be bound and beaten,[5] especially the abbot of

says Robin Hood, in an old ballad. Perhaps, however, thus is to be taken not in a literal, but in a figurative

sense from the binding and beating of wheat: for as all rich men were Robin's harvest, the bishops and

archbishops must have been the finest and fattest ears among them, from which Robin merely proposes to

thresh the grain when he directs them to be bound and beaten: and as Pharaoh's fat kine were typical of fat

ears of wheat, so may fat ears of wheat, mutatis mutandis, be typical of fat kine.

"I. Postmen, carriers and marketfolk, peasants and mechanics, farmers and millers, shall pass through our

"II. All other travellers through the forest shall be graciously invited to partake of Robin's hospitality; and if

they come not willingly they shall be compelled; and the rich man shall pay well for his fare; and the poor

man shall feast scot free, and peradventure receive bounty in proportion to his desert and necessity.

"I. Every forester shall, to the extent of his power, aid and protect maids, widows, and orphans, and all weak

and distressed persons whomsoever: and no woman shall be impeded or molested in any way; nor shall any

"I. Every forester, being Diana's forester and minion of the moon, shall commend himself to the grace of the

Virgin, and shall have the gift of continency on pain of expulsion: that the article of chivalry may be secure

from infringement, and maids, wives, and widows pass without fear through the forest.

"I. No one shall miscall a forester. He who calls Robin Robert of Huntingdon, or salutes him by any other

title or designation whatsoever except plain Robin Hood; or who calls Marian Matilda Fitzwater, or salutes

her by any other title or designation whatsoever except plain Maid Marian; and so of all others; shall for

"And these articles we swear to keep as we are good men and true. Carried by acclamation. God save King

"Excellent laws," said the baron: "excellent, by the holy rood. William of Normandy, with my great great

grandfather Fierabras at his elbow, could not have made better. And now, sweet Mawd"

"Od's life," said the baron, "shall I not call my own daughter Mawd? Methinks there should be a special

"But I will commute," said the friar; "for twenty marks a year duly paid into my ghostly pocket you shall call

"Gramercy," said the baron, "and I agree, honest friar, when I can get twenty marks to pay: for till Prince

"I will trust," said the friar, "and thus let us ratify the stipulation; so shall our laws and your infringement run

"But," said Little John, "this is a bad precedent, master friar. It is turning discipline into profit, penalty into

perquisite, public justice into private revenue. It is rank corruption, master friar."

"Why are laws made?" said the friar. "For the profit of somebody. Of whom? Of him who makes them first,

and of others as it may happen. Was not I legislator in the last article, and shall I not thrive by my own law?"

"Well then, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "I must leave you, Mawd: your life is very well for the young and

the hearty, but it squares not with my age or my humour. I must house, Mawd. I must find refuge: but where?

"Where Sir Guy of Gamwell has found it," said Robin Hood, "near the borders of Barnsdale. There you may

dwell in safety with him and fair Alice, till King Richard return, and Little John shall give you safe conduct.

You will have need to travel with caution, in disguise and without attendants, for Prince John commands all

this vicinity, and will doubtless lay the country for you and Marian. Now it is first expedient to dismiss your

retainers. If there be any among them who like our life, they may stay with us in the greenwood; the rest may

Some of the baron's men resolved to remain with Robin and Marian, and were furnished accordingly with

Marian now declared that as there was danger in the way to Barnsdale, she would accompany Little John and

the baron, as she should not be happy unless she herself saw her father placed in security. Robin was very

unwilling to consent to this, and assured her that there was more danger for her than the baron: but Marian

"If so, then," said Robin, "I shall be your guide instead of Little John, and I shall leave him and Scarlet

jointregents of Sherwood during my absence, and the voice of Friar Tuck shall be decisive between them if

they differ in nice questions of state policy." Marian objected to this, that there was more danger for Robin

"Talk not of my voice," said the friar; "for if Marian be a damsel errant, I will be her ghostly esquire."

Robin insisted that this should not be, for number would only expose them to greater risk of detection. The

While they were discussing these matters, they heard the distant sound of horses' feet.

Little John bounded away, and soon came before a young man, who was riding in a melancholy manner, with

the bridle hanging loose on the horse's neck, and his eyes drooping towards the ground.

"And that shall be," said Little John, "whither I please to lead him. I am commissioned to invite you to dine

"The bold outlaw?" said the stranger. "Neither he nor you should have made me turn an inch aside yesterday;

"Then it is better for you," said Little John, "that you came today than yesterday, if you love dining in a

whole skin: for my master is the pink of courtesy: but if his guests prove stubborn, he bastes them and his

The young man made no answer, and scarcely seemed to hear what Little John was saying, who therefore

took the horse's bridle and led him to where Robin and his foresters were setting forth their dinner. Robin

seated the young man next to Marian. Recovering a little from his stupor, he looked with much amazement at

her, and the baron, and Robin, and the friar; listened to their conversation, and seemed much astonished to

find himself in such holy and courtly company. Robin helped him largely to rumblepie and cygnet and

pheasant, and the other dainties of his table; and the friar pledged him in ale and wine, and exhorted him to

make good cheer. But the young man drank little, ate less, spake nothing, and every now and then sighed

When the repast was ended, "Now," said Robin, "you are at liberty to pursue your journey: but first be

"That would I gladly do, Robin," said the young man, "but all I have about me are five shillings and a ring.

To the five shillings you shall be welcome, but for the ring I will fight while there is a drop of blood in my

"Gallantly spoken," said Robin Hood. "A lovetoken, without doubt: but you must submit to our forest laws.

Little John must search; and if he find no more than you say, not a penny will I touch; but if you have spoken

"And with reason," said the friar; "for thereby is the truth maintained The abbot of Doubleflask swore there

was no money in his valise, and Little John forthwith emptied it of four hundred pounds. Thus was the

abbot's perjury but of one minute's duration; for though his speech was false in the utterance, yet was it no

sooner uttered than it became true, and we should have been participes criminis to have suffered the holy

abbot to depart in falsehood: whereas he came to us a false priest, and we sent him away a true man. Marry,

we turned his cloak to further account, and thereby hangs a tale that may be either said or sung; for in truth I

am minstrel here as well as chaplain; I pray for good success to our just and necessary warfare, and sing

Bold Robin has robed him in ghostly attire, And forth he is gone like a holy friar, Singing, hey down, ho

down, down, derry down: And of two grey friars he soon was aware, Regaling themselves with dainty fare,

"Good morrow, good brothers," said bold Robin Hood, "And what make you in the good greenwood, Singing

hey down, ho down, down, derry down! Now give me, I pray you, wine and food; For none can I find in the

"Good brother," they said, "we would give you full fain, But we have no more than enough for twain,

Singing, hey down, ho down, down, derry down." "Then give me some money," said bold Robin Hood, "For

"No money have we, good brother," said they: "Then," said he, "we three for money will pray: Singing, hey

down, ho down, down, derry down: And whatever shall come at the end of our prayer, We three holy friars

"We will not pray with thee, good brother, God wot: For truly, good brother, thou pleasest us not, Singing

hey down, ho down, down, derry down:" Then up they both started from Robin to run, But down on their

The grey friars prayed with a doleful face, But bold Robin prayed with a right merry grace, Singing, hey

down, ho down, down, derry down: And when they had prayed, their portmanteau he took, And from it a

"The saints," said bold Robin, "have hearkened our prayer, And here's a good angel apiece for your share: If

more you would have, you must win ere you wear: Singing hey down, ho down, down, derry down:" Then he

blew his good horn with a musical cheer, And fifty green bowmen came trooping full near, And away the

"Here is but five shillings and a ring," said Little John, "and the young man has spoken true."

