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diff --git a/old/maidm10.txt b/old/maidm10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e6544ab --- /dev/null +++ b/old/maidm10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4527 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Etext of Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock + + + + + +Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software + + + + + +MAID MARIAN + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +Now come ye for peace here, or come ye for war? SCOTT. + + +"The abbot, in his alb arrayed," stood at the altar in the abbey-chapel +of Rubygill, with all his plump, sleek, rosy friars, in goodly lines disposed, +to solemnise the nuptials of the beautiful Matilda Fitzwater, daughter of +the Baron of Arlingford, with the noble Robert Fitz-Ooth, Earl of Locksley +and Huntingdon. The abbey of Rubygill stood in a picturesque valley, +at a little distance from the western boundary of Sherwood Forest, in a spot +which seemed adapted by nature to be the retreat of monastic mortification, +being on the banks of a fine trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland +coverts, abounding with excellent game. The bride, with her father +and attendant maidens, entered the chapel; but the earl had not arrived. +The baron was amazed, and the bridemaidens were disconcerted. +Matilda feared that some evil had befallen her lover, but felt no diminution +of her confidence in his honour and love. Through the open gates of the +chapel she looked down the narrow road that wound along the side of the hill; +and her ear was the first that heard the distant trampling of horses, +and her eye was the first that caught the glitter of snowy plumes, +and the light of polished spears. "It is strange," thought the baron, +"that the earl should come in this martial array to his wedding;" +but he had not long to meditate on the phenomenon, for the foaming steeds +swept up to the gate like a whirlwind, and the earl, breathless with speed, +and followed by a few of his yeomen, advanced to his smiling bride. +It was then no time to ask questions, for the organ was in full peal, +and the choristers were in full voice. + +The abbot began to intone the ceremony in a style of modulation impressively +exalted, his voice issuing most canonically from the roof of his mouth, +through the medium of a very musical nose newly tuned for the occasion. +But he had not proceeded far enough to exhibit all the variety and compass +of this melodious instrument, when a noise was heard at the gate, and a party +of armed men entered the chapel. The song of the choristers died away +in a shake of demisemiquavers, contrary to all the rules of psalmody. +The organ-blower, who was working his musical air-pump with one hand, +and with two fingers and a thumb of the other insinuating a peeping-place +through the curtain of the organ-gallery, was struck motionless by the +double operation of curiosity and fear; while the organist, intent only +on his performance, and spreading all his fingers to strike a swell +of magnificent chords, felt his harmonic spirit ready to desert his body +on being answered by the ghastly rattle of empty keys, and in the consequent +agitato furioso of the internal movements of his feelings, was preparing +to restore harmony by the segue subito of an appoggiatura con foco with +the corner of a book of anthems on the head of his neglectful assistant, +when his hand and his attention together were arrested by the scene below. +The voice of the abbot subsided into silence through a descending scale +of long-drawn melody, like the sound of the ebbing sea to the explorers +of a cave. In a few moments all was silence, interrupted only by the iron +tread of the armed intruders, as it rang on the marble floor and echoed +from the vaulted aisles. + +The leader strode up to the altar; and placing himself opposite to the abbot, +and between the earl and Matilda, in such a manner that the four together +seemed to stand on the four points of a diamond, exclaimed, "In the name +of King Henry, I forbid the ceremony, and attach Robert Earl of Huntingdon as +a traitor!" and at the same time he held his drawn sword between the lovers, +as if to emblem that royal authority which laid its temporal ban upon +their contract. The earl drew his own sword instantly, and struck down +the interposing weapon; then clasped his left arm round Matilda, who sprang +into his embrace, and held his sword before her with his right hand. +His yeomen ranged themselves at his side, and stood with their swords drawn, +still and prepared, like men determined to die in his defence. +The soldiers, confident in superiority of numbers, paused. The abbot took +advantage of the pause to introduce a word of exhortation. "My children," +said he, "if you are going to cut each other's throats, I entreat you, +in the name of peace and charity, to do it out of the chapel." + +"Sweet Matilda," said the earl, "did you give your love to +the Earl of Huntingdon, whose lands touch the Ouse and the Trent, +or to Robert Fitz-Ooth, the son of his mother?" + +"Neither to the earl nor his earldom," answered Matilda firmly, +"but to Robert Fitz-Ooth and his love." + +"That I well knew," said the earl; "and though the ceremony +be incomplete, we are not the less married in the eye +of my only saint, our Lady, who will yet bring us together. +Lord Fitzwater, to your care, for the present, I commit +your daughter.--Nay, sweet Matilda, part we must for a while; +but we will soon meet under brighter skies, and be this the seal +of our faith." + +He kissed Matilda's lips, and consigned her to the baron, who glowered +about him with an expression of countenance that showed he was mortally +wroth with somebody; but whatever he thought or felt he kept to himself. +The earl, with a sign to his followers, made a sudden charge +on the soldiers, with the intention of cutting his way through. +The soldiers were prepared for such an occurrence, and a desperate +skirmish succeeded. Some of the women screamed, but none of them fainted; +for fainting was not so much the fashion in those days, when the ladies +breakfasted on brawn and ale at sunrise, as in our more refined age +of green tea and muffins at noon. Matilda seemed disposed to fly again +to her lover, but the baron forced her from the chapel. The earl's +bowmen at the door sent in among the assailants a volley of arrows, +one of which whizzed past the ear of the abbot, who, in mortal fear +of being suddenly translated from a ghostly friar into a friarly ghost, +began to roll out of the chapel as fast as his bulk and his holy robes +would permit, roaring "Sacrilege!" with all his monks at his heels, +who were, like himself, more intent to go at once than to stand upon +the order of their going. The abbot, thus pressed from behind, +and stumbling over his own drapery before, fell suddenly prostrate +in the door-way that connected the chapel with the abbey, +and was instantaneously buried under a pyramid of ghostly carcasses, +that fell over him and each other, and lay a rolling chaos of +animated rotundities, sprawling and bawling in unseemly disarray, +and sending forth the names of all the saints in and out of heaven, +amidst the clashing of swords, the ringing of bucklers, the clattering +of helmets, the twanging of bow-strings, the whizzing of arrows, +the screams of women, the shouts of the warriors, and the vociferations +of the peasantry, who had been assembled to the intended nuptials, +and who, seeing a fair set-to, contrived to pick a quarrel among +themselves on the occasion, and proceeded, with staff and cudgel, +to crack each other's skulls for the good of the king and the earl. +One tall friar alone was untouched by the panic of his brethren, +and stood steadfastly watching the combat with his arms a-kembo, +the colossal emblem of an unarmed neutrality. + +At length, through the midst of the internal confusion, the earl, +by the help of his good sword, the staunch valour of his men, +and the blessing of the Virgin, fought his way to the chapel-gate-- +his bowmen closed him in--he vaulted into his saddle, clapped spurs to +his horse, rallied his men on the first eminence, and exchanged his sword +for a bow and arrow, with which he did old execution among the pursuers, +who at last thought it most expedient to desist from offensive warfare, +and to retreat into the abbey, where, in the king's name, they broached +a pipe of the best wine, and attached all the venison in the larder, +having first carefully unpacked the tuft of friars, and set the fallen +abbot on his legs. + +The friars, it may be well supposed, and such of the king's men +as escaped unhurt from the affray, found their spirits a cup too low, +and kept the flask moving from noon till night. The peaceful brethren, +unused to the tumult of war, had undergone, from fear and discomposure, +an exhaustion of animal spirits that required extraordinary refection. +During the repast, they interrogated Sir Ralph Montfaucon, the leader +of the soldiers, respecting the nature of the earl's offence. + +"A complication of offences," replied Sir Ralph, "superinduced on the original +basis of forest-treason. He began with hunting the king's deer, in despite +of all remonstrance; followed it up by contempt of the king's mandates, +and by armed resistance to his power, in defiance of all authority; +and combined with it the resolute withholding of payment of certain moneys +to the abbot of Doncaster, in denial of all law; and has thus made himself the +declared enemy of church and state, and all for being too fond of venison." +And the knight helped himself to half a pasty. + +"A heinous offender," said a little round oily friar, +appropriating the portion of pasty which Sir Ralph had left. + +"The earl is a worthy peer," said the tall friar whom we have already +mentioned in the chapel scene, "and the best marksman in England." + +"Why this is flat treason, brother Michael," said the little round friar, +"to call an attainted traitor a worthy peer." + +"I pledge you," said brother Michael. The little friar +smiled and filled his cup. "He will draw the long bow," +pursued brother Michael, "with any bold yeoman among them all." + +"Don't talk of the long bow," said the abbot, who had the sound +of the arrow still whizzing in his ear: "what have we pillars +of the faith to do with the long bow?" + +"Be that as it may," said Sir Ralph, "he is an outlaw from this moment." + +"So much the worse for the law then," said brother Michael. "The law +will have a heavier miss of him than he will have of the law. +He will strike as much venison as ever, and more of other game. +I know what I say: but basta: Let us drink." + +"What other game?" said the little friar. "I hope he won't poach +among our partridges." + +"Poach! not he," said brother Michael: "if he wants your partridges, +he will strike them under your nose (here's to you), and drag your +trout-stream for you on a Thursday evening." + +"Monstrous! and starve us on fast-day," said the little friar. + +"But that is not the game I mean," said brother Michael. + +"Surely, son Michael," said the abbot, "you do not mean to insinuate +that the noble earl will turn freebooter?" + +"A man must live," said brother Michael, "earl or no. If the law +takes his rents and beeves without his consent, he must take beeves +and rents where he can get them without the consent of the law. +This is the lex talionis." + +"Truly," said Sir Ralph, "I am sorry for the damsel: +she seems fond of this wild runagate." + +"A mad girl, a mad girl," said the little friar. + +"How a mad girl?" said brother Michael. "Has she not beauty, +grace, wit, sense, discretion, dexterity, learning, and valour?" + +"Learning!" exclaimed the little friar; "what has a woman to do +with learning? And valour! who ever heard a woman commended for valour? +Meekness and mildness, and softness, and gentleness, and tenderness, +and humility, and obedience to her husband, and faith in her confessor, +and domesticity, or, as learned doctors call it, the faculty +of stayathomeitiveness, and embroidery, and music, and pickling, +and preserving, and the whole complex and multiplex detail of +the noble science of dinner, as well in preparation for the table, +as in arrangement over it, and in distribution around it to knights, +and squires, and ghostly friars,--these are female virtues: +but valour--why who ever heard----?" + +"She is the all in all," said brother Michael, "gentle as a ring-dove, +yet high-soaring as a falcon: humble below her deserving, +yet deserving beyond the estimate of panegyric: an exact economist +in all superfluity, yet a most bountiful dispenser in all liberality: +the chief regulator of her household, the fairest pillar of +her hall, and the sweetest blossom of her bower: having, in all +opposite proposings, sense to understand, judgment to weigh, +discretion to choose, firmness to undertake, diligence to conduct, +perseverance to accomplish, and resolution to maintain. +For obedience to her husband, that is not to be tried till she has one: +for faith in her confessor, she has as much as the law prescribes: +for embroidery an Arachne: for music a Siren: and for pickling +and preserving, did not one of her jars of sugared apricots give +you your last surfeit at Arlingford Castle?" + +"Call you that preserving?" said the little friar; "I call it destroying. +Call you it pickling? Truly it pickled me. My life was saved by miracle." + +"By canary," said brother Michael. "Canary is the only life preserver, +the true aurum potabile, the universal panacea for all diseases, thirst, +and short life. Your life was saved by canary." + +"Indeed, reverend father," said Sir Ralph, "if the young +lady be half what you describe, she must be a paragon: +but your commending her for valour does somewhat amaze me." + +"She can fence," said the little friar, "and draw the long bow, +and play at singlestick and quarter-staff." + +"Yet mark you," said brother Michael, "not like a virago or a hoyden, +or one that would crack a serving-man's head for spilling gravy on her ruff, +but with such womanly grace and temperate self-command as if those manly +exercises belonged to her only, and were become for her sake feminine." + +"You incite me," said Sir Ralph, "to view her more nearly. +That madcap earl found me other employment than to remark her +in the chapel." + +"The earl is a worthy peer," said brother Michael; "he is worth +any fourteen earls on this side Trent, and any seven on the other." +(The reader will please to remember that Rubygill Abbey was +north of Trent.) + +"His mettle will be tried," said Sir Ralph. "There is many a courtier +will swear to King Henry to bring him in dead or alive." + +"They must look to the brambles then," said brother Michael. + + "The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble, + Doth make a jest + Of silken vest, + That will through greenwood scramble: + The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble." + + +"Plague on your lungs, son Michael," said the abbot; "this is your old coil: +always roaring in your cups." + +"I know what I say," said brother Michael; "there is often more sense +in an old song than in a new homily. + + The courtly pad doth amble, + When his gay lord would ramble: + But both may catch + An awkward scratch, + If they ride among the bramble: + The bramble, the bramble, the bonny forest bramble." + + +"Tall friar," said Sir Ralph, "either you shoot the shafts of your merriment +at random, or you know more of the earl's designs than beseems your frock." + +"Let my frock," said brother Michael, "answer for its own sins. +It is worn past covering mine. It is too weak for a shield, +too transparent for a screen, too thin for a shelter, +too light for gravity, and too threadbare for a jest. +The wearer would be naught indeed who should misbeseem such +a wedding garment. + + But wherefore does the sheep wear wool? + That he in season sheared may be, + And the shepherd be warm though his flock be cool: + So I'll have a new cloak about me." + + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Vray moyne si oncques en feut depuis que le monde moynant moyna +de moynerie.--RABELAIS. + + +The Earl of Huntingdon, living in the vicinity of a royal forest, +and passionately attached to the chase from his infancy, +had long made as free with the king's deer as Lord Percy +proposed to do with those of Lord Douglas in the memorable +hunting of Cheviot. It is sufficiently well known how severe +were the forest-laws in those days, and with what jealousy +the kings of England maintained this branch of their prerogative; +but menaces and remonstrances were thrown away on the earl, +who declared that he would not thank Saint Peter for admission +into Paradise, if he were obliged to leave his bow and hounds +at the gate. King Henry (the Second) swore by Saint Botolph +to make him rue his sport, and, having caused him to be duly +and formally accused, summoned him to London to answer the charge. +The earl, deeming himself safer among his own vassals than +among king Henry's courtiers, took no notice of the mandate. +King Henry sent a force to bring him, vi et armis, to court. +The earl made a resolute resistance, and put the king's force +to flight under a shower of arrows: an act which the courtiers +declared to be treason. At the same time, the abbot of Doncaster +sued up the payment of certain moneys, which the earl, +whose revenue ran a losing race with his hospitality, +had borrowed at sundry times of the said abbot: for the abbots +and the bishops were the chief usurers of those days, and, +as the end sanctifies the means, were not in the least scrupulous +of employing what would have been extortion in the profane, +to accomplish the pious purpose of bringing a blessing on the land +by rescuing it from the frail hold of carnal and temporal +into the firmer grasp of ghostly and spiritual possessors. +But the earl, confident in the number and attachment of +his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money, +which he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not: +a refusal which in those days was an act of outlawry in a gentleman, +as it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman +having in our wiser times a more liberal privilege of gentility, +which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor. +Thus the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot +concurred to subject the earl to the penalties of outlawry, +by which the abbot would gain his due upon the lands +of Locksley, and the rest would be confiscate to the king. +Still the king did not think it advisable to assail the earl +in his own strong-hold, but caused a diligent watch +to be kept over his motions, till at length his rumoured +marriage with the heiress of Arlingford seemed to point +out an easy method of laying violent hands on the offender. +Sir Ralph Montfaucon, a young man of good lineage and of an +aspiring temper, who readily seized the first opportunity +that offered of recommending himself to King Henry's favour +by manifesting his zeal in his service, undertook the charge: +and how he succeeded we have seen. + +Sir Ralph's curiosity was strongly excited by the friar's description +of the young lady of Arlingford; and he prepared in the morning +to visit the castle, under the very plausible pretext of giving +the baron an explanation of his intervention at the nuptials. +Brother Michael and the little fat friar proposed to be his guides. +The proposal was courteously accepted, and they set out together, +leaving Sir Ralph's followers at the abbey. The knight was mounted +on a spirited charger; brother Michael on a large heavy-trotting horse; +and the little fat friar on a plump soft-paced galloway, +so correspondent with himself in size, rotundity, and sleekness, +that if they had been amalgamated into a centaur, there would +have been nothing to alter in their proportions. + +"Do you know," said the little friar, as they wound along the banks +of the stream, "the reason why lake-trout is better than river-trout, +and shyer withal?" + +"I was not aware of the fact," said Sir Ralph. + +"A most heterodox remark," said brother Michael: "know you not, +that in all nice