Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript (British Library Additional MS 71158)

402 Pages·1998·1.13 MB·English

by  Hilton Kelliher

Robin Hood : The Forresters Manuscript,
title:
British Library Additional MS 71158
author: Knight, Stephen Thomas.
publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
isbn10 | asin: 0859914364
print isbn13: 9780859914369
ebook isbn13: 9780585162867
language: English
Robin Hood (Legendary character)--Poetry,
Manuscripts, English--England--London,
subject
Ballads, English--Criticism, Textual,
Forresters manuscript, Outlaws--Poetry.
publication date: 1998
lcc: PR2125.F67 1998eb
ddc: 821/.04408351
Robin Hood (Legendary character)--Poetry,
Manuscripts, English--England--London,
subject:
Ballads, English--Criticism, Textual,
Forresters manuscript, Outlaws--Poetry.
Page iii
Robin Hood
The Forresters Manuscript
British Library Additional MS 71158
Edited by
Stephen Knight
with a manuscript description by
Hilton Kelliher
Curator of Western Manuscripts at the British Library
D. S. BREWER
Page iv
Editorial Matter © Stephen Knight 1998
Description of the Manuscript © Hilton Kelliher 1998
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 1998
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 0 85991 436 4
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126, USA
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Forresters manuscript.
Robin Hood: the Forresters manuscript (British Library Additional
MS 71158) / edited by Stephen Knight; with a manuscript description
by Hilton Kelliher.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
ISBN 0-85991-436-4 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Robin Hood (Legendary character) Poetry. 2. Manuscripts,
English England London. 3. Ballads, English Criticism, Textual.
4. Forresters manuscript. 5. Middle Ages Poetry. 6. Outlaws
Poetry. I. Knight, Stephen. II. Kelliher, Hilton. III. Robin
Hood (Legend) IV. Title.
PR2125.F67 1998
821'.04408351 dc21 97-
30543
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St
Edmunds, Suffolk
Page v
Contents
List of Plates vii
Preface ix
General Introduction xi
Description of the Manuscript by Hilton Kelliher xxii
Note on the Text xxvii
Note on the Context xxix
Texts:
1. Robin Hood and the Forresters 1 1
2. Robin Hood and the Bride 6
3. Robin Hood and the Old Wife 10
4. Robin Hoods Fishing 16
5. Robin Hood and the Sheriffe 23
6. Robin Hood and the Sheapard 34
7. Robin Hood and Bishopp 38
8. Robin Hood and the Butcher 44
9. Robin Hood and Queen Catherin 52
10A. Robin Hood and the Pinder of Wakefield 1 62
10B. Robin Hood and the Pinder of Wakefield 2 68
11. Robin Hood and the Fryer 71
12. Robin Hood and the Preists 77
13. Robin Hood and the Begger 81
14. Robin Hood and the Tincker 86
15. Robin Hood and Will Scathlock 92
16. Robin Hood and the Stranger 98
17. Robin Hood and the King 105
18. Robin Hood and the Tanner 117
19. Robin Hoods Chace 123
Page vi
20. Little Johns Begging 127
21. Robin Hood and the Forresters 2 131
Notes 135
Bibliography 167
Glossary 168
Page vii
Plates
British Library Additional MS 71158:
1. Table of Contents, f. 2 xiii
2. Robin Hood and the Butcher, f. 28 xxv
Page ix
Preface
Ever since the publication in 1888 of the fifth part of Francis James
Child's great collection of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads,
anyone who has wanted to read, analyse or teach the Robin Hood
ballads has studied the thirty-eight texts which Child presented, many
of them in variant versions. Robin Hood scholarship has mused over
issues like the historicity of the hero, the origin and audience of the
ballads, their variation between fierce banditry and cheerful
entertainment, but scholars did not feel the need to engage in textual
matters; the quality and completeness of Child's work seemed to have
resolved that matter forever. A reasonable view: when for Robin Hood
and Other Outlaw Tales (Knight and Ohlgren, 1997) the Child texts
were recollated there emerged only a tiny number of errors and no
more than a few instances where Child's interpretation of the material
could be questioned.
But even such solidity can be moved by the seismic emergence of new
forces. In 1993 the Forresters manuscript was discovered at an auction
house by A.R. Heath, a Bristol bookseller, was sold to Quaritch, the
London book-dealer, and then came to rest at the British Library.
The manuscript contains nothing but Robin Hood ballads, twenty
different ones and two versions of Robin Hood and the Pinder of
Wakefield. Some of these show only minor editorial or scribal
variation from ballads already known, but at least two, Robin Hoods
Fishing and Robin Hood and Queen Catherin, are better and fuller
copies of ballads in Child apparently from a source which had not
been reduced to fit the broadside form. Some of the other texts are
substantially variant from familiar versions, like Robin Hood and the
Old Wife, Robin Hood and the Butcher and Robin Hood and the
Pinder 1. Three other Forresters ballads were even further distanced