"Then," said Robin to the stranger, "if want of money be the cause of your melancholy, speak. Little John is

"It is, and it is not," said the stranger; "it is, because, had I not wanted money I had never lost my love; it is

not, because, now that I have lost her, money would come too late to regain her."

"In what way have you lost her?" said Robin: "let us clearly know that she is past regaining, before we give

"She is to be married this day," said the stranger, "and perhaps is married by this, to a rich old knight; and

"I know that bishop," said Robin; "he dined with me a month since, and paid three hundred pounds for his

dinner. He has a good ear and loves music. The friar sang to him to some tune. Give me my harper's cloak,

"These are dangerous times, Robin," said Marian, "for playing pranks out of the forest."

"Fear not," said Robin; "Edwinstow lies not Nottinghamward, and I will take my precautions."

Robin put on his harper's cloak, while Little John painted his eyebrows and cheeks, tipped his nose with red,

and tied him on a comely beard. Marian confessed, that had she not been present at the metamorphosis, she

should not have known her own true Robin. Robin took his harp and went to the wedding.

Robin found the bishop and his train in the church porch, impatiently expecting the arrival of the bride and

bridegroom. The clerk was observing to the bishop that the knight was somewhat gouty, and that the

necessity of walking the last quarter of a mile from the road to the churchyard probably detained the lively

"Oh! by my fey," said the musicloving bishop, "here comes a harper in the nick of time, and now I care not

"I am come to play anywhere," answered Robin, "where I can get a cup of sack; for which I will sing the

praise of the donor in lofty verse, and emblazon him with any virtue which he may wish to have the credit of

"A most courtly harper," said the bishop; "I will fill thee with sack; I will make thee a walking butt of sack, if

"That will I," said Robin; "in what branch of my art shall I exert my faculty? I am passing well in all, from

"It would be idle," said the bishop, "to give thee sack for playing me anthems, seeing that I myself do receive

sack for hearing them sung. Therefore, as the occasion is festive, thou shalt play me a coranto."

Robin struck up and played away merrily, the bishop all the while in great delight, noddling his head, and

beating time with his foot, till the bride and bridegroom appeared. The bridegroom was richly apparelled, and

came slowly and painfully forward, hobbling and leering, and pursing up his mouth into a smile of resolute

defiance to the gout, and of tender complacency towards his lady love, who, shining like gold at the old

knight's expense, followed slowly between her father and mother, her cheeks pale, her head drooping, her

Robin stopped his minstrelsy, and said to the bishop, "This seems to me an unfit match."

"I say," said Robin, "this seems to me an unfit match. What, in the devil's name, can you want with a young

"What is that to thee, sirrah varlet?" said the old knight; "stand away from the porch, or I will fracture thy

"I will not stand away from the porch," said Robin, "unless the bride bid me, and tell me that you are her own

"Speak," said the bride's father, in a severe tone, and with a look of significant menace. The girl looked

alternately at her father and Robin. She attempted to speak, but her voice failed in the effort, and she burst

"Here is lawful cause and just impediment," said Robin, "and I forbid the banns."

"I am the Roman law," said Robin, "which says that there shall not be more than ten years between a man and

"Honest harper," said the bishop, "you are somewhat overofficious here, and less courtly than I deemed you.

If you love sack, forbear; for this course will never bring you a drop. As to your Roman law, and your law of

nature, what right have they to say any thing which the law of Holy Writ says not?"

"The law of Holy Writ does say it," said Robin; "I expound it so to say; and I will produce sixty

And so saying, he produced a horn from beneath his cloak, and blew three blasts, and threescore bowmen in

green came leaping from the bushes and trees; and young Allen was the first among them to give Robin his

sword, while Friar Tuck and Little John marched up to the altar. Robin stripped the bishop and clerk of their

robes, and put them on the friar and Little John; and Allen advanced to take the hand of the bride. Her cheeks

grew red and her eyes grew bright, as she locked her hand in her lover's, and tripped lightly with him into the

"This marriage will not stand," said the bishop, "for they have not been thrice asked in church."

"We will ask them seven times," said Little John, "lest three should not suffice."

"And in the meantime," said Robin, "the knight and the bishop shall dance to my harping."

So Robin sat in the church porch and played away merrily, while his foresters formed a ring, in the centre of

which the knight and bishop danced with exemplary alacrity; and if they relaxed their exertions, Scarlet

"So I do," said Robin; "this is the true antipodagron: you shall dance the gout away, and be thankful to me

while you live. I told you," he added to the bishop, "I would play at this wedding; but you did not tell me that

The bishop was too much out of breath to reply; and now the young couple issued from church, and the bride

having made a farewell obeisance to her parents, they departed together with the foresters, the parents

storming, the attendants laughing, the bishop puffing and blowing, and the knight rubbing his gouty foot, and

uttering doleful lamentations for the gold and jewels with which he had so unwittingly adorned and cowered

In pursuance of the arrangement recorded in the twelfth chapter, the baron, Robin, and Marian disguised

themselves as pilgrims returned from Palestine, and travelling from the seacoast of Hampshire to their home

in Northumberland. By dint of staff and cockleshell, sandal and scrip, they proceeded in safety the greater

part of the way (for Robin had many sly inns and restingplaces between Barnsdale and Sherwood), and were

already on the borders of Yorkshire, when, one evening, they passed within view of a castle, where they saw

a lady standing on a turret, and surveying the whole extent of the valley through which they were passing. A

servant came running from the castle, and delivered to them a message from his lady, who was sick with

expectation of news from her lord in the Holy Land, and entreated them to come to her, that she might

question them concerning him. This was an awkward occurrence: but there was no presence for refusal, and

they followed the servant into the castle. The baron, who had been in Palestine in his youth, undertook to be

spokesman on the occasion, and to relate his own adventures to the lady as having happened to the lord in

question. This preparation enabled him to be so minute and circumstantial in his detail, and so coherent in his

replies to her questions, that the lady fell implicitly into the delusion, and was delighted to find that her lord

was alive and in health, and in high favour with the king, and performing prodigies of valour in the name of

his lady, whose miniature he always wore in his bosom. The baron guessed at this circumstance from the