matters you should take the implication for absolute, +and, without looking into the FACT WHETHER, seek only the reason why? +But the fact is so, on the word of a friar; which what layman will venture +to gainsay who prefers a down bed to a gridiron?" + +"The fact being so," said the knight, "I am still at a loss for the reason; +nor would I undertake to opine in a matter of that magnitude: since, in all +that appertains to the good things either of this world or the next, +my reverend spiritual guides are kind enough to take the trouble of thinking +off my hands." + +"Spoken," said brother Michael, "with a sound Catholic conscience. +My little brother here is most profound in the matter of trout. +He has marked, learned, and inwardly digested the subject, twice a +week at least for five-and-thirty years. I yield to him in this. +My strong points are venison and canary." + +"The good qualities of a trout," said the little friar, +"are firmness and redness: the redness, indeed, being the visible +sign of all other virtues." + +"Whence," said brother Michael, "we choose our abbot by his nose: + + The rose on the nose doth all virtues disclose: + For the outward grace shows + That the inward overflows, + When it glows in the rose of a red, red nose." + + +"Now," said the little friar, "as is the firmness so is the redness, +and as is the redness so is the shyness." + +"Marry why?" said brother Michael. "The solution is not physical-natural, +but physical-historical, or natural-superinductive. And thereby hangs a tale, +which may be either said or sung: + + The damsel stood to watch the fight + By the banks of Kingslea Mere, + And they brought to her feet her own true knight + Sore-wounded on a bier. + + She knelt by him his wounds to bind, + She washed them with many a tear: + And shouts rose fast upon the wind, + Which told that the foe was near. + + "Oh! let not," he said, "while yet I live, + The cruel foe me take: + But with thy sweet lips a last kiss give, + And cast me in the lake." + + Around his neck she wound her arms, + And she kissed his lips so pale: + And evermore the war's alarms + Came louder up the vale. + + She drew him to the lake's steep side, + Where the red heath fringed the shore; + She plunged with him beneath the tide, + And they were seen no more. + + Their true blood mingled in Kingslea Mere, + That to mingle on earth was fain: + And the trout that swims in that crystal clear + Is tinged with the crimson stain. + + +"Thus you see how good comes of evil, and how a holy friar may fare +better on fast-day for the violent death of two lovers two hundred +years ago. The inference is most consecutive, that wherever you +catch a red-fleshed trout, love lies bleeding under the water: +an occult quality, which can only act in the stationary waters of a lake, +being neutralised by the rapid transition of those of a stream." + +"And why is the trout shyer for that?" asked Sir Ralph. + +"Do you not see?" said brother Michael. "The virtues of both +lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion +of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: +the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: +and you shall find through life, the fish which is most +easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are +the towers of Arlingford." + +The little friar stopped. He seemed suddenly struck with an awful thought, +which caused a momentary pallescence in his rosy complexion; and after +a brief hesitation, he turned his galloway, and told his companions +he should give them good day. + +"Why, what is in the wind now, brother Peter?" said Friar Michael. + +"The lady Matilda," said the little friar, "can draw the long-bow. She +must bear no goodwill to Sir Ralph; and if she should espy him from +her tower, she may testify her recognition with a cloth-yard shaft. +She is not so infallible a markswoman, but that she might shoot at a crow +and kill a pigeon. She might peradventure miss the knight, and hit me, +who never did her any harm." + +"Tut, tut, man," said brother Michael, "there is no such fear." + +"Mass," said the little friar, "but there is such a fear, +and very strong too. You who have it not may keep your way, +and I who have it shall take mine. I am not just now in the vein +for being picked off at a long shot." And saying these words, +he spurred up his four-footed better half, and galloped off +as nimbly as if he had had an arrow singing behind him. + +"Is this lady Matilda, then, so very terrible a damsel?" +said Sir Ralph to brother Michael. + +"By no means," said the friar. "She has certainly a high spirit; +but it is the wing of the eagle, without his beak or his claw. +She is as gentle as magnanimous; but it is the gentleness of the +summer wind, which, however lightly it wave the tuft of the pine, +carries with it the intimation of a power, that, if roused +to its extremity, could make it bend to the dust." + +"From the warmth of your panegyric, ghostly father," said the knight, +"I should almost suspect you were in love with the damsel." + +"So I am," said the friar, "and I care not who knows it; +but all in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am, +as it were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant, +I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar militant. +I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me +black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her cause. +Though they be not yet one canonically, thanks to your soldiership, +the earl is her liege lord, and she is his liege lady. +I am her father confessor and ghostly director: +I have taken on me to show her the way to the next world; +and how can I do that if I lose sight of her in this? seeing +that this is but the road to the other, and has so many +circumvolutions and ramifications of byeways and beaten paths +(all more thickly set than the true one with finger-posts +and milestones, not one of which tells truth), that a traveller +has need of some one who knows the way, or the odds go hard +against him that he will ever see the face of Saint Peter." + +"But there must surely be some reason," said Sir Ralph, +"for father Peter's apprehension." + +"None," said brother Michael, "but the apprehension itself; fear being +its own father, and most prolific in self-propagation. The lady did, +it is true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother, +for reprimanding her in that she would go hunting a-mornings instead +of attending matins. She cut short the thread of his eloquence by +sportively drawing her bow-string and loosing an arrow over his head; +he waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for +many months. I thought he had forgotten it: but let that pass. +In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had +liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds: +yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally +fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove. +Had either been less sylvan, the other might have been more saintly; +but they will now never hear matins but those of the lark, +nor reverence vaulted aisle but that of the greenwood canopy. +They are twin plants of the forest, and are identified with its growth. + + For the slender beech and the sapling oak, + That grow by the shadowy rill, + You may cut down both at a single stroke, + You may cut down which you will. + + But this you must know, that as long as they grow + Whatever change may be, + You never can teach either oak or beech + To be aught but a greenwood tree." + + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Inflamed wrath in glowing breast.--BUTLER. + + +The knight and the friar arriving at Arlingford Castle, +and leaving their horses in the care of lady Matilda's groom, +with whom the friar was in great favour, were ushered +into a stately apartment, where they found the baron alone, +flourishing an enormous carving-knife over a brother baron--of beef-- +with as much vehemence of action as if he were cutting down an enemy. +The baron was a gentleman of a fierce and choleric temperament: +he was lineally descended from the redoubtable Fierabras +of Normandy, who came over to England with the Conqueror, +and who, in the battle of Hastings, killed with his own +hand four-and-twenty Saxon cavaliers all on a row. +The very excess of the baron's internal rage on the preceding day +had smothered its external manifestation: he was so equally angry +with both parties, that he knew not on which to vent his wrath. +He was enraged with the earl for having brought himself into +such a dilemma without his privily; and he was no less enraged +with the king's men for their very unseasonable intrusion. +He could willingly have fallen upon both parties, but, he must +necessarily have begun with one; and he felt that on whichever +side he should strike the first blow, his retainers would +immediately join battle. He had therefore contented himself +with forcing away his daughter from the scene of action. +In the course of the evening he had received intelligence that +the earl's castle was in possession of a party of the king's men, +who had been detached by Sir Ralph Montfaucon to seize on it during +the earl's absence. The baron inferred from this that the earl's +case was desperate; and those who have had the opportunity +of seeing a rich friend fall suddenly into poverty, may easily +judge by their own feelings how quickly and completely the whole +moral being of the earl was changed in the baron's estimation. +The baron immediately proceeded to require in his daughter's mind +the same summary revolution that had taken place in his own, +and considered himself exceedingly ill-used by her non-compliance. +The lady had retired to her chamber, and the baron had passed +a supperless and sleepless night, stalking about his apartments +till an advanced hour of the morning, when hunger compelled +him to summon into his presence the spoils of the buttery, +which, being the intended array of an uneaten wedding feast, +were more than usually abundant, and on which, when the knight +and the friar entered, he was falling with desperate valour. +He looked up at them fiercely, with his mouth full of beef +and his eyes full of flame, and rising, as ceremony required, +made an awful bow to the knight, inclining himself forward +over the table and presenting his carving-knife en militaire, +in a manner that seemed to leave it doubtful whether he meant +to show respect to his visitor, or to defend his provision: +but the doubt was soon cleared up by his politely motioning +the knight to be seated; on which the friar advanced to the table, +saying, "For what we are going to receive," and commenced operations +without further prelude by filling and drinking a goblet of wine. +The baron at the same time offered one to Sir Ralph, +with the look of a man in whom habitual hospitality and courtesy +were struggling with the ebullitions of natural anger. +They pledged each other in silence, and the baron, having completed +a copious draught, continued working his lips and his throat, +as if trying to swallow his wrath as he had done his wine. +Sir Ralph, not knowing well what to make of these ambiguous signs, +looked for instructions to the friar, who by significant +looks and gestures seemed to advise him to follow his example +and partake of the good cheer before him, without speaking +till the baron should be more intelligible in his demeanour. +The knight and the friar, accordingly, proceeded to refect +themselves after their ride; the baron looking first at the one +and then at the other, scrutinising alternately the serious looks +of the knight and the merry face of the friar, till at length, +having calmed himself sufficiently to speak, he said, +"Courteous knight and ghostly father, I presume you have some +other business with me than to eat my beef and drink my canary; +and if so, I patiently await your leisure to enter on the topic." + +"Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in obedience to my royal master, +King Henry, I have been the unwilling instrument of frustrating +the intended nuptials of your fair daughter; yet will you, I trust, +owe me no displeasure for my agency herein, seeing that the noble +maiden might otherwise by this time have been the bride of an outlaw." + +"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the baron; +"very exceedingly obliged. Your solicitude for my daughter is +truly paternal, and for a young man and a stranger very singular +and exemplary: and it is very kind withal to come to the relief +of my insufficiency and inexperience, and concern yourself +so much in that which concerns you not." + +"You misconceive the knight, noble baron," said the friar. +"He urges not his reason in the shape of a preconceived intent, +but in that of a subsequent extenuation. True, he has done +the lady Matilda great wrong----" + +"How, great wrong?" said the baron. "What do you mean by great wrong? +Would you have had her married to a wild fly-by-night, that accident +made an earl and nature a deer-stealer? that has not wit enough to eat +venison without picking a quarrel with monarchy? that flings away his +own lands into the clutches of rascally friars, for the sake of hunting +in other men's grounds, and feasting vagabonds that wear Lincoln green, +and would have flung away mine into the bargain if he had had my daughter? +What do you mean by great wrong?" + +"True," said the friar, "great right, I meant." + +"Right!" exclaimed the baron: "what right has any man to do my daughter +right but myself? What right has any man to drive my daughter's +bridegroom out of the chapel in the middle of the marriage ceremony, +and turn all our merry faces into green wounds and bloody coxcombs, +and then come and tell me he has done us great right?" + +"True," said the friar: "he has done neither right nor wrong." + +"But he has," said the baron, "he has done both, and I will maintain it +with my glove." + +"It shall not need," said Sir Ralph; "I will concede any thing in honour." + +"And I," said the baron, "will concede nothing in honour: +I will concede nothing in honour to any man." + +"Neither will I, Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in that sense: +but hear me. I was commissioned by the king to apprehend +the Earl of Huntingdon. I brought with me a party of soldiers, +picked and tried men, knowing that he would not lightly yield. +I sent my lieutenant with a detachment to surprise the earl's +castle in his absence, and laid my measures for intercepting +him on the way to his intended nuptials; but he seems to +have had intimation of this part of my plan, for he brought +with him a large armed retinue, and took a circuitous route, +which made him, I believe, somewhat later than his appointed hour. +When the lapse of time showed me that he had taken another track, +I pursued him to the chapel; and I would have awaited the close +of the ceremony, if I had thought that either yourself or your +daughter would have felt desirous that she should have been +the bride of an outlaw." + +"Who said, sir," cried the baron, "that we were desirous of any such thing? +But truly, sir, if I had a mind to the devil for a son-in-law, I would fain +see the man that should venture to interfere." + +"That would I," said the friar; "for I have undertaken to make +her renounce the devil." + +"She shall not renounce the devil," said the baron, "unless I please. +You are very ready with your undertakings. Will you undertake to make +her renounce the earl, who, I believe, is the devil incarnate? +Will you undertake that?" + +"Will I undertake," said the friar, "to make Trent run westward, +or to make flame burn downward, or to make a tree grow with its head +in the earth and its root in the air?" + +"So then," said the baron, "a girl's mind is as hard to change as nature and +the elements, and it is easier to make her renounce the devil than a lover. +Are you a match for the devil, and no match for a man?" + +"My warfare," said the friar, "is not of this world. +I am militant not against man, but the devil, who goes about +seeking what he may devour." + +"Oh! does he so?" said the baron: "then I take it that makes you look for him +so often in my buttery. Will you cast out the devil whose name is Legion, +when you cannot cast out the imp whose name is Love?" + +"Marriages," said the friar, "are made in heaven. Love is God's work, +and therewith I meddle not." + +"God's work, indeed!" said the baron, "when the ceremony was +cut short in the church. Could men have put them asunder, +if God had joined them together? And the earl is now no earl, +but plain Robert Fitz-Ooth: therefore, I'll none of him." + +"He may atone," said the friar, "and the king may mollify. +The earl is a worthy peer, and the king is a courteous king." + +"He cannot atone," said Sir Ralph. "He has killed the king's men; +and if the baron should aid and abet, he will lose his castle and land." + +"Will I?" said the baron; "not while I have a drop of blood in my veins. +He that comes to take them shall first serve me as the friar serves my +flasks of canary: he shall drain me dry as hay. Am I not disparaged? +Am I not outraged? Is not my daughter vilified, and made a mockery? +A girl half-married? There was my butler brought home with a broken head. +My butler, friar: there is that may move your sympathy. +Friar, the earl-no-earl shall come no more to my daughter." + +"Very good," said the friar. + +"It is not very good," said the baron, "for I cannot get her to say so." + +"I fear," said Sir Ralph, "the young lady must be much +distressed and discomposed." + +"Not a whit, sir," said the baron. "She is, as usual, in a most +provoking imperturbability, and contradicts me so smilingly that it +would enrage you to see her." + +"I had hoped," said Sir Ralph, "that I might have seen her, +to make my excuse in person for the hard necessity of my duty." + +He had scarcely spoken, when the door opened, and the lady +made her appearance. