Table Of ContentTable of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
PREFACE·
PART FIRST.
I. - Robin Hood and the Tinker.
II. - The Shooting-Match at Nottingham Town.
III. - Will Stutely rescued by his Good Companions.
PART SECOND.
I. - Robin Hood turns Butcher.
II. - Little John goes to the Fair at Nottingham Town.
III. - How Little John lived at the Sheriffs House.
PART THIRD.
I. - Little John and the Tanner of Blyth.
II. - Robin Hood and Will Scarlet.
III. - The Merry Adventure with Midge the Miller.
PART FOURTH.
I. - Robin Hood and Allan a Dale.
II. - Robin seeketh the Curtal Friar of the Fountain.
III. - Robin Hood compasseth the Marriage of Two True Lovers.
PART FIFTH.
I. - Robin Hood aideth a Sorrowful Knight.
II. - How Sir Richard of the Lea paid his Debts to Emmet.
PART SIXTH.
I. - Little John turns Barefoot Friar.
II. - Robin Hood turns Beggar.
PART SEVENTH.
I. - Robin and Three of his Merry Men shoot before Queen Eleanor in Finsbury
Fields.
II. - The Chase of Robin Hood.
PART EIGHTH.
I. - Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne.
II. - King Richard cometh to Sherwood Forest.
AFTERWORD
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
From the time he was a very small boy, Howard Pyle (1853-1911) loved
pictures, especially the pictures in storybooks. At the age of twenty-one, Pyle
began to contribute illustrations and fables to St. Nicholas magazine and later
went on to write and illustrate books for children. His first successful title was
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883). Many more books followed,
including Pepper and Salt; or, Seasoning for Young Folk, Otto of the Silver
Hand, Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, and The Story of King Arthur and His
Knights. He also taught illustration at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia and
later set up his own art school in Wilmington, Delaware.
Stephen Knight is Distinguished Research Professor in English Literature at
Cardiff University, Wales. Educated at the University of Oxford and the
University of Sydney, he has written widely on medieval and modern literature,
especially on the tradition of Robin Hood. His most recent book is Robin Hood:
A Mythical Biography.
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First Signet Classics Printing, January 1985
First Signet Classics Printing (Knight Afterword), September 2006
Afterword copyright © Stephen Knight, 2006
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PREFACE·
From the Author to the Reader.
YOU who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to give yourself up
even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you
who think that life hath nought to do with innocent laughter that can harm no
one; these pages are not for you. Clap to the leaves and go no farther than this,
for I tell you plainly that if you go farther you will be scandalized by seeing
good, sober folks of real history so frisk and caper in gay colors and motley, that
you would not know them but for the names tagged to them. Here is a stout, lusty
fellow with a quick temper, yet none so ill for all that, who goes by the name of
Henry II. Here is a fair, gentle lady before whom all the others bow and call her
Queen Eleanor. Here is a fat rogue of a fellow, dressed up in rich robes of a
clerical kind, that all the good folk call my Lord Bishop of Hereford. Here is a
certain fellow with a sour temper and a grim look—the worshipful, the Sheriff of
Nottingham. And here, above all, is a great, tall, merry fellow that roams the
greenwood and joins in homely sports, and sits beside the Sheriff at merry feast,
which same beareth the name of the proudest of the Plantagenets—Richard of
the Lion’s Heart. Beside these there are a whole host of knights, priests, nobles,
burghers, yeomen, pages, ladies, lasses, landlords, beggars, pedlers, and what
not, all living the merriest of merry lives, and all bound by nothing but a few odd
strands of certain old ballads (snipped and clipped and tied together again in a
score of knots) which draw these jocund fellows here and there, singing as they
go.
Here you will find a hundred dull, sober, jogging places, all tricked out with
flowers and what not, till no one would know them in their fanciful dress. And
here is a country bearing a well-known name, wherein no chill mists press upon
our spirits, and no rain falls but what rolls off our backs like April showers off
the backs of sleek drakes; where flowers bloom forever and birds are always
singing; where every fellow hath a merry catch as he travels the roads, and ale
and beer and wine (such as muddle no wits) flow like water in a brook.