"This miniature," added the baron, "I have had the felicity to see, and should have known you by it among a

million." The baron was a little embarrassed by some questions of the lady concerning her lord's personal

appearance; but Robin came to his aid, observing a picture suspended opposite to him on the wall, which he

made a bold conjecture to be that of the lord in question; and making a calculation of the influences of time

and war, which he weighed with a comparison of the lady's age, he gave a description of her lord sufficiently

like the picture in its groundwork to be a true resemblance, and sufficiently differing from it in circumstances

to be more an original than a copy. The lady was completely deceived, and entreated them to partake her

hospitality for the night; but this they deemed it prudent to decline, and with many humble thanks for her

kindness, and representations of the necessity of not delaying their homeward course, they proceeded on their

As they passed over the drawbridge, they met Sir Ralph Montfaucon and his squire, who were wandering in

quest of Marian, and were entering to claim that hospitality which the pilgrims had declined. Their

countenances struck Sir Ralph with a kind of imperfect recognition, which would never have been matured,

but that the eyes of Marian, as she passed him, encountered his, and the images of those stars of beauty

continued involuntarily twinkling in his sensorium to the exclusion of all other ideas, till memory, love, and

hope concurred with imagination to furnish a probable reason for their haunting him so pertinaciously. Those

eyes, he thought, were certainly the eyes of Matilda Fitzwater; and if the eyes were hers, it was extremely

probable, if not logically consecutive, that the rest of the body they belonged to was hers also. Now, if it were

really Matilda Fitzwater, who were her two companions? The baron? Aye, and the elder pilgrim was

something like him. And the earl of Huntingdon? Very probably. The earl and the baron might be good

friends again, now that they were both in disgrace together. While he was revolving these cogitations, he was

introduced to the lady, and after claiming and receiving the promise of hospitality, he inquired what she knew

of the pilgrims who had just departed? The lady told him they were newly returned from Palestine, having

been long in the Holy Land. The knight expressed some scepticism on this point. The lady replied, that they

had given her so minute a detail of her lord's proceedings, and so accurate a description of his person, that she

could not be deceived in them. This staggered the knight's confidence in his own penetration; and if it had not

been a heresy in knighthood to suppose for a moment that there could be in rerum natura such another pair of

eyes as those of his mistress, he would have acquiesced implicitly in the lady's judgment. But while the lady

and the knight were conversing, the warder blew his buglehorn, and presently entered a confidential

messenger from Palestine, who gave her to understand that her lord was well; but entered into a detail of his

adventures most completely at variance with the baron's narrative, to which not the correspondence of a

single incident gave the remotest colouring of similarity. It now became manifest that the pilgrims were not

true men; and Sir Ralph Montfaucon sate down to supper with his head full of cogitations, which we shall

Meanwhile our three pilgrims proceeded on their way. The evening set in black and lowering, when Robin

turned aside from the main track, to seek an asylum for the night, along a narrow way that led between rocky

and woody hills. A peasant observed the pilgrims as they entered that narrow pass, and called after them:

"Can you show us a direction," said Robin, "in which there are none? If so we will take it in preference." The

The pass widened as they advanced, and the woods grew thicker and darker around them. Their path wound

along the slope of a woody declivity, which rose high above them in a thick rampart of foliage, and

descended almost precipitously to the bed of a small river, which they heard dashing in its rocky channel, and

saw its white foam gleaming at intervals in the last faint glimmerings of twilight. In a short time all was dark,

and the rising voice of the wind foretold a coming storm. They turned a point of the valley, and saw a light

below them in the depth of the hollow, shining through a cottagecasement and dancing in its reflection on

the restless stream. Robin blew his horn, which was answered from below. The cottage door opened: a boy

came forth with a torch, ascended the steep, showed tokens of great delight at meeting with Robin, and

lighted them down a flight of steps rudely cut in the rock, and over a series of rugged steppingstones, that

crossed the channel of the river. They entered the cottage, which exhibited neatness, comfort, and plenty,

being amply enriched with pots, pans, and pipkins, and adorned with flitches of bacon and sundry similar

ornaments, that gave goodly promise in the firelight that gleamed upon the rafters. A woman, who seemed

just old enough to be the boy's mother, had thrown down her spinning wheel in her joy at the sound of

Robin's horn, and was bustling with singular alacrity to set forth her festal ware and prepare an abundant

supper. Her features, though not beautiful, were agreeable and expressive, and were now lighted up with such

manifest joy at the sight of Robin, that Marian could not help feeling a momentary touch of jealousy, and a

halfformed suspicion that Robin had broken his forest law, and had occasionally gone out of bounds, as

other great men have done upon occasion, in order to reconcile the breach of the spirit, with the preservation

of the letter, of their own legislation. However, this suspicion, if it could be said to exist in a mind so

generous as Marian's, was very soon dissipated by the entrance of the woman's husband, who testified as

much joy as his wife had done at the sight of Robin; and in a short time the whole of the party were amicably

seated round a smoking supper of riverfish and wild wood fowl, on which the baron fell with as much

The husband produced some recondite flasks of wine, which were laid by in a binn consecrated to Robin,

whose occasional visits to them in his wanderings were the festal days of these warmhearted cottagers,

whose manners showed that they had not been born to this low estate. Their story had no mystery, and

Marian easily collected it from the tenour of their conversation. The young man had been, like Robin, the

victim of an usurious abbot, and had been outlawed for debt, and his nutbrown maid had accompanied him

to the depths of Sherwood, where they lived an unholy and illegitimate life, killing the king's deer, and never

hearing mass. In this state, Robin, then earl of Huntingdon, discovered them in one of his huntings, and gave

them aid and protection. When Robin himself became an outlaw, the necessary qualification or gift of

continency was too hard a law for our lovers to subscribe to; and as they were thus disqualified for foresters,

Robin had found them a retreat in this romantic and secluded spot. He had done similar service to other

lovers similarly circumstanced, and had disposed them in various wild scenes which he and his men had

discovered in their flittings from place to place, supplying them with all necessaries and comforts from the

reluctant disgorgings of fat abbots and usurers. The benefit was in some measure mutual; for these cottages

served him as restingplaces in his removals, and enabled him to travel untraced and unmolested; and in the

delight with which he was always received he found himself even more welcome than he would have been at

an inn; and this is saying very much for gratitude and affection together. The smiles which surrounded him

The casements began to rattle in the wind, and the rain to beat upon the windows. The wind swelled to a

hurricane, and the rain dashed like a flood against the glass. The boy retired to his little bed, the wife trimmed

the lamp, the husband heaped logs upon the fire: Robin broached another flask; and Marian filled the baron's

"Well," said the baron, "give me a roof over my head, be it never so humble. Your greenwood canopy is

pretty and pleasant in sunshine; but if I were doomed to live under it, I should wish it were watertight."