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Are you mad, or what are you, that you squeak out your catches +without mitigation or remorse of voice? Twelfth Night. + + +Matilda, not dreaming of visitors, tripped into the apartment +in a dress of forest green, with a small quiver by her side, +and a bow and arrow in her hand. Her hair, black and glossy as +the raven's wing, curled like wandering clusters of dark ripe grapes +under the edge of her round bonnet; and a plume of black feathers fell +back negligently above it, with an almost horizontal inclination, +that seemed the habitual effect of rapid motion against the wind. +Her black eyes sparkled like sunbeams on a river: +a clear, deep, liquid radiance, the reflection of ethereal fire,-- +tempered, not subdued, in the medium of its living and gentle mirror. +Her lips were half opened to speak as she entered the apartment; +and with a smile of recognition to the friar, and a courtesy +to the stranger knight, she approached the baron and said, +"You are late at your breakfast, father." + +"I am not at breakfast," said the baron. "I have been at supper: +my last night's supper; for I had none." + +"I am sorry," said Matilda, "you should have gone to bed supperless." + +"I did not go to bed supperless," said the baron: +"I did not go to bed at all: and what are you doing with that +green dress and that bow and arrow?" + +"I am going a-hunting," said Matilda. + +"A-hunting!" said the baron. "What, I warrant you, to meet with the earl, +and slip your neck into the same noose?" + +"No," said Matilda: "I am not going out of our own woods to-day." + +"How do I know that?" said the baron. "What surety have I of that?" + +"Here is the friar," said Matilda. "He will be surety." + +"Not he," said the baron: "he will undertake nothing but where the devil +is a party concerned." + +"Yes, I will," said the friar: "I will undertake any thing +for the lady Matilda." + +"No matter for that," said the baron: "she shall not go hunting to day." + +"Why, father," said Matilda, "if you coop me up here in this odious castle, +I shall pine and die like a lonely swan on a pool. + +"No," said the baron, "the lonely swan does not die on the pool. +If there be a river at hand, she flies to the river, and finds her a mate; +and so shall not you." + +"But," said Matilda, "you may send with me any, or as many, +of your grooms as you will." + +"My grooms," said the baron, "are all false knaves. +There is not a rascal among them but loves you better than me. +Villains that I feed and clothe." + +"Surely," said Matilda, "it is not villany to love me: +if it be, I should be sorry my father were an honest man." +The baron relaxed his muscles into a smile. "Or my lover either," added +Matilda. The baron looked grim again. + +"For your lover," said the baron, "you may give God thanks of him. +He is as arrant a knave as ever poached." + +"What, for hunting the king's deer?" said Matilda. "Have I not heard +you rail at the forest laws by the hour?" + +"Did you ever hear me," said the baron, "rail myself out of house and land? +If I had done that, then were I a knave." + +"My lover," said Matilda, "is a brave man, and a true man, and a generous man, +and a young man, and a handsome man; aye, and an honest man too." + +"How can he be an honest man," said the baron, "when he has neither +house nor land, which are the better part of a man?" + +"They are but the husk of a man," said Matilda, "the worthless coat +of the chesnut: the man himself is the kernel." + +"The man is the grape stone," said the baron, "and the pulp of the melon. +The house and land are the true substantial fruit, and all that give him +savour and value." + +"He will never want house or land," said Matilda, "while the meeting +boughs weave a green roof in the wood, and the free range of the hart +marks out the bounds of the forest." + +"Vert and venison! vert and venison!" exclaimed the baron. +"Treason and flat rebellion. Confound your smiling face! +what makes you look so good-humoured? What! you think I can't +look at you, and be in a passion? You think so, do you? +We shall see. Have you no fear in talking thus, when here +is the king's liegeman come to take us all into custody, +and confiscate our goods and chattels?" + +"Nay, Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "you wrong me in your report. +My visit is one of courtesy and excuse, not of menace and authority." + +"There it is," said the baron: "every one takes a pleasure +in contradicting me. Here is this courteous knight, who has +not opened his mouth three times since he has been in my house +except to take in provision, cuts me short in my story with +a flat denial." + +"Oh! I cry you mercy, sir knight," said Matilda; "I did not mark you before. +I am your debtor for no slight favour, and so is my liege lord." + +"Her liege lord!" exclaimed the baron, taking large strides +across the chamber. + +"Pardon me, gentle lady," said Sir Ralph. "Had I known you +before yesterday, I would have cut off my right hand ere it +should have been raised to do you displeasure. + +"Oh sir," said Matilda, "a good man may be forced on an ill office: +but I can distinguish the man from his duty." She presented to him +her hand, which he kissed respectfully, and simultaneously with the +contact thirty-two invisible arrows plunged at once into his heart, +one from every point of the compass of his pericardia. + +"Well, father," added Matilda, "I must go to the woods." + +"Must you?" said the baron; "I say you must not." + +"But I am going," said Matilda + +"But I will have up the drawbridge," said the baron. + +"But I will swim the moat," said Matilda. + +"But I will secure the gates," said the baron. + +"But I will leap from the battlement," said Matilda. + +"But I will lock you in an upper chamber," said the baron. + +"But I will shred the tapestry," said Matilda, "and let myself down." + +"But I will lock you in a turret," said the baron, "where you +shall only see light through a loophole." + +"But through that loophole," said Matilda, "will I take my flight, +like a young eagle from its eerie; and, father, while I go out freely, +I will return willingly: but if once I slip out through a loop-hole----" +She paused a moment, and then added, singing,-- + + The love that follows fain + Will never its faith betray: + But the faith that is held in a chain + Will never be found again, + If a single link give way. + + +The melody acted irresistibly on the harmonious propensities of the friar, +who accordingly sang in his turn,-- + + For hark! hark! hark! + The dog doth bark, + That watches the wild deer's lair. + The hunter awakes at the peep of the dawn, + But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone, + And the hunter knows not where. + +Matilda and the friar then sang together,-- + + Then follow, oh follow! the hounds do cry: + The red sun flames in the eastern sky: + The stag bounds over the hollow. + He that lingers in spirit, or loiters in hall, + Shall see us no more till the evening fall, + And no voice but the echo shall answer his call: + Then follow, oh follow, follow: + Follow, oh follow, follow! + + +During the process of this harmony, the baron's eyes wandered from +his daughter to the friar, and from the friar to his daughter again, +with an alternate expression of anger differently modified: +when he looked on the friar, it was anger without qualification; +when he looked on his daughter it was still anger, but tempered +by an expression of involuntary admiration and pleasure. +These rapid fluctuations of the baron's physiognomy--the habitual, +reckless, resolute merriment in the jovial face of the friar,-- +and the cheerful, elastic spirits that played on the lips +and sparkled in the eyes of Matilda,--would have presented +a very amusing combination to Sir Ralph, if one of the three +images in the group had not absorbed his total attention +with feelings of intense delight very nearly allied to pain. +The baron's wrath was somewhat counteracted by the reflection +that his daughter's good spirits seemed to show that they +would naturally rise triumphant over all disappointments; +and he had had sufficient experience of her humour to know +that she might sometimes be led, but never could be driven. +Then, too, he was always delighted to hear her sing, though he was +not at all pleased in this instance with the subject of her song. +Still he would have endured the subject for the sake of the melody +of the treble, but his mind was not sufficiently attuned to unison +to relish the harmony of the bass. The friar's accompaniment +put him out of all patience, and--"So," he exclaimed, "this is +the way, you teach my daughter to renounce the devil, is it? +A hunting friar, truly! Who ever heard before of a hunting friar? +A profane, roaring, bawling, bumper-bibbing, neck-breaking, +catch-singing friar?" + +"Under favour, bold baron," said the friar; but the friar was warm +with canary, and in his singing vein; and he could not go on in plain +unmusical prose. He therefore sang in a new tune,-- + + Though I be now a grey, grey friar, + Yet I was once a hale young knight: + The cry of my dogs was the only choir + In which my spirit did take delight. + Little I recked of matin bell, + But drowned its toll with my clanging horn: + And the only beads I loved to tell + Were the beads of dew on the spangled thorn. + + +The baron was going to storm, but the friar paused, and Matilda +sang in repetition,-- + + Little I reck of matin bell, + But drown its toll with my clanging horn: + And the only beads I love to tell + Are the beads of dew on the spangled thorn. + + +And then she and the friar sang the four lines together, +and rang the changes upon them alternately. + +Little I reck of matin bell, + +sang the friar. + +"A precious friar," said the baron. + + +But drown its toll with my clanging horn, sang Matilda. + +"More shame for you," said the baron. + + And the only beads I love to tell + Are the beads of dew on the spangled thorn, + +sang Matilda and the friar together. + +"Penitent and confessor," said the baron: "a hopeful pair truly." + +The friar went on,-- + + An archer keen I was withal, + As ever did lean on greenwood tree; + And could make the fleetest roebuck fall, + A good three hundred yards from me. + Though changeful time, with hand severe, + Has made me now these joys forego, + Yet my heart bounds whene'er I hear + Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho! + + +Matilda chimed in as before. + +"Are you mad?" said the baron. "Are you insane? Are you possessed? +What do you mean? What in the devil's name do you both mean?" + +Yoicks! hark away! and tally ho! + +roared the friar. + +The baron's pent-up wrath had accumulated like the waters above the dam +of an overshot mill. The pond-head of his passion being now filled to +the utmost limit of its capacity, and beginning to overflow in the quivering +of his lips and the flashing of his eyes, he pulled up all the flash-boards +at once, and gave loose to the full torrent of his indignation, by seizing, +like furious Ajax, not a messy stone more than two modern men could raise, +but a vast dish of beef more than fifty ancient yeomen could eat, +and whirled it like a coit, in terrorem, over the head of the friar, +to the extremity of the apartment, + + Where it on oaken floor did settle, + With mighty din of ponderous metal. + + +"Nay father," said Matilda, taking the baron's hand, "do not harm the friar: +he means not to offend you. My gaiety never before displeased you. +Least of all should it do so now, when I have need of all my spirits +to outweigh the severity of my fortune." + +As she spoke the last words, tears started into her eyes, which, as if +ashamed of the involuntary betraying of her feelings, she turned away +to conceal. The baron was subdued at once. He kissed his daughter, +held out his hand to the friar, and said, "Sing on, in God's name, +and crack away the flasks till your voice swims in canary." +Then turning to Sir Ralph, he said, "You see how it is, sir knight. +Matilda is my daughter; but she has me in leading-strings, that is +the truth of it." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + 'T is true, no lover has that power + To enforce a desperate amour + As he that has two strings to his bow + And burns for love and money too.--BUTLER. + + +The friar had often had experience of the baron's testy humour; +but it had always before confined itself to words, +in which the habit of testiness often mingled more expression +of displeasure than the internal feeling prompted. +He knew the baron to be hot and choleric, but at the same time +hospitable and generous; passionately fond of his daughter, +often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact. +The early attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon +had given the baron no serious reason to interfere with her habits +and pursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover; +and not being over-burdened with orthodoxy, that is to say, +not being seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was +necessary to preserve him from excommunication, confiscation, +and philotheoparoptesism,[1] he was not sorry to encourage +his daughter's choice of her confessor in brother Michael, +who had more jollity and less hypocrisy than any of his fraternity, +and was very little anxious to disguise his love of the good things +of this world under the semblance of a sanctified exterior. +The friar and Matilda had often sung duets together, and had been +accustomed to the baron's chiming in with a stormy capriccio, +which was usually charmed into silence by some sudden turn +in the witching melodies of Matilda. They had therefore +naturally calculated, as far as their wild spirits calculated at all, +on the same effects from the same causes. But the circumstances +of the preceding day had made an essential alteration in the case. +The baron knew well, from the intelligence he had received, +that the earl's offence was past remission: which would +have been of less moment but for the awful fact of his castle +being in the possession of the king's forces, and in those days +possession was considerably more than eleven points of the law. +The baron was therefore convinced that the earl's outlawry +was infallible, and that Matilda must either renounce +her lover, or become with him an outlaw and a fugitive. +In proportion, therefore, to the baron's knowledge of the strength +and duration of her attachment, was his fear of the difficulty +of its ever being overcome: her love of the forest and the chase, +which he had never before discouraged, now presented itself +to him as matter of serious alarm; and if her cheerfulness +gave him hope on the one hand by indicating a spirit superior +to all disappointments, it was suspicious to him on the other, +as arising from some latent certainty of being soon united +to the earl. All these circumstances concurred to render +their songs of the vanished deer and greenwood archery and +Yoicks and Harkaway, extremely mal-a-propos, and to make +his anger boil and bubble in the cauldron of his spirit, +till its more than ordinary excitement burst forth with sudden +impulse into active manifestation. + +[1] Roasting by a slow fire for the love of God. + + + But as it sometimes happens, from the might + Of rage in minds that can no farther go, + As high as they have mounted in despite + In their remission do they sink as low, + To our bold baron did it happen so.[2] + + +[2] Of these lines all that is not in italics belongs to +Mr. Wordsworth: Resolution and Independence. + + +For his discobolic exploit proved the climax of his rage, and was +succeeded by an immediate sense that he had passed the bounds +of legitimate passion; and he sunk immediately from the very +pinnacle of opposition to the level of implicit acquiescence. +The friar's spirits were not to be marred by such a little incident. +He was half-inclined, at first, to return the baron's compliment; +but his love of Matilda checked him; and when the baron held out his hand, +the friar seized it cordially, and they drowned all recollection +of the affair by pledging each other in a cup of canary. + +The friar, having stayed long enough to see every thing replaced +on a friendly footing, rose, and moved to take his leave. +Matilda told him he must come again on the morrow, for she +had a very long confession to make to him. This the friar +promised to do, and departed with the knight. + +Sir Ralph, on reaching the abbey, drew his followers together, and led them +to Locksley Castle, which he found in the possession of his lieutenant; +whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold it in safe +keeping in the king's name, and proceeded to London to report the results +of his enterprise. + +Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion, +and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated +into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would +give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring +in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind +of the knight. The eyes of the fair huntress of Arlingford had +left a wound in his heart which only she who gave could heal. +He had seen that the baron was no longer very partial +to the outlawed earl, but that he still retained his old +affection for the lands and castle of Locksley. Now the lands +and castle were very fair things in themselves, and would be +pretty appurtenances to an adventurous knight; but they would +be doubly valuable as certain passports to the father's favour, +which was one step towards that of the daughter, or at least +towards obtaining possession of her either quietly or perforce; +for the knight was not so nice in his love as to consider +the lady's free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being, +by any means whatever, the lord of Locksley and Arlingford, +and the husband of the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades +of futurity a vista very tempting to a soldier of fortune. +He set out in high spirits with a chosen band of followers, +and beat up all the country far and wide around both the Ouse +and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposed to second +his diligence, for no vestige whatever could he trace of the earl. +His followers, who were only paid with the wages of hope, +began to murmur and fall off; for, as those unenlightened +days were ignorant of the happy invention of paper machinery, +by which one promise to pay is satisfactorily paid with another +promise to pay, and that again with another in infinite series, +they would not, as their wiser posterity has done, +take those tenders for true pay which were not sterling; +so that, one fine morning, the knight found himself sitting +on a pleasant bank of the Trent, with only a solitary squire, +who still clung to the shadow of preferment, because he did +not see at the moment any better chance of the substance. + +The knight did not despair because of the desertion of his followers: +he was well aware that he could easily raise recruits if he could +once find trace of his game; he, therefore, rode about indefatigably +over hill and dale, to the great sharpening of his own appetite +and that of his squire, living gallantly from inn to inn when +his purse was full, and quartering himself in the king's name +on the nearest ghostly brotherhood when it happened to be empty. +An autumn and a winter had passed away, when the course of his +perlustations brought him one evening into a beautiful sylvan valley, +where he found a number of young women weaving garlands of flowers, +and singing over their pleasant occupation. He approached them, +and courteously inquired the way to the nearest town. + +"There is no town within several miles," was the answer. + +"A village, then, if it be but large enough to furnish an inn?" + +"There is Gamwell just by, but there is no inn nearer than the nearest town." + +"An abbey, then?" + +"There is no abbey nearer than the nearest inn." + +"A house then, or a cottage, where I may obtain hospitality for the night?" + +"Hospitality!" said one of the young women; "you have not far to seek +for that. Do you not know that you are in the neighbourhood of Gamwell-Hall?" + +"So far from it," said the knight, "that I never heard the name +of Gamwell-Hall before." + +"Never heard of Gamwell-Hall?" exclaimed all the young women together, +who could as soon have dreamed of his never having heard of the sky. + +"Indeed, no," said Sir Ralph; "but I shall be very happy to get +rid of my ignorance." + +"And so shall I," said his squire; "for it seems that in this +case knowledge will for once be a cure for hunger, wherewith I +am grievously afflicted." + +"And why are you so busy, my pretty damsels, weaving these garlands?" +said the knight. + +"Why, do you not know, sir," said one of the young women, +"that to-morrow is Gamwell feast?" + +The knight was again obliged, with all humility, to confess his ignorance. + +"Oh! sir," said his informant, "then you will have something to see, +that I can tell you; for we shall choose a Queen of the May, and we +shall crown her with flowers, and place her in a chariot of flowers, +and draw it with lines of flowers, and we shall hang all the trees +with flowers, and we shall strew all the ground with flowers, +and we shall dance with flowers, and in flowers, and on flowers, +and we shall be all flowers." + +"That you will," said the knight; "and the sweetest and +brightest of all the flowers of the May, my pretty damsels." +On which all the pretty damsels smiled at him and each other. + +"And there will be all sorts of May-games, and there will +be prizes for archery, and there will be the knight's ale, +and the foresters' venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak +with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap with his fife and tabor, +and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with +his bagpipe, and how I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!" +added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding +from the ground with the pleasure of the anticipation. + +A tall athletic young man approached, to whom the rustic maidens +courtesied with great respect; and one of them informed Sir Ralph +that it was young Master William Gamwell. The young gentleman +invited and conducted the knight to the hall, where he introduced +him to the old knight his father, and to the old lady his mother, +and to the young lady his sister, and to a number of bold yeomen, +who were laying siege to beef, brawn, and plum pie around a ponderous table, +and taking copious draughts of old October. A motto was inscribed +over the interior door,-- + +EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY: + +an injunction which Sir Ralph and his squire showed remarkable alacrity +in obeying. Old Sir Guy of Gamwell gave Sir Ralph a very cordial welcome, +and entertained him during supper with several of his best stories, enforced +with an occasional slap on the back, and pointed with a peg in the ribs; +a species of vivacious eloquence in which the; old gentleman excelled, +and which is supposed by many of that pleasant variety of the human spectes, +known by the name of choice fellows and comical dogs, to be the genuine +tangible shape of the cream of a good joke. