Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/58

 50 have known the courtly and harmonious verse which Chaucer had invented and made fashionable even as far as remote Scotland, neglected or rather disdained it for the rough old-fashioned metre of Robert of Gloucester, always a favourite with the less cultivated portion of the people of England. No Robin Hood writer would have deliberately chosen such a vehicle for his thoughts if it had not been radically English (in the vulgar sense of the word) and intensely popular both with the masses and those who approximated to them in feelings and prejudices. This poem, in its cold-blooded lawlessness, leaves even the Lytel Geste far behind. Its hatred of the monks and the higher clergy is extraordinary. Gamelin, the hero of the poem, is made to say with the fullest approval of his followers:—

After this speech he and his following assail (breaking legs and arms) all the clergy assembled in his brother's hall, and these are not mere parish priests but "abbot, piior, monk, and canon."

Dominated by the feeling of their leader, these men then take to the wood, where they find a company of seven score outlaws, and are conducted by them into the presence of the "master outlaw." The latter (also called "King of Outlaws") is not slow to propound to the new comers his own principle of action, and also interrogates Gamelin, who thus answers with appropriate readiness:—

Gamelin is made lieutenant of the gang, and shortly afterwards, tidings coming that the chief has been pardoned by the king, he is elected by the outlaws to take his place.

On Gamelin presenting himself at the next quarter sessions, his elder brother, who is high sheriff, commits him to prison as "wolf's head," but he is straightway bailed by a third brother, Sir Ote, who undertakes to produce him for trial at the next assizes.

Gamelin then revisits the wood and finds his "merry men" much