"But," said Robin, "we have tents and caves for foul weather, good store of wine and venison, and fuel in

"Ay, but," said the baron, "I like to pull off my boots of a night, which you foresters seldom do, and to

ensconce myself thereafter in a comfortable bed. Your beechroot is overhard for a couch, and your mossy

"Had you not dry leaves," said Robin, "with a bishop's surplice over them? What would you have softer? And

had you not an abbot's travelling cloak for a coverlet? What would you have warmer?"

"Very true," said the baron, "but that was an indulgence to a guest, and I dreamed all night of the sheriff of

Nottingham. I like to feel myself safe," he added, stretching out his legs to the fire, and throwing himself

back in his chair with the air of a man determined to be comfortable. "I like to feel myself safe," said the

At that moment the woman caught her husband's arm, and all the party following the direction of her eyes,

looked simultaneously to the window, where they had just time to catch a glimpse of an apparition of an

armed head, with its plumage tossing in the storm, on which the light shone from within, and which

Several knocks, as from the knuckles of an iron glove, were given to the door of the cottage, and a voice was

heard entreating shelter from the storm for a traveller who had lost his way. Robin arose and went to the door.

"A soldier," replied the voice: "an unfortunate adherent of Longchamp, flying the vengeance of Prince John."

"Yes," said the voice: "it is a dreadful night. Hospitable cottagers, pray give me admittance. I would not have

"That I believe," said Robin. "You did not reckon on the storm when you turned into this pass. Do you know

A pause ensued, during which Robin listening attentively caught a faint sound of whispering.

"None but the wind and the water," said the voice, "and I would I had them not."

"The wind and the water have many voices," said Robin, "but I never before heard them say, What shall we

"Look ye, master cottager," said the voice, in an altered tone, "if you do not let us in willingly, we will break

"Ho! ho!" roared the baron, "you are become plural are you, rascals? How many are there of you, thieves?

What, I warrant, you thought to rob and murder a poor harmless cottager and his wife, and did not dream of a

garrison? You looked for no weapon of opposition but spit, poker, and basting ladle, wielded by unskilful

hands: but, rascals, here is short sword and long cudgel in hands well tried in war, wherewith you shall be

No reply was made, but furious strokes from without resounded upon the door. Robin, Marian, and the baron

threw by their pilgrim's attire, and stood in arms on the defensive. They were provided with swords, and the

cottager gave them bucklers and helmets, for all Robin's haunts were furnished with secret armouries. But

they kept their swords sheathed, and the baron wielded a ponderous spear, which he pointed towards the door

ready to run through the first that should enter, and Robin and Marian each held a bow with the arrow drawn

to its head and pointed in the same direction. The cottager flourished a strong cudgel (a weapon in the use of

which he prided himself on being particularly expert), and the wife seized the spit from the fireplace, and

held it as she saw the baron hold his spear. The storm of wind and rain continued to beat on the roof and the

casement, and the storm of blows to resound upon the door, which at length gave way with a violent crash,

and a cluster of armed men appeared without, seemingly not less than twelve. Behind them rolled the stream

now changed from a gentle and shallow river to a mighty and impetuous torrent, roaring in waves of yellow

foam, partially reddened by the light that streamed through the open door, and turning up its convulsed

surface in flashes of shifting radiance from restless masses of halfvisible shadow. The steppingstones, by

which the intruders must have crossed, were buried under the waters. On the opposite bank the light fell on

the stems and boughs of the rockrooted oak and ash tossing and swaying in the blast, and sweeping the

The instant the door broke, Robin and Marian loosed their arrows. Robin's arrow struck one of the assailants

in the juncture of the shoulder, and disabled his right arm: Marian's struck a second in the juncture of the

knee, and rendered him unserviceable; for the night. The baron's long spear struck on the mailed breastplate

of a third, and being stretched to its full extent by the longarmed hero, drove him to the edge of the torrent,

and plunged him into its eddies, along which he was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream,

calling vainly on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost in the mingled roar of the waters and the wind. A

fourth springing through the door was laid prostrate by the cottager's cudgel: but the wife being less

dexterous than her company, though an Amazon in strength, missed her pass at a fifth, and drove the point of

the spit several inches into the right hand doorpost as she stood close to the left, and thus made a new barrier

which the invaders could not pass without dipping under it and submitting their necks to the sword: but one

of the assailants seizing it with gigantic rage, shook it at once from the grasp of its holder and from its

lodgment in the post, and at the same time made good the irruption of the rest of his party into the cottage.

Now raged an unequal combat, for the assailants fell two to one on Robin, Marian, the baron, and the

cottager; while the wife, being deprived of her spit, converted every thing that was at hand to a missile, and

rained pots, pans, and pipkins on the armed heads of the enemy. The baron raged like a tiger, and the cottager

laid about him like a thresher. One of the soldiers struck Robin's sword from his hand and brought him on his

knee, when the boy, who had been roused by the tumult and had been peeping through the inner door, leaped

forward in his shirt, picked up the sword and replaced it in Robin's hand, who instantly springing up,

disarmed and wounded one of his antagonists, while the other was laid prostrate under the dint of a brass

cauldron launched by the Amazonian dame. Robin now turned to the aid of Marian, who was parrying most

dexterously the cuts and slashes of her two assailants, of whom Robin delivered her from one, while a

wellapplied blow of her sword struck off the helmet of the other, who fell on his knees to beg a boon, and

she recognised Sir Ralph Montfaucon. The men who were engaged with the baron and the peasant, seeing

their leader subdued, immediately laid down their arms and cried for quarter. The wife brought some strong

"Odso! courteous knight," said the baron, "is this the return you make for my beef and canary, when you

kissed my daughter's hand in token of contrition for your intermeddling at her wedding? Heart, I am glad to

see she has given you a bloody coxcomb. Slice him down, Mawd! slice him down, and fling him into the

"Confess," said Marian, "what brought you here, and how did you trace our steps?"

"Then confess you, rascal," said the baron, holding his sword to the throat of the captive squire.

"Take away the sword," said the squire, "it is too near my mouth, and my voice will not come out for fear:

take away the sword, and I will confess all." The baron dropped his sword, and the squire proceeded; "Sir

Ralph met you, as you quitted Lady Falkland's castle, and by representing to her who you were, borrowed

from her such a number of her retainers as he deemed must ensure your capture, seeing that your familiar the

friar was not at your elbow. We set forth without delay, and traced you first by means of a peasant who saw

you turn into this valley, and afterwards by the light from the casement of this solitary dwelling. Our design

was to have laid an ambush for you in the morning, but the storm and your observation of my unlucky face

through the casement made us change our purpose; and what followed you can tell better than I can, being

"Gramercy," said the squire, "and better late than never: but I lacked a cup of this before. Had I been

"Sir knight," said Marian, "this is the third time you have sought the life of my lord and of me, for mine is

interwoven with his. And do you think me so spiritless as to believe that I can be yours by compulsion?