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +What! shall we have incision? shall we embrew? Henry IV. + + +Old Sir Guy of Gamwell, and young William Gamwell, and fair +Alice Gamwell, and Sir Ralph Montfaucon and his squire, +rode together the next morning to the scene of the feast. +They arrived on a village green, surrounded with cottages peeping +from among the trees by which the green was completely encircled. +The whole circle was hung round with one continuous garland +of flowers, depending in irregular festoons from the branches. +In the centre of the green was a May-pole hidden in boughs +and garlands; and a multitude of round-faced bumpkins and +cherry-checked lasses were dancing around it, to the quadruple +melody of Scrapesqueak, Whistlerap, Trumtwang, and Muggledrone: +harmony we must not call it; for, though they had agreed to a partnership +in point of tune, each, like a true painstaking man, seemed determined +to have his time to himself: Muggledrone played allegretto, +Trumtwang allegro, Whistlerap presto, and Scrapesqueak prestissimo. +There was a kind of mathematical proportion in their discrepancy: +while Muggledrone played the tune four times, Trumtwang played +it five, Whistlerap six, and Scrapesqueak eight; for the latter +completely distanced all his competitors, and indeed worked his +elbow so nimbly that its outline was scarcely distinguishable +through the mistiness of its rapid vibration. + +While the knight was delighting his eyes and ears with these +pleasant sights and sounds, all eyes were turned in one direction; +and Sir Ralph, looking round, saw a fair lady in green and +gold come riding through the trees, accompanied by a portly +friar in grey, and several fair damsels and gallant grooms. +On their nearer approach, he recognised the lady Matilda and her +ghostly adviser, brother Michael. A party of foresters arrived +from another direction, and then ensued cordial interchanges +of greeting, and collisions of hands and lips, among the Gamwells +and the new-comers,--"How does my fair coz, Mawd?" and "How does +my sweet coz, Mawd?" and "How does my wild coz, Mawd?" And "Eh! +jolly friar, your hand, old boy:" and "Here, honest friar:" +and "To me, merry friar:" and "By your favour, mistress Alice:" +and "Hey! cousin Robin:" and "Hey! cousin Will:" +and "Od's life! merry Sir Guy, you grow younger every year,"-- +as the old knight shook them all in turn with one hand, and slapped +them on the back with the other, in token of his affection. +A number of young men and women advanced, some drawing, +and others dancing round, a floral car; and having placed a crown +of flowers on Matilda's head, they saluted her Queen of the May, +and drew her to the place appointed for the rural sports. + +A hogshead of ale was abroach under an oak, and a fire was blazing +in an open space before the trees to roast the fat deer which the +foresters brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series +of bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning, +wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing +or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued. +The conqueror was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand +of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till +the close of the feast. This stimulated the knight's emulation: +young Gamwell supplied him with a bow and arrow, and he took his +station among the foresters, but had the mortification to be out-shot +by them all, and to see one of them lodge the point of his arrow +in the golden ring of the centre, and receive the prize from the hand +of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on him with particular grace. +The jealous knight scrutinised the successful champion with +great attention, and surely thought he had seen that face before. +In the mean time the forester led the lady to the station. +The luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless +grace of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand, +and adjusting the arrow with her right, advancing her left foot, +and gently curving her beautiful figure with a slight motion of her head +that waved her black feathers and her ringleted hair, she drew the arrow +to its head, and loosed it from her open fingers. The arrow struck +within the ring of gold, so close to that of the victorious forester +that the points were in contact, and the feathers were intermingled. +Great acclamations succeeded, and the forester led Matilda to the dance. +Sir Ralph gazed on her fascinating motions till the torments of baffled +love and jealous rage became unendurable; and approaching young Gamwell, +he asked him if he knew the name of that forester who was leading +the dance with the Queen of the May? + +"Robin, I believe," said young Gamwell carelessly; "I think they +call him Robin." + +"Is that all you know of him?" said Sir Ralph. + +"What more should I know of him?" said young Gamwell. + +"Then I can tell you," said Sir Ralph, "he is the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, +on whose head is set so large a price." + +"Ay, is he?" said young Gamwell, in the same careless manner. + +"He were a prize worth the taking," said Sir Ralph. + +"No doubt," said young Gamwell. + +"How think you?" said Sir Ralph: "are the foresters his adherents?" + +"I cannot say," said young Gamwell. + +"Is your peasantry loyal and well-disposed?" said Sir Ralph. + +"Passing loyal," said young Gamwell. + +"If I should call on them in the king's name," said Sir Ralph, +"think you they would aid and assist?" + +"Most likely they would," said young Gamwell, "one side or the other." + +"Ay, but which side?" said the knight. + +"That remains to be tried," said young Gamwell. + +"I have King Henry's commission," said the knight, "to apprehend this +earl that was. How would you advise me to act, being, as you see, +without attendant force?" + +"I would advise you," said young Gamwell, "to take yourself off without delay, +unless you would relish the taste of a volley of arrows, a shower of stones, +and a hailstorm of cudgel-blows, which would not be turned aside by a God +save King Henry." + +Sir Ralph's squire no sooner heard this, and saw by the looks +of the speaker that he was not likely to prove a false prophet, +than he clapped spurs to his horse and galloped off with might +and main. This gave the knight a good excuse to pursue him, +which he did with great celerity, calling, "Stop, you rascal." +When the squire fancied himself safe out of the reach of pursuit, +he checked his speed, and allowed the knight to come up with him. +They rode on several miles in silence, till they discovered +the towers and spires of Nottingham, where the knight introduced +himself to the sheriff, and demanded an armed force to assist in +the apprehension of the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon. The sheriff, +who was willing to have his share of the prize, determined to accompany +the knight in person, and regaled him and his man with good store +of the best; after which, they, with a stout retinue of fifty men, +took the way to Gamwell feast. + +"God's my life," said the sheriff, as they rode along, +"I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate. +I much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin, +be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered +himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring +to apprehend I have fallen divers times into disasters. +He has gotten together a band of disinherited prodigals, +outlawed debtors, excommunicated heretics, elder sons that +have spent all they had, and younger sons that never had any +thing to spend; and with these he kills the king's deer, +and plunders wealthy travellers of five-sixths of their money; +but if they be abbots or bishops, them he despoils utterly." + +The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure +of the abbot of Doubleflask (which some grave historians have +related of the abbot of Saint Mary's, and others of the bishop +of Hereford): how the abbot, returning to his abbey in company +with his high selerer, who carried in his portmanteau the rents +of the abbey-lands, and with a numerous train of attendants, +came upon four seeming peasants, who were roasting the king's +venison by the king's highway: how, in just indignation at +this flagrant infringement of the forest laws, he asked them +what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine: +how he ordered them to be seized and bound, and led captive +to Nottingham, that they might know wild-flesh to have been destined +by Providence for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for +the base hunger of unqualified knaves: how they prayed for mercy, +and how the abbot swore by Saint Charity that he would show them none: +how one of them thereupon drew a bugle horn from under his +smock-frock and blew three blasts, on which the abbot and his +train were instantly surrounded by sixty bowmen in green: +how they tied him to a tree, and made him say mass for their sins: +how they unbound him, and sate him down with them to dinner, +and gave him venison and wild-fowl and wine, and made him pay +for his fare all the money in his high selerer's portmanteau, +and enforced him to sleep all night under a tree in his cloak, +and to leave the cloak behind him in the morning: how the abbot, +light in pocket and heavy in heart, raised the country upon +Robin Hood, for so he had heard the chief forester called +by his men, and hunted him into an old woman's cottage: +how Robin changed dresses with the old woman, and how the abbot rode +in great triumph to Nottingham, having in custody an old woman in a +green doublet and breeches: how the old woman discovered herself: +how the merrymen of Nottingham laughed at the abbot: +how the abbot railed at the old woman, and how the old woman +out-railed the abbot, telling him that Robin had given her food +and fire through the winter, which no abbot would ever do, +but would rather take it from her for what he called the good +of the church, by which he meant his own laziness and gluttony; +and that she knew a true man from a false thief, and a free +forester from a greedy abbot. + +"Thus you see," added the sheriff, "how this villain perverts +the deluded people by making them believe that those who tithe +and toll upon them for their spiritual and temporal benefit are not +their best friends and fatherly guardians; for he holds that in +giving to boors and old women what he takes from priests and peers, +he does but restore to the former what the latter had taken from them; +and this the impudent varlet calls distributive justice. +Judge now if any loyal subject can be safe in such neighbourhood." + +While the sheriff was thus enlightening his companion concerning +the offenders, and whetting his own indignation against them, +the sun was fast sinking to the west. They rode on till they +came in view of a bridge, which they saw a party approaching +from the opposite side, and the knight presently discovered +that the party consisted of the lady Matilda and friar Michael, +young Gamwell, cousin Robin, and about half-a-dozen foresters. +The knight pointed out the earl to the sheriff, who exclaimed, +"Here, then, we have him an easy prey;" and they rode on manfully +towards the bridge, on which the other party made halt. + +"Who be these," said the friar, "that come riding so fast this way? +Now, as God shall judge me, it is that false knight Sir Ralph Montfaucon, +and the sheriff of Nottingham, with a posse of men. We must make good +our post, and let them dislodge us if they may." + +The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff +and the knight, advancing in the front of the cavalcade, +called on the lady, the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters, +to deliver up that false-traitor, Robert, formerly Earl +of Huntingdon. Robert himself made answer by letting fly +an arrow that struck the ground between the fore feet of +the sheriff's horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing, +and lodged the sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time, +the fair Matilda favoured the knight with an arrow in his +right arm, that compelled him to withdraw from the affray. +His men lifted the sheriff carefully up, and replaced him on +his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and zeal urged +on to the assault with his fifty men at his heels, some of whom +were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters +and Matilda; while the friar, with an eight-foot staff, +dislodged the sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all +the vigour of the church militant on earth, in spite of his +ejaculations of "Hey, friar Michael! What means this, honest friar? +Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy friar!"--till Matilda interposed, +and delivered the battered sheriff to the care of the foresters. +The friar continued flourishing his staff among the sheriff's men, +knocking down one, breaking the ribs of another, dislocating +the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of a fourth, +cracking the skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the river, +till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole bones, +clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives, +under a farewell volley of arrows. + +Sir Ralph's squire, meanwhile, was glad of the excuse of +attending his master's wound to absent himself from the battle; +and put the poor knight to a great deal of unnecessary pain +by making as long a business as possible of extracting the arrow, +which he had not accomplished when Matilda, approaching, extracted it +with great facility, and bound up the wound with her scarf, +saying, "I reclaim my arrow, sir knight, which struck where I +aimed it, to admonish you to desist from your enterprise. +I could as easily have lodged it in your heart." + +"It did not need," said the knight, with rueful gallantry; +"you have lodged one there already." + +"If you mean to say that you love me," said Matilda, "it is more than I +ever shall you: but if you will show your love by no further interfering +with mine, you will at least merit my gratitude." + +The knight made a wry face under the double pain of heart and body caused +at the same moment by the material or martial, and the metaphorical +or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a declaration +more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put in any such +claim to the lady's gratitude as would bar all hopes of her love: +he therefore remained silent; and the lady and her escort, leaving him +and the sheriff to the care of the squire, rode on till they came +in sight of Arlingford Castle, when they parted in several directions. +The friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him +they heard his voice through the twilight, singing,-- + + A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff, + That is both stoure and stiff, + Is all a good friar can needs desire + To shrive a proud sheriffe. + And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so + Of the forester's greenwood game, + Wilt be in no haste thy time to waste + In seeking more taste of the same: + Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well, + Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell, + Than the sheriff of Nottinghame. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Now, master sheriff, what's your will with me? Henry IV. + + +Matilda had carried her point with the baron of ranging at liberty +whithersoever she would, under her positive promise to return home; +she was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence +by means of an obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping +her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms, +but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her, +that he could not help considering her word a better security than +locks and bars. + +The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of +the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible +precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that +they might cause the interruption of her greenwood liberty; +and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler, +being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions, +and regaled the baron with a long story of the right merry +adventure of Robin Hood and the abbot of Doubleflask. + +The baron was one morning, as usual, cutting his way valorously +through a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were +suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth, +and looking from his castle wall, he perceived a large party +of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on +the warder in the king's name to lower the drawbridge and raise +the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda's order. +The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite +to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as they saw him, +called out, "Lower the drawbridge, in the king's name." + +"For what, in the devil's name?" said the baron. + +"The sheriff of Nottingham," said one, "lies in bed grievously bruised, +and many of his men are wounded, and several of them slain; +and Sir Ralph Montfaucon, knight, is sore wounded in the arm; +and we are charged to apprehend William Gamwell the younger, +of Gamwell Hall, and father Michael of Rubygill Abbey, +and Matilda Fitzwater of Arlingford Castle, as agents and +accomplices in the said breach of the king's peace." + +"Breach of the king's fiddlestick!" answered the baron. +"What do you mean by coming here with your cock and bull, stories of my +daughter grievously bruising the sheriff of Nottingham? You are a set +of vagabond rascals in disguise; and I hear, by the bye, there is +a gang of thieves that has just set up business in Sherwood Forest: +a pretty presence, indeed, to get into my castle with force and arms, +and make a famine in my buttery, and a drought in my cellar, +and a void in my strong box, and a vacuum in my silver scullery." + +"Lord Fitzwater," cried one, "take heed how you resist lawful authority: +we will prove ourselves----" + +"You will prove yourselves arrant knaves, I doubt not," answered the baron; +"but, villains, you shall be more grievously bruised by me than ever was +the sheriff by my daughter (a pretty tale truly!), if you do not forthwith +avoid my territory." + +By this time the baron's men had flocked to the battlements, +with long-bows and cross-bows, slings and stones, +and Matilda with her bow and quiver at their head. +The assailants, finding the castle so well defended, deemed it +expedient to withdraw till they could return in greater force, +and rode off to Rubygill Abbey, where they made known their +errand to the father abbot, who, having satisfied himself +of their legitimacy, and conned over the allegations, +said that doubtless brother Michael had heinously offended; +but it was not for the civil law to take cognizance of the misdoings +of a holy friar; that he would summon a chapter of monks, +and pass on the offender a sentence proportionate to his offence. +The ministers of civil justice said that would not do. +The abbot said it would do and should; and bade them not +provoke the meekness of his catholic charity to lay them under +the curse of Rome. This threat had its effect, and the party +rode off to Gamwell-Hall, where they found the Gamwells +and their men