“Weary of the Wood-sideAnd chasing of the fallow deer,”
“Weary of the Wood-sideAnd chasing of the fallow deer,”
“Weary of the Wood-sideAnd chasing of the fallow deer,”
“Weary of the Wood-side
And chasing of the fallow deer,”
tried his fortunes at sea. They had two ballads at least that varied old themes of theGeste, “Robin Hood and the Bishop” and “The King’s Disguise”. And Little John was their friend,—not of course, the old Little John who praised the season in the words of a poet; but “A jolly brisk blade right fit for the trade”, more like the scapegrace in a popular “History”.
Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1749, gave a mere collection of stories for the sequence of theGeste, and many chap-books copied it in prose; but a rough cadence is better than none, and Robin Hood was first praised in a ballad.
The chap-books, indeed, were no more than the dead leaves of romance; it took the vivid play of a child’s fancy to revive them; but whatever the ballad-maker touched,—fairy tale or legend or history,—he made a new thing of it: a story to sing or tell, but short enough to be sung or told many times over.