Tempt me not again, for the next time shall be the last, and the fish of the nearest river shall commute the

flesh of a recreant knight into the fastday dinner of an uncarnivorous friar. I spare you now, not in pity but

in scorn. Yet shall you swear to a convention never more to pursue or molest my lord or me, and on this

The knight had no alternative but to comply, and swore, on the honour of knighthood, to keep the convention

inviolate. How well he kept his oath we shall have no opportunity of narrating: Di lui la nostra istoria piu non

The pilgrims, without experiencing further molestation, arrived at the retreat of Sir Guy of Gamwell. They

found the old knight a cup too low; partly from being cut off from the scenes of his old hospitality and the

shouts of his Nottinghamshire vassals, who were wont to make the rafters of his ancient hall reecho to their

revelry; but principally from being parted from his son, who had long been the better half of his flask and

pasty. The arrival of our visitors cheered him up; and finding that the baron was to remain with him, he

testified his delight and the cordiality of his welcome by pegging him in the ribs till he made him roar.

Robin and Marian took an affectionate leave of the baron and the old knight; and before they quitted the

vicinity of Barnsdale, deeming it prudent to return in a different disguise, they laid aside their pilgrim's attire,

They travelled in this character safely and pleasantly, till one evening at a late hour they arrived by the side of

a river, where Robin looking out for a mode of passage perceived a ferryboat safely moored in a nook on

the opposite bank; near which a chimney sending up a wreath of smoke through the thickset willows, was

the only symptom of human habitation; and Robin naturally conceiving the said chimney and wreath of

smoke to be the outward signs of the inward ferryman, shouted "Over!" with much strength and clearness;

but no voice replied, and no ferryman appeared. Robin raised his voice, and shouted with redoubled energy,

"Over, Over, Oooover!" A faint echo alone responded "Over!" and again died away into deep silence: but

after a brief interval a voice from among the willows, in a strange kind of mingled intonation that was half a

Over, over, over, jolly, jolly rover, Would you then come over? Over, over, over? Jolly, jolly rover, here's

one lives in clover: Who finds the clover? The jolly, jolly rover. He finds the clover, let him then come over,

"I much doubt," said Marian, "if this ferryman do not mean by clover something more than the toll of his

"I doubt not," answered Robin, "he is a levier of toll and tithe, which I shall put him upon proof of his right to

The ferryman emerged from the willows and stepped into his boat. "As I live," exclaimed Robin, "the

"He will scarcely know us," said Robin; "and if he do not, I will break a staff with him for sport."

The friar came singing across the water: the boat touched the land: Robin and Marian stepped on board: the

"Silken doublets, silken doublets," said the friar: "slenderly lined, I bow: your wandering minstrel is always

poor toll: your sweet angels of voices pass current for a bed and a supper at the house of every lord that likes

to hear the fame of his valour without the trouble of fighting for it. What need you of purse or pouch? You

may sing before thieves. Pedlars, pedlars: wandering from door to door with the small ware of lies and

cajolery: exploits for carpetknights; honesty for courtiers; truth for monks, and chastity for nuns: a good

saleable stock that costs the vender nothing, defies wear and tear, and when it has served a hundred customers

is as plentiful and as marketable as ever. But, sirrahs, I'll none of your balderdash. You pass not hence

without clink of brass, or I'll knock your musical noddles together till they ring like a pair of cymbals. That

This friendly speech of the friar ended as they stepped on the opposite bank. Robin had noticed as they

"Why, thou brawling mongrel," said Robin, "that whether thou be thief, friar, or ferryman, or an illmixed

compound of all three, passes conjecture, though I judge thee to be simple thief, what barkest thou at thus?

Villain, there is clink of brass for thee. Dost thou see this coin? Dost thou hear this music? Look and listen:

for touch thou shalt not: my minstrelship defies thee. Thou shalt carry me on thy back over the water, and

"A bargain," said the friar: "for the water is low, the labour is light, and the reward is alluring." And he

stooped down for Robin, who mounted his back, and the friar waded with him over the river.

"Now, fine fellow," said the friar, "thou shalt carry me back over the water, and thou shalt have a cracked

Robin took the friar on his back, and waded with him into the middle of the river, when by a dexterous jerk

he suddenly flung him off and plunged him horizontally over head and ears in the water. Robin waded to

"Fine fellow, fine fellow," said the friar, "now will I pay thee thy cracked sconce."

"Not so," said Robin, "I have not earned it: but thou hast earned it, and shalt have it."

It was not, even in those good old times, a sight of every day to see a troubadour and a friar playing at

singlestick by the side of a river, each aiming with fell intent at the other's coxcomb. The parties were both

so skilled in attack and defence, that their mutual efforts for a long time expended themselves in quick and

loud rappings on each other's oaken staves. At length Robin by a dexterous feint contrived to score one on the

friar's crown: but in the careless moment of triumph a splendid sweep of the friar's staff struck Robin's out of

his hand into the middle of the river, and repaid his crack on the head with a degree of vigour that might have

passed the bounds of a jest if Marian had not retarded its descent by catching the friar's arm.

"How now, recreant friar," said Marian; "what have you to say why you should not suffer instant execution,

being detected in open rebellion against your liege lord? Therefore kneel down, traitor, and submit your neck

"Benefit of clergy," said the friar: "I plead my clergy. And is it you indeed, ye scapegraces? Ye are well

disguised: I knew ye not, by my flask. Robin, jolly Robin, he buys a jest dearly that pays for it with a bloody

coxcomb. But here is balm for all bruises, outward and inward. (The friar produced a flask of canary.) Wash

thy wound twice and thy throat thrice with this solar concoction, and thou shalt marvel where was thy hurt.

But what moved ye to this frolic? Knew ye not that ye could not appear in a mask more fashioned to move

my bile than in that of these gilders and lackerers of the smooth surface of worthlessness, that bring the gold

of true valour into disrepute, by stamping the baser metal with the fairer impression? I marvelled to find any

such given to fighting (for they have an old instinct of selfpreservation): but I rejoiced thereat, that I might

discuss to them poetical justice: and therefore have I cracked thy sconce: for which, let this be thy medicine."

"But wherefore," said Marian, "do we find you here, when we left you joint lord warden of Sherwood?"

"I do but retire to my devotions," replied the friar. "This is my hermitage, in which I first took refuge when I

escaped from my beloved brethren of Rubygill; and to which I still retreat at times from the vanities of the

world, which else might cling to me too closely, since I have been promoted to be peerspiritual of your

forestcourt. For, indeed, I do find in myself certain indications and admonitions that my day has past its

noon; and none more cogent than this: that daily of bad wine I grow more intolerant, and of good wine have a

keener and more fastidious relish. There is no surer symptom of receding years. The ferryman is my faithful

varlet. I send him on some pious errand, that I may meditate in ghostly privacy, when my presence in the

forest can best be spared: and when can it be better spared than now, seeing that the neighbourhood of Prince

John, and his incessant perquisitions for Marian, have made the forest too hot to hold more of us than are

needful to keep up a quorum, and preserve unbroken the continuity of our forestdominion? For, in truth,

without your greenwood majesties, we have hardly the wit to live in a body, and at the same time to keep our

necks out of jeopardy, while that archrebel and traitor John infests the precincts of our territory."