just sitting down to dinner, which they saved +them the trouble of eating by consuming it in the king's +name themselves, having first seized and bound young Gamwell; +all which they accomplished by dint of superior numbers, +in despite of a most vigorous stand made by the Gamwellites +in defence of their young master and their provisions. + +The baron, meanwhile, after the ministers of justice had departed, +interrogated Matilda concerning the alleged fact of the grievous +bruising of the sheriff of Nottingham. Matilda told him the whole +history of Gamwell feast, and of their battle on the bridge, +which had its origin in a design of the sheriff of Nottingham +to take one of the foresters into custody. + +"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "and I guess who that forester was; +but truly this friar is a desperate fellow. I did not think +there could have been so much valour under a grey frock. +And so you wounded the knight in the arm. You are a +wild girl, Mawd,--a chip of the old block, Mawd. A wild girl, +and a wild friar, and three or four foresters, wild lads all, +to keep a bridge against a tame knight, and a tame sheriff, +and fifty tame varlets; by this light, the like was never heard! +But do you know, Mawd, you must not go about so any more, +sweet Mawd: you must stay at home, you must ensconce; +for there is your tame sheriff on the one hand, that will take +you perforce; and there is your wild forester on the other hand, +that will take you without any force at all, Mawd: your wild +forester, Robin, cousin Robin, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, +that beats and binds bishops, spreads nets for archbishops, +and hunts a fat abbot as if he were a buck: excellent game, +no doubt, but you must hunt no more in such company. I see it now: +truly I might have guessed before that the bold outlaw Robin, +the most courteous Robin, the new thief of Sherwood Forest, +was your lover, the earl that has been: I might have guessed +it before, and what led you so much to the woods; but you hunt +no more in such company. No more May games and Gamwell feasts. +My lands and castle would be the forfeit of a few more such pranks; +and I think they are as well in my hands as the king's, +quite as well." + +"You know, father," said Matilda, "the condition of keeping me at home: +I get out if I can, and not on parole." + +"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "if you can; very true: +watch and ward, Mawd, watch and ward is my word: if you can, +is yours. The mark is set, and so start fair." + +The baron would have gone on in this way for an hour; but the friar +made his appearance with a long oak staff in his hand, singing,-- + + Drink and sing, and eat and laugh, + And so go forth to battle: + For the top of a skull and the end of a staff + Do make a ghostly rattle. + + +"Ho! ho! friar!" said the baron--"singing friar, +laughing friar, roaring friar, fighting friar, hacking friar, +thwacking friar; cracking, cracking, cracking friar; +joke-cracking, bottle-cracking, skull-cracking friar!" + +"And ho! ho!" said the friar,--"bold baron, old baron, +sturdy baron, wordy baron, long baron, strong baron, +mighty baron, flighty baron, mazed baron, crazed baron, +hacked baron, thwacked baron; cracked, cracked, cracked baron; +bone-cracked, sconce-cracked, brain-cracked baron!" + +"What do you mean," said the baron, "bully friar, by calling me +hacked and thwacked?" + +"Were you not in the wars?" said the friar, "where he who +escapes untracked does more credit to his heels than his arms. +I pay tribute to your valour in calling you hacked and thwacked." + +"I never was thwacked in my life," said the baron; "I stood +my ground manfully, and covered my body with my sword. +If I had had the luck to meet with a fighting friar indeed, +I might have been thwacked, and soundly too; but I hold myself +a match for any two laymen; it takes nine fighting laymen +to make a fighting friar." + +"Whence come you now, holy father?" asked Matilda. + +"From Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "whither I never return: + + For I must seek some hermit cell, + Where I alone my beads may tell, + And on the wight who that way fares + Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs, + Levy a toll, levy a toll, + Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs." + + +"What is the matter then, father?" said Matilda. + +"This is the matter," said the friar: "my holy brethren have held +a chapter on me, and sentenced me to seven years' privation of wine. +I therefore deemed it fitting to take my departure, which they would +fain have prohibited. I was enforced to clear the way with my staff. +I have grievously beaten my dearly beloved brethren: I grieve thereat; +but they enforced me thereto. I have beaten them much; I mowed them +down to the right and to the left, and left them like an ill-reaped field +of wheat, ear and straw pointing all ways, scattered in singleness and +jumbled in masses; and so bade them farewell, saying, Peace be with you. +But I must not tarry, lest danger be in my rear: therefore, farewell, +sweet Matilda; and farewell, noble baron; and farewell, sweet Matilda again, +the alpha and omega of father Michael, the first and the last." + +"Farewell, father," said the baron, a little softened; +"and God send you be never assailed by more than fifty men +at a time." + +"Amen," said the friar, "to that good wish." + +"And we shall meet again, father, I trust," said Matilda. + +"When the storm is blown over," said the baron. + +"Doubt it not," said the friar, "though flooded Trent were between us, +and fifty devils guarded the bridge." + +He kissed Matilda's forehead, and walked away without a song. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +Let gallows gape for dog: let man go free. Henry V. + + +A page had been brought up in Gamwell-Hall, who, while he was little, +had been called Little John, and continued to be so called after +he had grown to be a foot taller than any other man in the house. +He was full seven feet high. His latitude was worthy of his longitude, +and his strength was worthy of both; and though an honest man by profession, +he had practiced archery on the king's deer for the benefit of his +master's household, and for the improvement of his own eye and hand, +till his aim had become infallible within the range of two miles. +He had fought manfully in defence of his young master, took his captivity +exceedingly to heart, and fell into bitter grief and boundless rage +when he heard that he had been tried in Nottingham and sentenced to die. +Alice Gamwell, at Little John's request, wrote three letters of one tenour; +and Little John, having attached them to three blunt arrows, saddled the +fleetest steed in old Sir Guy of Gamwell's stables, mounted, and rode first to +Arlingford Castle, where he shot one of the three arrows over the battlements; +then to Rubygill Abbey, where he shot the second into the abbey-garden; +then back past Gamwell-Hall to the borders of Sherwood Forest, +where he shot the third into the wood. Now the first of these arrows +lighted in the nape of the neck of Lord Fitzwater, and lodged itself firmly +between his skin and his collar; the second rebounded with the hollow +vibration of a drumstick from the shaven sconce of the abbot of Rubygill; +and the third pitched perpendicularly into the centre of a venison pasty +in which Robin Hood was making incision. + +Matilda ran up to her father in the court of Arlingford Castle, +seized the arrow, drew off the letter, and concealed it in her +bosom before the baron had time to look round, which he did +with many expressions of rage against the impudent villain +who had shot a blunt arrow into the nape of his neck. + +"But you know, father," said Matilda, "a sharp arrow in the same place would +have killed you; therefore the sending a blunt one was very considerate." + +"Considerate, with a vengeance!" said the baron. +"Where was the consideration of sending it at all? +This is some of your forester's pranks. He has missed you +in the forest, since I have kept watch and ward over you, +and by way of a love-token and a remembrance to you takes +a random shot at me." + +The abbot of Rubygill picked up the missile-missive or messenger arrow, +which had rebounded from his shaven crown, with a very unghostly +malediction on the sender, which he suddenly checked with a pious +and consolatory reflection on the goodness of Providence in having +blessed him with such a thickness of skull, to which he was now indebted +for temporal preservation, as he had before been for spiritual promotion. +He opened the letter, which was addressed to father Michael; +and found it to contain an intimation that William Gamwell was to be +hanged on Monday at Nottingham. + +"And I wish," said the abbot, "father Michael were to be hanged with him: +an ungrateful monster, after I had rescued him from the fangs of +civil justice, to reward my lenity by not leaving a bone unbruised +among the holy brotherhood of Rubygill." + +Robin Hood extracted from his venison pasty a similar intimation +of the evil destiny of his cousin, whom he determined, if possible, +to rescue from the jaws of Cerberus. + +The sheriff of Nottingham, though still sore with his bruises, +was so intent on revenge, that he raised himself from his bed +to attend the execution of William Gamwell. He rode to the august +structure of retributive Themis, as the French call a gallows, +in all the pride and pomp of shrievalty, and with a splendid +retinue of well-equipped knaves and varlets, as our ancestors +called honest serving-men. + +Young Gamwell was brought forth with his arms pinioned behind him; +his sister Alice and his father, Sir Guy, attending him in disconsolate mood. +He had rejected the confessor provided by the sheriff, and had insisted on +the privilege of choosing his own, whom Little John had promised to bring. +Little John, however, had not made his appearance when the fatal +procession began its march; but when they reached the place of execution, +Little John appeared, accompanied by a ghostly friar. + +"Sheriff," said young Gamwell, "let me not die with my hands pinioned: +give me a sword, and set any odds of your men against me, and let +me die the death of a man, like the descendant of a noble house, +which has never yet been stained with ignominy." + +"No, no," said the sheriff; "I have had enough of setting odds against you. +I have sworn you shall be hanged, and hanged you shall be." + +"Then God have mercy on me," said young Gamwell; "and now, holy friar, +shrive my sinful soul." + +The friar approached. + +"Let me see this friar," said the sheriff: "if he be the friar +of the bridge, I had as lief have the devil in Nottingham; +but he shall find me too much for him here." + +"The friar of the bridge," said Little John, "as you very +well know, sheriff, was father Michael of Rubygill Abbey, +and you may easily see that this is not the man." + +"I see it," said the sheriff; "and God be thanked for his absence." + +Young Gamwell stood at the foot of the ladder. The friar approached him, +opened his book, groaned, turned up the whites of his eyes, +tossed up his arms in the air, and said "Dominus vobiscum." +He then crossed both his hands on his breast under the folds +of his holy robes, and stood a few moments as if in inward prayer. +A deep silence among the attendant crowd accompanied this action +of the friar; interrupted only by the hollow tone of the death-bell, +at long and dreary intervals. Suddenly the friar threw off +his holy robes, and appeared a forester clothed in green, +with a sword in his right hand and a horn in his left. +With the sword he cut the bonds of William Gamwell, who instantly +snatched a sword from one of the sheriff's men; and with the horn +he blew a loud blast, which was answered at once by four bugles +from the quarters of the four winds, and from each quarter came +five-and-twenty bowmen running all on a row. + +"Treason! treason!" cried the sheriff. Old Sir Guy sprang to his +son's side, and so did Little John; and the four setting back +to back, kept the sheriff and his men at bay till the bowmen came +within shot and let fly their arrows among the sheriff's men, who, +after a brief resistance, fled in all directions. The forester, +who had personated the friar, sent an arrow after the flying sheriff, +calling with a strong voice, "To the sheriff's left arm, +as a keepsake from Robin Hood." The arrow reached its destiny; +the sheriff redoubled his speed, and, with the one arrow in his arm, +did not stop to breathe till he was out of reach of another. + +The foresters did not waste time in Nottingham, but were soon at a distance +from its walls. Sir Guy returned with Alice to Gamwell-Hall; but thinking +he should not be safe there, from the share he had had in his son's rescue, +they only remained long enough to supply themselves with clothes and money, +and departed, under the escort of Little John, to another seat of the Gamwells +in Yorkshire. Young Gamwell, taking it for granted that his offence +was past remission, determined on joining Robin Hood, and accompanied him +to the forest, where it was deemed expedient that he should change his name; +and he was rechristened without a priest, and with wine instead of water, +by the immortal name of Scarlet. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + Who set my man i' the stocks?---- + I set him there, Sir but his own disorders + Deserved much less advancement.--Lear. + + +The baron was inflexible in his resolution not to let Matilda leave +the castle. The letter, which announced to her the approaching +fate of young Gamwell, filled her with grief, and increased +the irksomeness of a privation which already preyed sufficiently +on her spirits, and began to undermine her health. She had no longer +the consolation of the society of her old friend father Michael: +the little fat friar of Rubygill was substituted as the castle confessor, +not without some misgivings in his ghostly bosom; but he was more +allured by the sweet savour of the good things of this world at +Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe of the lady Matilda, +which nevertheless was so excessive, from his recollection of the twang +of the bow-string, that he never ventured to find her in the wrong, +much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of penance, as was +the occasional practice of holy confessors, with or without cause, +for the sake of pious discipline, and what was in those days +called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges +of the few who happened to have any, at the expense of the swinish +multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and +being shot at for the benefit of their betters, which is obviously +not the meaning of social order in our more enlightened times: +let us therefore be grateful to Providence, and sing Te Deum laudamus +in chorus with the Holy Alliance. + +The little friar, however, though he found the lady spotless, +found the butler a great sinner: at least so it was conjectured, +from the length of time he always took to confess him in the buttery. + +Matilda became every day more pale and dejected: her spirit, +which could have contended against any strenuous affliction, +pined in the monotonous inaction to which she was condemned. +While she could freely range the forest with her lover in +the morning, she had been content to return to her father's +castle in the evening, thus preserving underanged the balance +of her duties, habits, and affections; not without a hope that +the repeal of her lover's outlawry might be eventually obtained, +by a judicious distribution of some of his forest spoils among +the holy fathers and saints that-were-to-be,--pious proficients +in the ecclesiastic art equestrian, who rode the conscience +of King Henry with double-curb bridles, and kept it well in hand +when it showed mettle and seemed inclined to rear and plunge. +But the affair at Gamwell feast threw many additional +difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of this hope; +and very shortly afterwards King Henry the Second went to make +up in the next world his quarrel with Thomas-a-Becket; +and Richard Coeur de Lion made all England resound with +preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many +zealous adventurers, who eagerly flocked under his banner +in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil, +which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was +not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations, +was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley, +which he appropriated immediately to his own purposes, and sold +to the highest bidder. Now, as the repeal of the outlawry would +involve the restitution of the estates to the rightful owner, +it was obvious that it could never be expected from that +most legitimate and most Christian king, Richard the First +of England, the arch-crusader and anti-jacobin by excellence,-- +the very type, flower, cream, pink, symbol, and mirror +of all the Holy Alliances that have ever existed on earth, +excepting that he seasoned his superstition and love +of conquest with a certain condiment of romantic generosity +and chivalrous self-devotion, with which his imitators +in all other points have found it convenient to dispense. +To give freely to one man what he had taken forcibly from another, +was generosity of which he was very capable; but to restore +what he had taken to the man from whom he had taken it, +was something that wore too much of the cool physiognomy +of justice to be easily reconcileable to his kingly feelings. +He had, besides, not only sent all King Henry's saints +about their business, or rather about their no-business-- +their faineantise--but he had laid them under rigorous +contribution for the purposes of his holy war; and having +made them refund to the piety of the successor what they had +extracted from the piety of the precursor, he compelled them, +in addition, to give him their blessing for nothing. +Matilda, therefore, from all these circumstances, felt little +hope that her lover would be any thing but an outlaw for life. + +The departure of King Richard from England was succeeded by the episcopal +regency of the bishops of Ely and Durham. Longchamp, bishop of Ely, +proceeded to show his sense of Christian fellowship by arresting his +brother bishop, and despoiling him of his share in the government; +and to set forth his humility and loving-kindness in a retinue of nobles +and knights who consumed in one night's entertainment some five years' +revenue of their entertainer, and in a guard of fifteen hundred +foreign soldiers, whom he considered indispensable to the exercise +of a vigour beyond the law in maintaining wholesome discipline over +the refractory English. The ignorant impatience of the swinish multitude +with these fruits of good living, brought forth by one of the meek who +had inherited the earth, displayed itself in a general ferment, of which +Prince John took advantage to make the experiment of getting possession +of his brother's crown in his absence. He began by calling at Reading +a council of barons, whose aspect induced the holy bishop to disguise himself +(some say as an old woman, which, in the twelfth century, perhaps might +have been a disguise for a bishop), and make his escape beyond sea. +Prince John followed up his advantage by obtaining possession of several +strong posts, and among others of the castle of Nottingham. + +While John was conducting his operations at Nottingham, he rode +at times past the castle of Arlingford. He stopped on one occasion +to claim Lord Fitzwater's hospitality, and made most princely +havoc among his venison and brawn. Now it is a matter of record +among divers great historians and learned clerks, that he was then +and there grievously smitten by the charms of the lovely Matilda, +and that a few days after he despatched his travelling minstrel, +or laureate, Harpiton,[3] (whom he retained at moderate wages, +to keep a journal of his proceedings, and prove them all just and +legitimate), to the castle of Arlingford, to make proposals to the lady. +This Harpiton was a very useful person. He was always ready, +not only to maintain the cause of his master with his pen, and to sing +his eulogies to his harp, but to undertake at a moment's notice +any kind of courtly employment, called dirty work by the profane, +which the blessings of civil government, namely, his master's pleasure, +and the interests of social order, namely, his own emolument, +might require. In short, + + Il eut l'emploi qui certes n'est pas mince, + Et qu'a la cour, ou tout se peint en beau, + On appelloit etre l'ami du prince; + Mais qu'a la ville, et surtout en province, + Les gens grossiers ont nomme maquereau. + + +[3] Harp-it-on: or, a corruption of <greek 'Erpeton>, a creeping thing. + + + +Prince John was of opinion that the love of a prince actual and +king expectant, was in itself a sufficient honour to the daughter +of a simple baron, and that the right divine or royalty would +make it sufficiently holy without the rite divine of the church. +He was, therefore, graciously pleased to fall into an exceeding +passion, when his confidential messenger returned from his +embassy in piteous plight, having been, by the baron's order, +first tossed in a blanket and set in the stocks to cool, +and afterwards ducked in the moat and set again in the stocks +to dry. John swore to revenge horribly this flagrant outrage +on royal prerogative, and to obtain possession of the lady +by force of arms; and accordingly collected a body of troops, +and marched upon Arlingford castle. A letter, conveyed as before +on the point of a blunt arrow, announced his approach to Matilda: +and lord Fitzwater had just time to assemble his retainers, +collect a hasty supply of provision, raise the draw-bridge, and drop +the portcullis, when the castle was surrounded by the enemy. +The little fat friar, who during the confusion was asleep in the buttery, +found himself, on awaking, inclosed in the besieged castle, +and dolefully bewailed his evil chance. