Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/60

52 not, the proceedings of the poetic robber chief began to be regarded through a prism of indulgence which gradually amounted to real favour. Of this new aspect the Pepysian collection is a good exponent. In these ballads Robin Hood is no longer a yeoman, he is Earl of Huntingdon (see A True Tale of Robin Hood). Before then grave historians like Grafton had already written seriously of his "nobility," though they admit it to have been under a cloud. The legend itself thus came to be regarded as the indigenous Arcadian romance of England. The reforming bishop Latimer has recorded how chagrined he felt on May Day on finding that the holiday-making rustics of an English village, whom he desired to edify by a homily of his own confection, much preferred breathing the sweet air of their meadows as "Robin Hood's men" to hearing the bishop's projected discourse, however redolent it might be of the Wartburg or Zurich.

In fact the poetic genius displayed in these ballads had made them overshoot their original mark; and the English public, high and low? had ended by ignoring their evil intention, and loving them for their rural allusions and scenery. So Henry VIII. and his courtiers masqueraded at Shooter's Hill as Robin Hood and his men, and Shakespeare in As You Like It affected to believe that the legend commemorated the golden age of Britain.

SOME FOLK-LORE OF THE SEA.

AMES given to the sea are:—

The Haddock Peel (Pool);

The Herring Peel;

The Herring Pond.

"To send one across the Haddock Peel" means to banish one.—(Keith.)