"How like you my horn'd beasts, good master sheriff?
They be fat and fair for to see;"
"I tell thee, good fellow, I would I were gone,
For I like not thy company."
Then Robin set his horn to his mouth,
And blew but blasts three;
Then quickly anon there came Little John,
And all his company.
"What is your will, master?" then said Little John,
"Good master come tell unto me;"
"I have brought hither the sheriff of Nottingham
This day to dine with thee."
"He is welcome to me," then said Little John,
"I hope he will honestly pay;
I know he has gold, if it be but well told,
Will serve us to drink a whole day."
Then Robin took his mantle from his back,
And laid it upon the ground:
And out of the sheriffs portmantle
He told three hundred pound.
Then Robin he brought him thorow the wood,
And set him on his dapple gray;
"O have me commanded to your wife at home;"
So Robin went laughing away.
NOTES
SIR PATRICK SPENS
Mr. Child finds the first published version of "the grand old
ballad of Sir Patrick Spens," as Coleridge calls it, in Bishop
Percy's Reliques. Here the name is "Spence," and the middle rhyme-
-
"Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,"
is not of early date. The "Cork-heeled Shoon," too, cannot be
early, but ballads are subject, in oral tradition, to such modern
interpolations. The verse about the ladies waiting vainly is
anticipated in a popular song of the fourteenth century, on a
defeat of the noblesse in Flanders--
"Their ladies them may abide in bower and hall well long!"
If there be historical foundation for the ballad, it is probably a
blending of the voyage of Margaret, daughter of Alexander III.
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