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +A noble girl, i' faith. Heart! I think I fight with a familiar, +or the ghost of a fencer. Call you this an amorous visage? +Here's blood that would have served me these seven years, +in broken heads and cut fingers, and now it runs out +all together.--MIDDLETON. Roaring Girl. + + +Prince John sat down impatiently before Arlingford castle in the hope +of starving out the besieged; but finding the duration of their supplies +extend itself in an equal ratio with the prolongation of his hope, +he made vigorous preparations for carrying the place by storm. +He constructed an immense machine on wheels, which, being advanced +to the edge of the moat, would lower a temporary bridge, of which +one end would rest on the bank, and the other on the battlements, +and which, being well furnished with stepping boards, would enable +his men to ascend the inclined plane with speed and facility. +Matilda received intimation of this design by the usual friendly channel +of a blunt arrow, which must either have been sent from some secret +friend in the prince's camp, or from some vigorous archer beyond it: +the latter will not appear improbable, when we consider that Robin Hood +and Little John could shoot two English miles and an inch point-blank, + +Come scrive Turpino, che non erra. + + +The machine was completed, and the ensuing morning fixed for the assault. +Six men, relieved at intervals, kept watch over it during the night. +Prince John retired to sleep, congratulating himself in the expectation +that another day would place the fair culprit at his princely mercy. +His anticipations mingled with the visions of his slumber, and he dreamed +of wounds and drums, and sacking and firing the castle, and bearing off +in his arms the beautiful prize through the midst of fire and smoke. +In the height of this imaginary turmoil, he awoke, and conceived for a few +moments that certain sounds which rang in his ears, were the continuation +of those of his dream, in that sort of half-consciousness between +sleeping and waking, when reality and phantasy meet and mingle in dim +and confused resemblance. He was, however, very soon fully awake +to the fact of his guards calling on him to arm, which he did in haste, +and beheld the machine in flames, and a furious conflict raging around it. +He hurried to the spot, and found that his camp had been suddenly assailed +from one side by a party of foresters, and that the baron's people +had made a sortie on the other, and that they had killed the guards, +and set fire to the machine, before the rest of the camp could come +to the assistance of their fellows. + +The night was in itself intensely dark, and the fire-light +shed around it a vivid and unnatural radiance. On one side, +the crimson light quivered by its own agitation on the waveless moat, +and on the bastions and buttresses of the castle, and their +shadows lay in massy blackness on the illuminated walls: +on the other, it shone upon the woods, streaming far within +among the open trunks, or resting on the closer foliage. +The circumference of darkness bounded the scene on all sides: +and in the centre raged the war; shields, helmets, and bucklers +gleaming and glittering as they rang and clashed against each other; +plumes confusedly tossing in the crimson light, and the messy +light and shade that fell on the faces of the combatants, +giving additional energy to their ferocious expression. + +John, drawing nearer to the scene of action, observed two young warriors +fighting side by side, one of whom wore the habit of a forester, +the other that of a retainer of Arlingford. He looked intently on +them both: their position towards the fire favoured the scrutiny; +and the hawk's eye of love very speedily discovered that the +latter was the fair Matilda. The forester he did not know: +but he had sufficient tact to discern that his success would be very much +facilitated by separating her from this companion, above all others. +He therefore formed a party of men into a wedge, only taking especial +care not to be the point of it himself, and drove it between them +with so much precision, that they were in a moment far asunder. + +"Lady Matilda," said John, "yield yourself my prisoner." + +"If you would wear me, prince," said Matilda, "you must win me:" +and without giving him time to deliberate on the courtesy of fighting +with the lady of his love, she raised her sword in the air, and lowered +it on his head with an impetus that would have gone nigh to fathom +even that extraordinary depth of brain which always by divine grace +furnishes the interior of a head-royal, if he had not very dexterously +parried the blow. Prince John wished to disarm and take captive, +not in any way to wound or injure, least of all to kill, his fair opponent. +Matilda was only intent to get rid of her antagonist at any rate: +the edge of her weapon painted his complexion with streaks of very +unloverlike crimson, and she would probably have marred John's hand +for ever signing Magna Charta, but that he was backed by the advantage +of numbers, and that her sword broke short on the boss of his buckler. +John was following up his advantage to make a captive of the lady, +when he was suddenly felled to the earth by an unseen antagonist. +Some of his men picked him carefully up, and conveyed him to his tent, +stunned and stupified. + +When he recovered, he found Harpiton diligently assisting in his recovery, +more in the fear of losing his place than in that of losing his master: +the prince's first inquiry was for the prisoner he had been on the point +of taking at the moment when his habeas corpus was so unseasonably suspended. +He was told that his people had been on the point of securing the said +prisoner, when the devil suddenly appeared among them in the likeness +of a tall friar, having his grey frock cinctured with a sword-belt, +and his crown, which whether it were shaven or no they could not see, +surmounted with a helmet, and flourishing an eight-foot staff, +with which he laid about him to the right and to the left, knocking down +the prince and his men as if they had been so many nine-pins: in fine, +he had rescued the prisoner, and made a clear passage through friend and foe, +and in conjunction with a chosen party of archers, had covered the retreat +of the baron's men and the foresters, who had all gone off in a body +towards Sherwood forest. + +Harpiton suggested that it would be desirable to sack the castle, +and volunteered to lead the van on the occasion, as the defenders were +withdrawn, and the exploit seemed to promise much profit and little danger: +John considered that the castle would in itself be a great acquisition to him, +as a stronghold in furtherance of his design on his brother's throne; +and was determining to take possession with the first light of morning, +when he had the mortification to see the castle burst into flames in several +places at once. A piteous cry was heard from within, and while the prince +was proclaiming a reward to any one who would enter into the burning pile, +and elucidate the mystery of the doleful voice, forth waddled the little +fat friar in an agony of fear, out of the fire into the frying-pan; +for he was instantly taken into custody and carried before Prince John, +wringing his hands and tearing his hair. + +"Are you the friar," said Prince John, in a terrible voice, +"that laid me prostrate in battle, mowed down my men like grass, +rescued my captive, and covered the retreat of my enemies? +And, not content with this, have you now set fire to the castle +in which I intended to take up my royal quarters?" + +The little friar quaked like a jelly: he fell on his knees, +and attempted to speak; but in his eagerness to vindicate himself +from this accumulation of alarming charges, he knew not where to begin; +his ideas rolled round upon each other like the radii of a wheel; +the words he desired to utter, instead of issuing, as it were, +in a right line from his lips, seemed to conglobate themselves +into a sphere turning on its own axis in his throat: +after several ineffectual efforts, his utterance totally failed him, +and he remained gasping, with his mouth open, his lips quivering, +his hands clasped together, and the whites of his eyes turned up +towards the prince with an expression most ruefully imploring. + +"Are you that friar?" repeated the prince. + +Several of the by-standers declared that he was not that friar. The little +friar, encouraged by this patronage, found his voice, and pleaded for mercy. +The prince questioned him closely concerning the burning of the castle. +The little friar declared, that he had been in too great fear during the siege +to know much of what was going forward, except that he had been conscious +during the last few days of a lamentable deficiency of provisions, and had +been present that very morning at the broaching of the last butt of sack. +Harpiton groaned in sympathy. The little friar added, that he knew nothing +of what had passed since till he heard the flames roaring at his elbow. + +"Take him away, Harpiton," said the prince, "fill him with sack, +and turn him out." + +"Never mind the sack," said the little friar, "turn me out at once." + +"A sad chance," said Harpiton, "to be turned out without sack." + +But what Harpiton thought a sad chance the little friar thought a merry one, +and went bounding like a fat buck towards the abbey of Rubygill. + +An arrow, with a letter attached to it, was shot into the camp, +and carried to the prince. The contents were these:-- + +"Prince John,--I do not consider myself to have resisted lawful authority +in defending my castle against you, seeing that you are at present +in a state of active rebellion against your liege sovereign Richard: +and if my provisions had not failed me, I would have maintained it +till doomsday. As it is, I have so well disposed my combustibles +that it shall not serve you as a strong hold in your rebellion. +If you hunt in the chases of Nottinghamshire, you may catch other +game than my daughter. Both she and I are content to be houseless +for a time, in the reflection that we have deserved your enmity, +and the friendship of Coeur-de-Lion. "FITZWATER." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + --Tuck, the merry friar, who many a sermon made + In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade. + DRAYTON. + + +The baron, with some of his retainers and all the foresters, halted at +daybreak in Sherwood forest. The foresters quickly erected tents, +and prepared an abundant breakfast of venison and ale. + +"Now, Lord Fitzwater," said the chief forester, "recognise your son-in-law +that was to have been, in the outlaw Robin Hood." + +"Ay, ay," said the baron, "I have recognised you long ago." + +"And recognise your young friend Gamwell," said the second, +"in the outlaw Scarlet." + +"And Little John, the page," said the third, "in Little John the outlaw." + +"And Father Michael, of Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "in Friar Tuck, +of Sherwood forest. Truly, I have a chapel here hard by, in the shape +of a hollow tree, where I put up my prayers for travellers, and Little John +holds the plate at the door, for good praying deserves good paying." + +"I am in fine company," said the baron. + +"In the very best of company," said the friar, "in the high +court of Nature, and in the midst of her own nobility. +Is it not so? This goodly grove is our palace: +the oak and the beech are its colonnade and its canopy: +the sun and the moon and the stars are its everlasting lamps: +the grass, and the daisy, and the primrose, and the violet, +are its many-coloured floor of green, white, yellow, and blue; +the may-flower, and the woodbine, and the eglantine, and the ivy, +are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry: the lark, +and the thrush, and the linnet, and the nightingale, are its +unhired minstrels and musicians. Robin Hood is king of the forest +both by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army: +to say nothing of the free choice of his people, which he +has indeed, but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis of power. +He holds his dominion over the forest, and its horned multitude +of citizen-deer, and its swinish multitude or peasantry +of wild boars, by right of conquest and force of arms. +He levies contributions among them by the free consent of +his archers, their virtual representatives. If they should find +a voice to complain that we are 'tyrants and usurpers to kill +and cook them up in their assigned and native dwelling-place,' +we should most convincingly admonish them, with point of arrow, +that they have nothing to do with our laws but to obey them. +Is it not written that the fat ribs of the herd shall be fed +upon by the mighty in the land? And have not they withal my +blessing? my orthodox, canonical, and archiepiscopal blessing? +Do I not give thanks for them when they are well roasted and smoking +under my nose? What title had William of Normandy to England, +that Robin of Locksley has not to merry Sherwood? William fought +for his claim. So does Robin. With whom, both? With any +that would or will dispute it. William raised contributions. +So does Robin. From whom, both? From all that they could +or can make pay them. Why did any pay them to William? Why do +any pay them to Robin? For the same reason to both: +because they could not or cannot help it. They differ indeed, +in this, that William took from the poor and gave to the rich, +and Robin takes from the rich and gives to the poor: and therein +is Robin illegitimate; though in all else he is true prince. +Scarlet and John, are they not peers of the forest? lords temporal +of Sherwood? And am not I lord spiritual? Am I not archbishop? +Am I not pope? Do I not consecrate their banner and absolve +their sins? Are not they state, and am not I church? +Are not they state monarchical, and am not I church militant? +Do I not excommunicate our enemies from venison and brawn, +and by 'r Lady, when need calls, beat them down under my feet? +The state levies tax, and the church levies tithe. +Even so do we. Mass, we take all at once. What then? +It is tax by redemption and tithe by commutation. +Your William and Richard can cut and come again, but our Robin +deals with slippery subjects that come not twice to his exchequer. +What need we then to constitute a court, except a fool and a laureate? +For the fool, his only use is to make false knaves merry by art, +and we are true men and are merry by nature. For the laureate, +his only office is to find virtues in those who have none, +and to drink sack for his pains. We have quite virtue enough +to need him not, and can drink our sack for ourselves." +"Well preached, friar," said Robin Hood: "yet there is one +thing wanting to constitute a court, and that is a queen. +And now, lovely Matilda, look round upon these sylvan shades +where we have so often roused the stag from his ferny covert. +The rising sun smiles upon us through the stems of that beechen knoll. +Shall I take your hand, Matilda, in the presence of this my court? +Shall I crown you with our wild-wood coronal, and hail you +queen of the forest? Will you be the queen Matilda of your own +true king Robin?" + +Matilda smiled assent. + +"Not Matilda," said the friar: "the rules of our holy alliance +require new birth. We have excepted in favour of Little John, +because he is great John, and his name is a misnomer. +I sprinkle, not thy forehead with water, but thy lips with wine, +and baptize thee MARIAN." + +"Here is a pretty conspiracy," exclaimed the baron. +"Why, you villanous friar, think you to nickname and marry +my daughter before my face with impunity?" + +"Even so, bold baron," said the friar; "we are strongest here. +Say you, might overcomes right? I say no. There is no right but might: +and to say that might overcomes right is to say that right overcomes itself: +an absurdity most palpable. Your right was the stronger in Arlingford, +and ours is the stronger in Sherwood. Your right was right as long +as you could maintain it; so is ours. So is King Richard's, with +all deference be it spoken; and so is King Saladin's; and their two +mights are now committed in bloody fray, and that which overcomes +will be right, just as long as it lasts, and as far as it reaches. +And now if any of you know any just impediment----" + +"Fire and fury," said the baron. + +"Fire and fury," said the friar, "are modes of that might which +constitutes right, and are just impediments to any thing against which +they can be brought to bear. They are our good allies upon occasion, +and would declare for us now if you should put them to the test." + +"Father," said Matilda, "you know the terms of our compact: +from the moment you restrained my liberty, you renounced your +claim to all but compulsory obedience. The friar argues well. +Right ends with might. Thick walls, dreary galleries, +and tapestried chambers, were indifferent to me while I could leave +them at pleasure, but have ever been hateful to me since they +held me by force. May I never again have roof but the blue sky, +nor canopy but the green leaves, nor barrier but the forest-bounds; +with the foresters to my train, Little John to my page, +Friar Tuck to my ghostly adviser, and Robin Hood to my liege lord. +I am no longer lady Matilda Fitzwater, of Arlingford Castle, +but plain Maid Marian, of Sherwood Forest." + +"Long live Maid Marian!" re-echoed the foresters. + +"Oh false girl!" said the baron, "do you renounce your name and parentage?" + +"Not my parentage," said Marian, "but my name indeed: +do not all maids renounce it at the altar?" + +"The altar!" said the baron: "grant me patience! what do you +mean by the altar?" + +"Pile green turf," said the friar, "wreathe it with flowers, +and crown it with fruit, and we will show the noble baron what we +mean by the altar." + +The foresters did as the friar directed. + +"Now, Little John," said the friar, "on with the cloak +of the abbot of Doubleflask. I appoint thee my clerk: +thou art here duly elected in full mote." + +"I wish you were all in full moat together," said the baron, +"and smooth wall on both sides." + +"Punnest thou?" said the friar. "A heinous anti-christian offence. +Why anti-christian? Because anti-catholic? Why anti-catholic? Because +anti-roman. Why anti-roman? Because Carthaginian. Is not pun from +Punic? punica fides: the very quint-essential quiddity of bad faith: +double-visaged: double-tongued. He that will make a pun will---- I say +no more. Fie on it. Stand forth, clerk. Who is the bride's father?" + +"There is no bride's father," said the baron. "I am the father +of Matilda Fitzwater." + +"There is none such," said the friar. "This is the fair +Maid Marian. Will you make a virtue of necessity, or will you give +laws to the flowing tide? Will you give her, or shall Robin take her? +Will you be her true natural father, or shall I commute paternity? +Stand forth, Scarlet." + +"Stand back, sirrah Scarlet," said the baron. "My daughter shall +have no father but me. Needs must when the devil drives." + +"No matter who drives," said the friar, "so that, like a +well-disposed subject, you yield cheerful obedience to those +who can enforce it." + +"Mawd, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "will you then forsake +your poor old father in his distress, with his castle in ashes, +and his enemy in power?" + +"Not so, father," said Marian; "I will always be your true daughter: +I will always love, and serve, and watch, and defend you: but neither +will I forsake my plighted love, and my own liege lord, who was your +choice before he was mine, for you made him my associate in infancy; +and that he continued to be mine when he ceased to be yours, does not +in any way show remissness in my duties or falling off in my affections. +And though I here plight my troth at the altar to Robin, in the presence +of this holy priest and pious clerk, yet.... Father, when Richard +returns from Palestine, he will restore you to your barony, and perhaps, +for your sake, your daughter's husband to the earldom of Huntingdon: +should that never be, should it be the will of fate that we must live +and die in the greenwood, I will live and die MAID MARIAN."