The friar now conducted them to his peaceful cell, where he spread his frugal board with fish, venison,

wildfowl, fruit, and canary. Under the compound operation of this materia medica Robin's wounds healed

apace, and the friar, who hated minstrelsy, began as usual chirping in his cups. Robin and Marian chimed in

It was now the very witching time of night, when they heard a voice shouting, "Over!" They paused to listen,

and the voice repeated "Over!" in accents clear and loud, but which at the same time either were in

themselves, or seemed to be, from the place and the hour, singularly plaintive and dreary. The friar fidgetted

about in his seat: fell into a deep musing: shook himself, and looked about him: first at Marian, then at Robin,

then at Marian again; filled and tossed off a cup of canary, and relapsed into his reverie.

"Will you not bring your passenger over?" said Robin. The friar shook his head and looked mysterious.

"That passenger," said the friar, "will never come over. Every full moon, at midnight, that voice calls, 'Over!'

I and my varlet have more than once obeyed the summons, and we have sometimes had a glimpse of a white

figure under the opposite trees: but when the boat has touched the bank, nothing has been to be seen; and the

"I must go to it," said the friar, "or it will give us no peace. I would all my customers were of this world. I

"Still less," said the friar, hurrying out of the cell. Robin and Marian followed: but the friar outstepped them,

A white figure was visible under the shade of the opposite trees. The boat approached the shore, and the

They reentered the cottage, and sat some time conversing on the phenomenon they had seen. The friar

"There is a tradition of a damsel who was drowned here some years ago. The tradition is"

But the friar could not narrate a plain tale: he therefore cleared his throat, and sang with due solemnity, in a

A damsel came in midnight rain, And called across the ferry: The weary wight she called in vain, Whose

senses sleep did bury. At evening, from her father's door She turned to meet her lover: At midnight, on the

She had not met him by the tree Of their accustomed meeting, And sad and sick at heart was she, Her heart

all wildly beating. In chill suspense the hours went by, The wild storm burst above her: She turned her to the

A dim, discoloured, doubtful light The moon's dark veil permitted, And thick before her troubled sight

Fantastic shadows flitted. Her lover's form appeared to glide, And beckon o'er the water: Alas! his blood that

Upon a little rock she stood, To make her invocation: She marked not that the rainswoll'n flood Was

islanding her station. The tempest mocked her feeble cry: No saint his aid would give her: The flood swelled

Yet oft beneath the pale moonlight, When hollow winds are blowing, The shadow of that maiden bright

Glides by the dark stream's flowing. And when the storms of midnight rave, While clouds the broad moon

While the friar was singing, Marian was meditating: and when he had ended she said, "Honest friar, you have

misplaced your tradition, which belongs to the aestuary of a nobler river, where the damsel was swept away

by the rising of the tide, for which your landflood is an indifferent substitute. But the true tradition of this

It was a friar of orders free, A friar of Rubygill: At the greenwoodtree a vow made he, But he kept it very

ill: A vow made he of chastity, But he kept it very ill. He kept it, perchance, in the conscious shade Of the

bounds of the forest wherein it was made: But he roamed where he listed, as free as the wind, And he left his

good vow in the forest behind: For its woods out of sight were his vow out of mind, With the friar of

In lonely hut himself he shut, The friar of Rubygill; Where the ghostly elf absolved himself, To follow his

own good will: And he had no lack of canary sack, To keep his conscience still. And a damsel well knew,

when at lonely midnight It gleamed on the waters, his signallamplight: "Over! over!" she warbled with

nightingale throat, And the friar sprung forth at the magical note, And she crossed the dark stream in his trim

"Look you now," said Robin, "if the friar does not blush. Many strange sights have I seen in my day, but

"I think," said the friar, "you never saw one that blushed not, or you saw good canary thrown away. But you

are welcome to laugh if it so please you. None shall laugh in my company, though it be at my expense, but I

will have my share of the merriment. The world is a stage, and life is a farce, and he that laughs most has

most profit of the performance. The worst thing is good enough to be laughed at, though it be good for

nothing else; and the best thing, though it be good for something else, is good for nothing better."

And he struck up a song in praise of laughing and quaffing, without further adverting to Marian's insinuated

accusation; being, perhaps, of opinion, that it was a subject on which the least said would be the soonest

So passed the night. In the morning a forester came to the friar, with intelligence that Prince John had been

compelled, by the urgency of his affairs in other quarters, to disembarrass Nottingham Castle of his royal

presence. Our wanderers returned joyfully to their forestdominion, being thus relieved from the vicinity of

any more formidable belligerent than their old bruised and beaten enemy the sheriff of Nottingham.

So Robin and Marian dwelt and reigned in the forest, ranging the glades and the greenwoods from the matins

of the lark to the vespers of the nightingale, and administering natural justice according to Robin's ideas of

rectifying the inequalities of human condition: raising genial dews from the bags of the rich and idle, and

returning them in fertilising showers on the poor and industrious: an operation which more enlightened

statesmen have happily reversed, to the unspeakable benefit of the community at large. The light footsteps of

Marian were impressed on the morning dew beside the firmer step of her lover, and they shook its large drops

about them as they cleared themselves a passage through the thick tall fern, without any fear of catching cold,

which was not much in fashion in the twelfth century. Robin was as hospitable as Cathmor; for seven men

stood on seven paths to call the stranger to his feast. It is true, he superadded the small improvement of

making the stranger pay for it: than which what could be more generous? For Cathmor was himself the prime

giver of his feast, whereas Robin was only the agent to a series of strangers, who provided in turn for the

entertainment of their successors; which is carrying the disinterestedness of hospitality to its acme. Marian

Which Scarlet dressed, and Friar Tuck blessed While Little John wandered in search of a guest.

Robin was very devout, though there was great unity in his religion: it was exclusively given to our Lady the

Virgin, and he never set forth in a morning till he had said three prayers, and had heard the sweet voice of his

Marian singing a hymn to their mutual patroness. Each of his men had, as usual, a patron saint according to

his name or taste. The friar chose a saint for himself, and fixed on Saint Botolph, whom he euphonised into

Saint Bottle, and maintained that he was that very Panomphic Pantagruelian saint, well known in ancient

France as a female divinity, by the name of La Dive Bouteille, whose oracular monosyllable "Trincq,', is

celebrated and understood by all nations, and is expounded by the learned doctor Alcofribas,[6] who has

treated at large on the subject, to signify "drink." Saint Bottle, then, was the saint of Friar Tuck, who did not

yield even to Robin and Marian in the assiduity of his devotions to his chosen patron. Such was their summer

life, and in their winter caves they had sufficient furniture, ample provender, store of old wine, and assuredly

no lack of fuel, with joyous music and pleasant discourse to charm away the season of darkness and storms.