[4] + + +[4] And therefore is she called Maid Marian + Because she leads a spotless maiden life + And shall till Robin's outlaw life have end. + Old Play. + + +"A pretty resolution," said the baron, "if Robin will let you keep it." + +"I have sworn it," said Robin. "Should I expose her tenderness +to the perils of maternity, when life and death may hang on shifting +at a moment's notice from Sherwood to Barnsdale, and from Barnsdale +to the sea-shore? And why should I banquet when my merry men starve? +Chastity is our forest law, and even the friar has kept it since +he has been here." + +"Truly so," said the friar: "for temptation dwells with ease and luxury: +but the hunter is Hippolytus, and the huntress is Dian. And now, +dearly beloved----" + +The friar went through the ceremony with great unction, +and Little John was most clerical in the intonation of his responses. +After which, the friar sang, and Little John fiddled, and the +foresters danced, Robin with Marian, and Scarlet with the baron; +and the venison smoked, and the ale frothed, and the wine sparkled, +and the sun went down on their unwearied festivity: +which they wound up with the following song, the friar leading +and the foresters joining chorus: + + Oh! bold Robin Hood is a forester good, + As ever drew bow in the merry greenwood: + At his bugle's shrill singing the echoes are ringing, + The wild deer are springing for many a rood: + Its summons we follow, through brake, over hollow, + The thrice-blown shrill summons of bold Robin Hood. + + And what eye hath e'er seen such a sweet Maiden Queen, + As Marian, the pride of the forester's green? + A sweet garden-flower, she blooms in the bower, + Where alone to this hour the wild rose has been: + We hail her in duty the queen of all beauty: + We will live, we will die, by our sweet Maiden queen. + + And here's a grey friar, good as heart can desire, + To absolve all our sins as the case may require: + Who with courage so stout, lays his oak-plant about, + And puts to the rout all the foes of his choir: + For we are his choristers, we merry foresters, + Chorussing thus with our militant friar + + And Scarlet cloth bring his good yew-bough and string, + Prime minister is he of Robin our king: + No mark is too narrow for little John's arrow, + That hits a cock sparrow a mile on the wing; + Robin and Marion, Scarlet, and Little John, + Long with their glory old Sherwood shall ring. + + Each a good liver, for well-feathered quiver + Doth furnish brawn, venison, and fowl of the river: + But the best game we dish up, it is a fat bishop: + When his angels we fish up, he proves a free giver: + For a prelate so lowly has angels more holy, + And should this world's false angels to sinners deliver. + + Robin and Marion, Scarlet and Little John, + Drink to them one by one, drink as ye sing: + Robin and Marion, Scarlet and Little John, + Echo to echo through Sherwood shall fling: + Robin and Marion, Scarlet and Little John, + Long with their glory old Sherwood shall ring. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + A single volume paramount: a code: + A master spirit: a determined road. + WORDSWORTH. + + +The next morning Robin Hood convened his foresters, and desired Little John, +for the baron's edification, to read over the laws of their forest society. +Little John read aloud with a stentorophonic voice. + +"At a high court of foresters, held under the greenwood tree, +an hour after sun-rise, Robin Hood President, William Scarlet +Vice-President, Little John Secretary: the following articles, +moved by Friar Tuck in his capacity of Peer Spiritual, +and seconded by Much the Miller, were unanimously agreed to. + +"The principles of our society are six: +Legitimacy, Equity, Hospitality, Chivalry, Chastity, and Courtesy. + +"The articles of Legitimacy are four: + +"I. Our government is legitimate, and our society is founded on the one +golden rule of right, consecrated by the universal consent of mankind, +and by the practice of all ages, individuals, and nations: namely, To keep +what we have, and to catch what we can. + +"II. Our government being legitimate, all our proceedings shall +be legitimate: wherefore we declare war against the whole world, +and every forester is by this legitimate declaration legitimately +invested with a roving commission, to make lawful prize of every +thing that comes in his way. + +"III. All forest laws but our own we declare to be null and void. + +"IV. All such of the old laws of England as do not in any +way interfere with, or militate against, the views of this +honourable assembly, we will loyally adhere to and maintain. +The rest we declare null and void as far as relates to ourselves, +in all cases wherein a vigour beyond the law may be conducive +to our own interest and preservation." + +"The articles of Equity are three: + +"I. The balance of power among the people being very much deranged, +by one having too much and another nothing, we hereby resolve ourselves +into a congress or court of equity, to restore as far as in us lies +the said natural balance of power, by taking from all who have +too much as much of the said too much as we can lay our hands on; +and giving to those who have nothing such a portion thereof as it +may seem to us expedient to part with. + +"II. In all cases a quorum of foresters shall constitute a court of equity, +and as many as may be strong enough to manage the matter in hand shall +constitute a quorum. + +"III. All usurers, monks, courtiers, and other drones of the great hive +of society, who shall be found laden with any portion of the honey +whereof they have wrongfully despoiled the industrious bee, shall be +rightfully despoiled thereof in turn; and all bishops and abbots +shall be bound and beaten,[5] especially the abbot of Doncaster; +as shall also all sheriffs, especially the sheriff of Nottingham. + + +[5] "These byshoppes and these archbyshoppes Ye shall them bete and bynde," + +says Robin Hood, in an old ballad. Perhaps, however, thus is to be +taken not in a literal, but in a figurative sense from the binding +and beating of wheat: for as all rich men were Robin's harvest, +the bishops and archbishops must have been the finest and fattest +ears among them, from which Robin merely proposes to thresh +the grain when he directs them to be bound and beaten: +and as Pharaoh's fat kine were typical of fat ears of wheat, +so may fat ears of wheat, mutatis mutandis, be typical of fat kine. + + +"The articles of Hospitality are two: + +"I. Postmen, carriers and market-folk, peasants and mechanics, +farmers and millers, shall pass through our forest dominions +without let or molestation. + +"II. All other travellers through the forest shall be graciously invited +to partake of Robin's hospitality; and if they come not willingly they +shall be compelled; and the rich man shall pay well for his fare; +and the poor man shall feast scot free, and peradventure receive bounty +in proportion to his desert and necessity. + +"The article of Chivalry is one: + +"I. Every forester shall, to the extent of his power, aid and protect maids, +widows, and orphans, and all weak and distressed persons whomsoever: +and no woman shall be impeded or molested in any way; nor shall any company +receive harm which any woman is in. + +"The article of Chastity is one: + +"I. Every forester, being Diana's forester and minion of +the moon, shall commend himself to the grace of the Virgin, +and shall have the gift of continency on pain of expulsion: +that the article of chivalry may be secure from infringement, +and maids, wives, and widows pass without fear through the forest. + +"The article of Courtesy is one: + +"I. No one shall miscall a forester. He who calls Robin Robert of Huntingdon, +or salutes him by any other title or designation whatsoever except +plain Robin Hood; or who calls Marian Matilda Fitzwater, or salutes her +by any other title or designation whatsoever except plain Maid Marian; +and so of all others; shall for every such offence forfeit a mark, +to be paid to the friar. + +"And these articles we swear to keep as we are good men and true. +Carried by acclamation. God save King Richard. "LITTLE JOHN, Secretary." + +"Excellent laws," said the baron: "excellent, by the holy rood. +William of Normandy, with my great great grandfather Fierabras +at his elbow, could not have made better. And now, sweet Mawd----" + +"A fine, a fine," cried the friar, "a fine, by the article of courtesy." + +"Od's life," said the baron, "shall I not call my own +daughter Mawd? Methinks there should be a special exception +in my favour." + +"It must not be," said Robin Hood: "our constitution admits no privilege." + +"But I will commute," said the friar; "for twenty marks a year +duly paid into my ghostly pocket you shall call your daughter +Mawd two hundred times a day." + +"Gramercy," said the baron, "and I agree, honest friar, when I can get +twenty marks to pay: for till Prince John be beaten from Nottingham, +my rents are like to prove but scanty." + +"I will trust," said the friar, "and thus let us ratify the stipulation; +so shall our laws and your infringement run together in an amicable parallel." + +"But," said Little John, "this is a bad precedent, master friar. +It is turning discipline into profit, penalty into perquisite, +public justice into private revenue. It is rank corruption, master friar." + +"Why are laws made?" said the friar. "For the profit of somebody. +Of whom? Of him who makes them first, and of others as it may happen. +Was not I legislator in the last article, and shall I not thrive +by my own law?" + +"Well then, sweet Mawd," said the baron, "I must leave you, Mawd: +your life is very well for the young and the hearty, but it squares +not with my age or my humour. I must house, Mawd. I must find refuge: +but where? That is the question." + +"Where Sir Guy of Gamwell has found it," said Robin Hood, "near the borders +of Barnsdale. There you may dwell in safety with him and fair Alice, +till King Richard return, and Little John shall give you safe conduct. +You will have need to travel with caution, in disguise and without attendants, +for Prince John commands all this vicinity, and will doubtless lay the country +for you and Marian. Now it is first expedient to dismiss your retainers. +If there be any among them who like our life, they may stay with us +in the greenwood; the rest may return to their homes." + +Some of the baron's men resolved to remain with Robin and Marian, +and were furnished accordingly with suits of green, of which Robin +always kept good store. + +Marian now declared that as there was danger in the way to Barnsdale, +she would accompany Little John and the baron, as she should not +be happy unless she herself saw her father placed in security. +Robin was very unwilling to consent to this, and assured +her that there was more danger for her than the baron: +but Marian was absolute. + +"If so, then," said Robin, "I shall be your guide instead of Little John, +and I shall leave him and Scarlet joint-regents of Sherwood during my absence, +and the voice of Friar Tuck shall be decisive between them if they +differ in nice questions of state policy." Marian objected to this, +that there was more danger for Robin than either herself or the baron: +but Robin was absolute in his turn. + +"Talk not of my voice," said the friar; "for if Marian be a damsel errant, +I will be her ghostly esquire." + +Robin insisted that this should not be, for number would +only expose them to greater risk of detection. The friar, +after some debate, reluctantly acquiesced. + +While they were discussing these matters, they heard the distant +sound of horses' feet. + +"Go," said Robin to Little John, "and invite yonder horseman to dinner." + +Little John bounded away, and soon came before a young man, who was riding +in a melancholy manner, with the bridle hanging loose on the horse's neck, +and his eyes drooping towards the ground. + +"Whither go you?" said Little John. + +"Whithersoever my horse pleases," said the young man. + +"And that shall be," said Little John, "whither I please to lead him. +I am commissioned to invite you to dine with my master." + +"Who is your master?" said the young man. + +"Robin Hood," said Little John. + +"The bold outlaw?" said the stranger. "Neither he nor you should have made +me turn an inch aside yesterday; but to-day I care not." + +"Then it is better for you," said Little John, "that you came +to-day than yesterday, if you love dining in a whole skin: +for my master is the pink of courtesy: but if his guests +prove stubborn, he bastes them and his venison together, +while the friar says mass before meat." + +The young man made no answer, and scarcely seemed to hear what +Little John was saying, who therefore took the horse's bridle and led +him to where Robin and his foresters were setting forth their dinner. +Robin seated the young man next to Marian. Recovering a little +from his stupor, he looked with much amazement at her, and the baron, +and Robin, and the friar; listened to their conversation, and seemed +much astonished to find himself in such holy and courtly company. +Robin helped him largely to rumble-pie and cygnet and pheasant, +and the other dainties of his table; and the friar pledged +him in ale and wine, and exhorted him to make good cheer. +But the young man drank little, ate less, spake nothing, and every +now and then sighed heavily. + +When the repast was ended, "Now," said Robin, "you are at liberty to pursue +your journey: but first be pleased to pay for your dinner." + +"That would I gladly do, Robin," said the young man, +"but all I have about me are five shillings and a ring. +To the five shillings you shall be welcome, but for the ring +I will fight while there is a drop of blood in my veins." + +"Gallantly spoken," said Robin Hood. "A love-token, without doubt: +but you must submit to our forest laws. Little John must search; +and if he find no more than you say, not a penny will I touch; +but if you have spoken false, the whole is forfeit to our fraternity." + +"And with reason," said the friar; "for thereby is the truth maintained +The abbot of Doubleflask swore there was no money in his valise, +and Little John forthwith emptied it of four hundred pounds. +Thus was the abbot's perjury but of one minute's duration; +for though his speech was false in the utterance, yet was it no sooner +uttered than it became true, and we should have been participes +criminis to have suffered the holy abbot to depart in falsehood: +whereas he came to us a false priest, and we sent him away +a true man. Marry, we turned his cloak to further account, +and thereby hangs a tale that may be either said or sung; +for in truth I am minstrel here as well as chaplain; +I pray for good success to our just and necessary warfare, +and sing thanks-giving odes when our foresters bring in booty: + + Bold Robin has robed him in ghostly attire, + And forth he is gone like a holy friar, + Singing, hey down, ho down, down, derry down: + And of two grey friars he soon was aware, + Regaling themselves with dainty fare, + All on the fallen leaves so brown. + + "Good morrow, good brothers," said bold Robin + Hood, + "And what make you in the good greenwood, + Singing hey down, ho down, down, derry down! + Now give me, I pray you, wine and food; + For none can I find in the good greenwood, + All on the fallen leaves so brown." + + "Good brother," they said, "we would give you full fain, + But we have no more than enough for twain, + Singing, hey down, ho down, down, derry down." + "Then give me some money," said bold Robin Hood, + "For none can I find in the good greenwood, + All on the fallen leaves so brown." + + "No money have we, good brother," said they: + "Then," said he, "we three for money will pray: + Singing, hey down, ho down, down, derry down: + And whatever shall come at the end of our prayer, + We three holy friars will piously share, + All on the fallen leaves so brown." + + "We will not pray with thee, good brother, God wot: + For truly, good brother, thou pleasest us not, + Singing hey down, ho down, down, derry down:" + Then up they both started from Robin to run, + But down on their knees Robin pulled them each one, + All on the fallen leaves so brown. + + The grey friars prayed with a doleful face, + But bold Robin prayed with a right merry grace, + Singing, hey down, ho down, down, derry down: + And when they had prayed, their portmanteau he took, + And from it a hundred good angels he shook, + All on the fallen leaves so brown. + + "The saints," said bold Robin, "have hearkened our prayer, + And here's a good angel apiece for your share: + If more you would have, you must win ere you wear: + Singing hey down, ho down, down, derry down:" + Then he blew his good horn with a musical cheer, + And fifty green bowmen came trooping full near, + And away the grey friars they bounded like deer, + All on the fallen leaves so brown. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + What can a young lassie, what shall a young lassie, + What can a young lassie do wi'an auld man?