[6] Alcofribas Nasier: an anagram of Francois Rabelais, and his assumed appellation.

The reader who desires to know more about this oracular divinity, may consult the said doctor Alcofribas

Nasier, who will usher him into the adytum through the medium of the high priestess Bacbuc.

Many moons had waxed and waned, when on the afternoon of a lovely summer day a lusty broadboned

knight was riding through the forest of Sherwood. The sun shone brilliantly on the full green foliage, and

afforded the knight a fine opportunity of observing picturesque effects, of which it is to be feared he did not

avail himself. But he had not proceeded far, before he had an opportunity of observing something much more

interesting, namely, a fine young outlaw leaning, in the true Sherwood fashion, with his back against a tree.

The knight was preparing to ask the stranger a question, the answer to which, if correctly given, would have

relieved him from a doubt that pressed heavily on his mind, as to whether he was in the right road or the

wrong, when the youth prevented the inquiry by saying: "In God's name, sir knight, you are late to your

"I doubt," said the knight, "I am not he you wot of. I am no where bidden to day and I know none in this

"We feared," said the youth, "your memory would be treacherous: therefore am I stationed here to refresh it."

"He knows you," answered the youth "as he does every wayfaring knight and friar, by instinct."

"Gramercy," said the knight; "then I understand his bidding: but how if I say I will not come?"

"I am enjoined to bring you," said the youth. "If persuasion avail not, I must use other argument."

"Say'st thou so?" said the knight; "I doubt if thy stripling rhetoric would convince me."

"We are not equally matched, boy," said the knight. "I should get less honour by thy conquest, than grief by

"Perhaps," said the youth, "my strength is more than my seeming, and my cunning more than my strength.

"It shall please my knighthood to chastise thy presumption," said the knight, springing from his saddle.

Hereupon, which in those days was usually the result of a meeting between any two persons anywhere, they

The knight had in an uncommon degree both strength and skill: the forester had less strength, but not less

skill than the knight, and showed such a mastery of his weapon as reduced the latter to great admiration.

They had not fought many minutes by the forest clock, the sun; and had as yet done each other no worse

injury than that the knight had wounded the forester's jerkin, and the forester had disabled the knight's plume;

when they were interrupted by a voice from a thicket, exclaiming, "Well fought, girl: well fought. Mass, that

had nigh been a shrewd hit. Thou owest him for that, lass. Marry, stand by, I'll pay him for thee."

The knight turning to the voice, beheld a tall friar issuing from the thicket, brandishing a ponderous cudgel.

"I am the church militant of Sherwood," answered the friar. "Why art thou in arms against our lady queen?"

"Truly, this," said the friar, "is our liege lady of the forest, against whom I do apprehend thee in overt act of

"I say," answered the knight, "that if this be indeed a lady, man never yet held me so long."

"Spoken," said the friar, "like one who hath done execution. Hast thou thy stomach full of steel? Wilt thou

diversify thy repast with a taste of my oakgraff? Or wilt thou incline thine heart to our venison which truly

is cooling? Wilt thou fight? or wilt thou dine? or wilt thou fight and dine? or wilt thou dine and fight? I am

"I will dine," said the knight; "for with lady I never fought before, and with friar I never fought yet, and with

neither will I ever fight knowingly: and if this be the queen of the forest, I will not, being in her own

So saying, he kissed the hand of Marian, who was pleased most graciously to express her approbation.

"Gramercy, sir knight," said the friar, "I laud thee for thy courtesy, which I deem to be no less than thy

valour. Now do thou follow me, while I follow my nose, which scents the pleasant odour of roast from the

The knight took Marian's hand, and followed the friar, who walked before them, singing:

When the wind blows, when the wind blows From where under buck the dry log glows, What guide can you

They proceeded, following their infallible guide, first along a light elastic greensward under the shade of lofty

and widespreading trees that skirted a sunny opening of the forest, then along labyrinthine paths, which the

deer, the outlaw, or the woodman had made, through the close shoots of the young coppices, through the

thick undergrowth of the ancient woods, through beds of gigantic fern that filled the narrow glades and

waved their green feathery heads above the plume of the knight. Along these sylvan alleys they walked in

single file; the friar singing and pioneering in the van, the horse plunging and floundering behind the friar, the

lady following "in maiden meditation fancy free," and the knight bringing up the rear, much marvelling at the

strange company into which his stars had thrown him. Their path had expanded sufficiently to allow the

knight to take Marian's hand again, when they arrived in the august presence of Robin Hood and his court.

Robin's table was spread under a high overarching canopy of living boughs, on the edge of a natural lawn of

verdure starred with flowers, through which a swift transparent rivulet ran sparkling in the sun. The board

was covered with abundance of choice food and excellent liquor, not without the comeliness of snowwhite

linen and the splendour of costly plate, which the sheriff of Nottingham had unwillingly contributed to

supply, at the same time with an excellent cook, whom Little John's art had spirited away to the forest with

An hundred foresters were here assembled overready for their dinner, some seated at the table and some

Robin bade courteous welcome to the knight, who took his seat between Robin and Marian at the festal

board; at which was already placed one strange guest in the person of a portly monk, sitting between Little

John and Scarlet, with, his rotund physiognomy elongated into an unnatural oval by the conjoint influence of

sorrow and fear: sorrow for the departed contents of his travelling treasury, a goodlooking valise which was

hanging empty on a bough; and fear for his personal safety, of which all the flasks and pasties before him

could not give him assurance. The appearance of the knight, however, cheered him up with a semblance of

protection, and gave him just sufficient courage to demolish a cygnet and a rumblepie, which he diluted

But wine, which sometimes creates and often increases joy, doth also, upon occasion, heighten sorrow: and

so it fared now with our portly monk, who had no sooner explained away his portion of provender, than he

"Why dost thou weep, man?" said Robin Hood. "Thou hast done thine embassy justly, and shalt have thy

"Alack! alack!" said the monk: "no embassy had I, luckless sinner, as well thou wottest, but to take to my

"You well remember," said Robin Hood, "the sorrowful knight who dined with us here twelve months and a

"Well do I," said Friar Tuck. "His lands were in jeopardy with a certain abbot, who would allow him no

longer day for their redemption. Whereupon you lent to him the four hundred pounds which he needed, and

which he was to repay this day, though he had no better security to give than our Lady the Virgin."

"I never desired better," said Robin, "for she never yet failed to send me my pay; and here is one of her own

flock, this faithful and wellfavoured monk of St. Mary's, hath brought it me duly, principal and interest to a

penny, as Little John can testify, who told it forth. To be sure, he denied having it, but that was to prove our

"I know nothing of your knight," said the monk: "and the money was our own, as the Virgin shall bless me."

The monk resumed his wailing. Little John brought him his horse. Robin gave him leave to depart. He sprang

with singular nimbleness into the saddle, and vanished without saying, God give you good day.

"They say, sir knight," said Friar Tuck, "they should laugh who win: but thou laughest who art likely to lose."

"I have won," said the knight, "a good dinner, some mirth, and some knowledge: and I cannot lose by paying

"Bravely said," answered Robin. "Still it becomes thee to pay: for it is not meet that a poor forester should

"Troth, I know not," said the knight. "Sometimes much, sometimes little, sometimes none. But search, and

what thou findest, keep: and for the sake of thy kind heart and open hand, be it what it may, I shall wish it

"Then, since thou sayest so," said Robin, "not a penny will I touch. Many a false churl comes hither, and

disburses against his will: and till there is lack of these, I prey not on true men."

"Thou art thyself a true man, right well I judge, Robin," said the stranger knight, "and seemest more like one

"Our life," said the friar, "is a craft, an art, and a mystery. How much of it, think you, could be learned at

"Indeed, I cannot say," said the stranger knight: "but I should apprehend very little."

"And so should I," said the friar: "for we should find very little of our bold open practice, but should hear

abundance of praise of our principles. To live in seeming fellowship and secret rivalry; to have a hand for all,

and a heart for none; to be everybody's acquaintance, and nobody's friend; to meditate the ruin of all on

whom we smile, and to dread the secret stratagems of all who smile on us; to pilfer honours and despoil

fortunes, not by fighting in daylight, but by sapping in darkness: these are arts which the court can teach, but

which we, by 'r Lady, have not learned. But let your courtminstrel tune up his throat to the praise of your

courthero, then come our principles into play: then is our practice extolled not by the same name, for their

Richard is a hero, and our Robin is a thief: marry, your hero guts an exchequer, while your thief disembowels

a portmanteau, your hero sacks a city, while your thief sacks a cellar: your hero marauds on a larger scale,

and that is all the difference, for the principle and the virtue are one: but two of a trade cannot agree:

therefore your hero makes laws to get rid of your thief, and gives him an ill name that he may hang him: for

might is right, and the strong make laws for the weak, and they that make laws to serve their own turn do also

"Your comparison, friar," said the stranger, "fails in this: that your thief fights for profit, and your hero for

honour. I have fought under the banners of Richard, and if, as you phrase it, he guts exchequers, and sacks

cities, it is not to win treasure for himself, but to furnish forth the means of his greater and more glorious

"Misconceive me not, sir knight," said the friar. "We all love and honour King Richard, and here is a deep

draught to his health: but I would show you, that we foresters are miscalled by opprobrious names, and that

our virtues, though they follow at humble distance, are yet truly akin to those of CoeurdeLion. I say not

that Richard is a thief, but I say that Robin is a hero: and for honour, did ever yet man, miscalled thief, win

greater honour than Robin? Do not all men grace him with some honourable epithet? The most gentle thief,

the most courteous thief, the most bountiful thief, yea, and the most honest thief? Richard is courteous,

bountiful, honest, and valiant: but so also is Robin: it is the false word that makes the unjust distinction. They

are twinspirits, and should be friends, but that fortune hath differently cast their lot: but their names shall

descend together to the latest days, as the flower of their age and of England: for in the pure principles of

freebootery have they excelled all men; and to the principles of freebootery, diversely developed, belong all

"And you may add, friar," said Marian, "that Robin, no less than Richard, is king in his own dominion; and

"I would, fair lady," said the stranger, "that thy latter observation were not so true. But I nothing doubt,

Robin, that if Richard could hear your friar, and see you and your lady, as I now do, there is not a man in

"Gramercy, sir knight," said Robin But his speech was cut short by Little John calling, "Hark!"

All listened. A distant trampling of horses was heard. The sounds approached rapidly, and at length a group

"No arms, Robin," said the foremost horseman, riding up and springing from his saddle: "have you forgotten

Little John bustled to rearray the disorganised economy of the table, and replace the dilapidations of the

"I come late, Robin," said Sir William, "but I came by a wrestling, where I found a good yeoman wrongfully

"I thank thee for that, in God's name," said Robin, "as if thy good service had been to myself."

"And here," said the knight, "is thy four hundred pound; and my men have brought thee an hundred bows and

as many wellfurnished quivers; which I beseech thee to receive and to use as a poor token of my grateful

kindness to thee: for me and my wife and children didst thou redeem from beggary."

"Thy bows and arrows," said Robin, "will I joyfully receive: but of thy money, not a penny. It is paid already.

"It is paid," said Robin, "as this good knight can testify, who saw my Lady's messenger depart but now."

Sir William looked round to the stranger knight, and instantly fell on his knee, saying, "God save King

The foresters, friar and all, dropped on their knees together, and repeated in chorus: "God save King

"Rise, rise," said Richard, smiling: "Robin is king here, as his lady hath shown. I have heard much of thee,

Robin, both of thy present and thy former state. And this, thy fair forestqueen, is, if tales say true, the lady

"Your father," said the king, "has approved his fidelity to me, by the loss of his lands, which the newness of

my return, and many public cares, have not yet given me time to restore: but this justice shall be done to him,

and to thee also, Robin, if thou wilt leave thy forestlife and resume thy earldom, and be a peer of

"Your followers," said the king, "shall have free pardon, and such of them as thou wilt part with shall have

maintenance from me; and if ever I confess to priest, it shall be to thy friar."

"Gramercy to your majesty," said the friar; "and my inflictions shall be flasks of canary; and if the number be

(as in grave cases I may, peradventure, make it) too great for one frail mortality, I will relieve you by

Robin and his followers embraced the king's proposal. A joyful meeting soon followed with the baron and Sir

Guy of Gamwell: and Richard himself honoured with his own presence a formal solemnization of the nuptials

The friar could not say, Farewell to the forest, without something of a heavy heart: and he sang as he turned

Ye woods, that oft at sultry noon Have o'er me spread your messy shade: Ye gushing streams, whose

murmured tune Has in my ear sweet music made, While, where the dancing pebbles show Deep in the

restless fountainpool The gelid water's upward flow, My second flask was laid to cool:

Ye pleasant sights of leaf and flower: Ye pleasant sounds of bird and bee: Ye sports of deer in sylvan bower:

Ye feasts beneath the greenwood tree: Ye baskings in the vernal sun: Ye slumbers in the summer dell: Ye

But the friar's farewell was not destined to be eternal. He was domiciled as the family confessor of the earl

and countess of Huntingdon, who led a discreet and courtly life, and kept up old hospitality in all its

munificence, till the death of King Richard and the usurpation of John, by placing their enemy in power,

compelled them to return to their greenwood sovereignty; which, it is probable, they would have before done

from choice, if their love of sylvan liberty had not been counteracted by their desire to retain the friendship of

CoeurdeLion. Their old and tried adherents, the friar among the foremost, flocked again round their

forestbanner; and in merry Sherwood they long lived together, the lady still retaining her former name of

Maid Marian, though the appellation was then as much a misnomer as that of Little John.