--BURNS. + + +"Here is but five shillings and a ring," said Little John, +"and the young man has spoken true." + +"Then," said Robin to the stranger, "if want of money be the cause +of your melancholy, speak. Little John is my treasurer, +and he shall disburse to you." + +"It is, and it is not," said the stranger; "it is, because, had I not wanted +money I had never lost my love; it is not, because, now that I have lost her, +money would come too late to regain her." + +"In what way have you lost her?" said Robin: "let us clearly +know that she is past regaining, before we give up our wishes +to restore her to you." + +"She is to be married this day," said the stranger, "and perhaps is married +by this, to a rich old knight; and yesterday I knew it not." + +"What is your name?" said Robin. + +"Allen," said the stranger. + +"And where is the marriage to take place, Allen?" said Robin. + +"At Edwinstow church," said Allen, "by the bishop of Nottingham." + +"I know that bishop," said Robin; "he dined with me a month since, and paid +three hundred pounds for his dinner. He has a good ear and loves music. +The friar sang to him to some tune. Give me my harper's cloak, and I +will play a part at this wedding. + +"These are dangerous times, Robin," said Marian, "for playing +pranks out of the forest." + +"Fear not," said Robin; "Edwinstow lies not Nottingham-ward, +and I will take my precautions." + +Robin put on his harper's cloak, while Little John painted his eyebrows +and cheeks, tipped his nose with red, and tied him on a comely beard. +Marian confessed, that had she not been present at the metamorphosis, +she should not have known her own true Robin. Robin took his harp +and went to the wedding. + +Robin found the bishop and his train in the church porch, +impatiently expecting the arrival of the bride and bridegroom. +The clerk was observing to the bishop that the knight was somewhat gouty, +and that the necessity of walking the last quarter of a mile from +the road to the churchyard probably detained the lively bridegroom +rather longer than had been calculated upon. + +"Oh! by my fey," said the music-loving bishop, "here comes a harper +in the nick of time, and now I care not how long they tarry. +Ho! honest friend, are you come to play at the wedding?" + +"I am come to play anywhere," answered Robin, "where I can get a cup of sack; +for which I will sing the praise of the donor in lofty verse, and emblazon +him with any virtue which he may wish to have the credit of possessing, +without the trouble of practising. + +"A most courtly harper," said the bishop; "I will fill thee with sack; +I will make thee a walking butt of sack, if thou wilt delight my ears +with thy melodies." + +"That will I," said Robin; "in what branch of my art shall I exert +my faculty? I am passing well in all, from the anthem to the glee, +and from the dirge to the coranto." + +"It would be idle," said the bishop, "to give thee sack for playing +me anthems, seeing that I myself do receive sack for hearing them sung. +Therefore, as the occasion is festive, thou shalt play me a coranto." + +Robin struck up and played away merrily, the bishop all +the while in great delight, noddling his head, and beating +time with his foot, till the bride and bridegroom appeared. +The bridegroom was richly apparelled, and came slowly and +painfully forward, hobbling and leering, and pursing up his mouth +into a smile of resolute defiance to the gout, and of tender +complacency towards his lady love, who, shining like gold at the old +knight's expense, followed slowly between her father and mother, +her cheeks pale, her head drooping, her steps faltering, +and her eyes reddened with tears. + +Robin stopped his minstrelsy, and said to the bishop, "This seems +to me an unfit match." + +"What do you say, rascal?" said the old knight, hobbling up to him. + +"I say," said Robin, "this seems to me an unfit match. +What, in the devil's name, can you want with a young wife, +who have one foot in flannels and the other in the grave?" + +"What is that to thee, sirrah varlet?" said the old knight; +"stand away from the porch, or I will fracture thy sconce +with my cane." + +"I will not stand away from the porch," said Robin, "unless the bride bid me, +and tell me that you are her own true love." + +"Speak," said the bride's father, in a severe tone, and with a look +of significant menace. The girl looked alternately at her father +and Robin. She attempted to speak, but her voice failed in the effort, +and she burst into tears. + +"Here is lawful cause and just impediment," said Robin, +"and I forbid the banns." + +"Who are you, villain?" said the old knight, stamping his sound +foot with rage. + +"I am the Roman law," said Robin, "which says that there shall not be more +than ten years between a man and his wife; and here are five times ten: +and so says the law of nature." + +"Honest harper," said the bishop, "you are somewhat +over-officious here, and less courtly than I deemed you. +If you love sack, forbear; for this course will never bring you a drop. +As to your Roman law, and your law of nature, what right have they +to say any thing which the law of Holy Writ says not?" + +"The law of Holy Writ does say it," said Robin; "I expound it so to say; +and I will produce sixty commentators to establish my exposition." + +And so saying, he produced a horn from beneath his cloak, and blew +three blasts, and threescore bowmen in green came leaping from the bushes +and trees; and young Allen was the first among them to give Robin +his sword, while Friar Tuck and Little John marched up to the altar. +Robin stripped the bishop and clerk of their robes, and put them on the friar +and Little John; and Allen advanced to take the hand of the bride. +Her cheeks grew red and her eyes grew bright, as she locked her hand +in her lover's, and tripped lightly with him into the church. + +"This marriage will not stand," said the bishop, "for they have not been +thrice asked in church." + +"We will ask them seven times," said Little John, "lest three +should not suffice." + +"And in the meantime," said Robin, "the knight and the bishop +shall dance to my harping." + +So Robin sat in the church porch and played away merrily, while his +foresters formed a ring, in the centre of which the knight and bishop +danced with exemplary alacrity; and if they relaxed their exertions, +Scarlet gently touched them up with the point of an arrow. + +The knight grimaced ruefully, and begged Robin to think of his gout. + +"So I do," said Robin; "this is the true antipodagron: +you shall dance the gout away, and be thankful to me while you live. +I told you," he added to the bishop, "I would play at this wedding; +but you did not tell me that you would dance at it. +The next couple you marry, think of the Roman law." + +The bishop was too much out of breath to reply; and now the young +couple issued from church, and the bride having made a farewell +obeisance to her parents, they departed together with the foresters, +the parents storming, the attendants laughing, the bishop puffing +and blowing, and the knight rubbing his gouty foot, and uttering +doleful lamentations for the gold and jewels with which he had +so unwittingly adorned and cowered the bride. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + As ye came from the holy land + Of blessed Walsinghame, + Oh met ye not with my true love, + As by the way ye came?--Old Ballad. + + +In pursuance of the arrangement recorded in the twelfth chapter, +the baron, Robin, and Marian disguised themselves as pilgrims +returned from Palestine, and travelling from the sea-coast of +Hampshire to their home in Northumberland. By dint of staff and +cockle-shell, sandal and scrip, they proceeded in safety the greater +part of the way (for Robin had many sly inns and resting-places +between Barnsdale and Sherwood), and were already on the borders +of Yorkshire, when, one evening, they passed within view of a castle, +where they saw a lady standing on a turret, and surveying +the whole extent of the valley through which they were passing. +A servant came running from the castle, and delivered to them a message +from his lady, who was sick with expectation of news from her lord +in the Holy Land, and entreated them to come to her, that she might +question them concerning him. This was an awkward occurrence: +but there was no presence for refusal, and they followed the servant +into the castle. The baron, who had been in Palestine in his youth, +undertook to be spokesman on the occasion, and to relate his own +adventures to the lady as having happened to the lord in question. +This preparation enabled him to be so minute and circumstantial +in his detail, and so coherent in his replies to her questions, +that the lady fell implicitly into the delusion, and was delighted +to find that her lord was alive and in health, and in high favour +with the king, and performing prodigies of valour in the name +of his lady, whose miniature he always wore in his bosom. +The baron guessed at this circumstance from the customs of that age, +and happened to be in the right. + +"This miniature," added the baron, "I have had the felicity +to see, and should have known you by it among a million." +The baron was a little embarrassed by some questions of the lady +concerning her lord's personal appearance; but Robin came to his aid, +observing a picture suspended opposite to him on the wall, +which he made a bold conjecture to be that of the lord in question; +and making a calculation of the influences of time and war, +which he weighed with a comparison of the lady's age, he gave +a description of her lord sufficiently like the picture in its +groundwork to be a true resemblance, and sufficiently differing +from it in circumstances to be more an original than a copy. +The lady was completely deceived, and entreated them to partake +her hospitality for the night; but this they deemed it prudent +to decline, and with many humble thanks for her kindness, +and representations of the necessity of not delaying their +homeward course, they proceeded on their way. + +As they passed over the drawbridge, they met Sir Ralph Montfaucon +and his squire, who were wandering in quest of Marian, and were +entering to claim that hospitality which the pilgrims had declined. +Their countenances struck Sir Ralph with a kind of imperfect recognition, +which would never have been matured, but that the eyes of Marian, +as she passed him, encountered his, and the images of those stars of beauty +continued involuntarily twinkling in his sensorium to the exclusion +of all other ideas, till memory, love, and hope concurred with imagination +to furnish a probable reason for their haunting him so pertinaciously. +Those eyes, he thought, were certainly the eyes of Matilda Fitzwater; +and if the eyes were hers, it was extremely probable, if not logically +consecutive, that the rest of the body they belonged to was hers also. +Now, if it were really Matilda Fitzwater, who were her two companions? +The baron? Aye, and the elder pilgrim was something like him. +And the earl of Huntingdon? Very probably. The earl and the baron might +be good friends again, now that they were both in disgrace together. +While he was revolving these cogitations, he was introduced to the lady, +and after claiming and receiving the promise of hospitality, +he inquired what she knew of the pilgrims who had just departed? +The lady told him they were newly returned from Palestine, having been long +in the Holy Land. The knight expressed some scepticism on this point. +The lady replied, that they had given her so minute a detail of her +lord's proceedings, and so accurate a description of his person, +that she could not be deceived in them. This staggered the knight's +confidence in his own penetration; and if it had not been a heresy +in knighthood to suppose for a moment that there could be in rerum +natura such another pair of eyes as those of his mistress, +he would have acquiesced implicitly in the lady's judgment. +But while the lady and the knight were conversing, the warder blew +his bugle-horn, and presently entered a confidential messenger +from Palestine, who gave her to understand that her lord was well; +but entered into a detail of his adventures most completely at +variance with the baron's narrative, to which not the correspondence +of a single incident gave the remotest colouring of similarity. +It now became manifest that the pilgrims were not true men; +and Sir Ralph Montfaucon sate down to supper with his head full +of cogitations, which we shall leave him to chew and digest with his +pheasant and canary. + +Meanwhile our three pilgrims proceeded on their way. +The evening set in black and lowering, when Robin turned +aside from the main track, to seek an asylum for the night, +along a narrow way that led between rocky and woody hills. +A peasant observed the pilgrims as they entered that narrow pass, +and called after them: "Whither go you, my masters? there +are rogues in that direction." + +"Can you show us a direction," said Robin, "in which there are none? +If so we will take it in preference." The peasant grinned, +and walked away whistling. + +The pass widened as they advanced, and the woods grew thicker and darker +around them. Their path wound along the slope of a woody declivity, +which rose high above them in a thick rampart of foliage, +and descended almost precipitously to the bed of a small river, +which they heard dashing in its rocky channel, and saw its white foam +gleaming at intervals in the last faint glimmerings of twilight. +In a short time all was dark, and the rising voice of the wind +foretold a coming storm. They turned a point of the valley, and saw +a light below them in the depth of the hollow, shining through a +cottage-casement and dancing in its reflection on the restless stream. +Robin blew his horn, which was answered from below. The cottage +door opened: a boy came forth with a torch, ascended the steep, +showed tokens of great delight at meeting with Robin, and lighted +them down a flight of steps rudely cut in the rock, and over a series +of rugged stepping-stones, that crossed the channel of the river. +They entered the cottage, which exhibited neatness, comfort, and plenty, +being amply enriched with pots, pans, and pipkins, and adorned +with flitches of bacon and sundry similar ornaments, that gave +goodly promise in the firelight that gleamed upon the rafters. +A woman, who seemed just old enough to be the boy's mother, +had thrown down her spinning wheel in her joy at the sound +of Robin's horn, and was bustling with singular alacrity +to set forth her festal ware and prepare an abundant supper. +Her features, though not beautiful, were agreeable and expressive, +and were now lighted up with such manifest joy at the sight of Robin, +that Marian could not help feeling a momentary touch of jealousy, +and a half-formed suspicion that Robin had broken his forest law, +and had occasionally gone out of bounds, as other great men have +done upon occasion, in order to reconcile the breach of the spirit, +with the preservation of the letter, of their own legislation. +However, this suspicion, if it could be said to exist in a mind +so generous as Marian's, was very soon dissipated by the entrance +of the woman's husband, who testified as much joy as his wife +had done at the sight of Robin; and in a short time the whole of +the party were amicably seated round a smoking supper of river-fish +and wild wood fowl, on which the baron fell with as much alacrity +as if he had been a true pilgrim from Palestine. + +The husband produced some recondite flasks of wine, which were laid +by in a binn consecrated to Robin, whose occasional visits to them +in his wanderings were the festal days of these warm-hearted cottagers, +whose manners showed that they had not been born to this low estate. +Their story had no mystery, and Marian easily collected it from +the tenour of their conversation. The young man had been, like Robin, +the victim of an usurious abbot, and had been outlawed for debt, +and his nut-brown maid had accompanied him to the depths of Sherwood, +where they lived an unholy and illegitimate life, killing the king's deer, +and never hearing mass. In this state, Robin, then earl of Huntingdon, +discovered them in one of his huntings, and gave them aid and protection. +When Robin himself became an outlaw, the necessary qualification or gift +of continency was too hard a law for our lovers to subscribe to; +and as they were thus disqualified for foresters, Robin had found them +a retreat in this romantic and secluded spot. He had done similar +service to other lovers similarly circumstanced, and had disposed them +in various wild scenes which he and his men had discovered in their +flittings from place to place, supplying them with all necessaries +and comforts from the reluctant disgorgings of fat abbots and usurers. +The benefit was in some measure mutual; for these cottages served him +as resting-places in his removals, and enabled him to travel untraced +and unmolested; and in the delight with which he was always received +he found himself even more welcome than he would have been at an inn; +and this is saying very much for gratitude and affection together. +The smiles which surrounded him were of his own creation, and he participated +in the happiness he had bestowed. + +The casements began to rattle in the wind, and the rain to beat upon +the windows. The wind swelled to a hurricane, and the rain dashed +like a flood against the glass. The boy retired to his little bed, +the wife trimmed the lamp, the husband heaped logs upon the fire: +Robin broached another flask; and Marian filled the baron's cup, +and sweetened Robin's by touching its edge with her lips. + +"Well," said the baron, "give me a roof over my head, be it never so humble. +Your greenwood canopy is pretty and pleasant in sunshine; but if I were doomed +to live under it, I should wish it were water-tight." + +"But," said Robin, "we have tents and caves for foul weather, +good store of wine and venison, and fuel in abundance." + +"Ay, but," said the baron, "I like to pull off my boots of a night, which you +foresters seldom do, and to ensconce myself thereafter in a comfortable bed. +Your beech-root is over-hard for a couch, and your mossy stump is somewhat +rough for a bolster." + +"Had you not dry leaves," said Robin, "with a bishop's surplice over them? +What would you have softer? And had you not an abbot's travelling cloak +for a coverlet? What would you have warmer?" + +"Very true," said the baron, "but that was an indulgence to a guest, and I +dreamed all night of the sheriff of Nottingham. I like to feel myself safe," +he added, stretching out his legs to the fire, and throwing himself +back in his chair with the air of a man determined to be comfortable. +"I like to feel myself safe," said the baron. + +At that moment the woman caught her husband's arm, and all the party +following the direction of her eyes, looked simultaneously to the window, +where they had just time to catch a glimpse of an apparition of an armed head, +with its plumage tossing in the storm, on which the light shone from within, +and which disappeared immediately. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +O knight, thou lack'st a cup of canary. When did I see thee +so put down?--Twelfth Night. + + +Several knocks, as from the knuckles of an iron glove, were given +to the door of the cottage, and a voice was heard entreating +shelter from the storm for a traveller who had lost his way. +Robin arose and went to the door. + +"What are you?" said Robin. + +"A soldier," replied the voice: "an unfortunate adherent of Longchamp, +flying the vengeance of Prince John." + +"Are you alone?" said Robin. + +"Yes," said the voice: "it is a dreadful night. Hospitable cottagers, +pray give me admittance. I would not have asked it but for the storm. +I would have kept my watch in the woods." + +"That I believe," said Robin. "You did not reckon on the storm when you +turned into this pass. Do you know there are rogues this way?" + +"I do," said the voice. + +"So do I," said Robin. + +A pause ensued, during which Robin listening attentively caught +a faint sound of whispering. + +"You are not alone," said Robin. "Who are your companions?" + +"None but the wind and the water," said the voice, "and I would +I had them not." + +"The wind and the water have many voices," said Robin, "but I +never before heard them say, What shall we do?" + +Another pause ensued: after which, + +"Look ye, master cottager," said the voice, in an altered tone, +"if you do not let us in willingly, we will break down the door." + +"Ho! ho!" roared the baron, "you are become plural are you, rascals? How many +are there of you, thieves? What, I warrant, you thought to rob and murder +a poor harmless cottager and his wife, and did not dream of a garrison? +You looked for no weapon of opposition but spit, poker, and basting ladle, +wielded by unskilful hands: but, rascals, here is short sword and long cudgel +in hands well tried in war, wherewith you shall be drilled into cullenders +and beaten into mummy." + +No reply was made, but furious strokes from without resounded +upon the door. Robin, Marian, and the baron threw by their +pilgrim's attire, and stood in arms on the defensive. +They were provided with swords, and the cottager gave them +bucklers and helmets, for all Robin's haunts were furnished +with secret armouries. But they kept their swords sheathed, +and the baron wielded a ponderous spear, which he pointed towards +the door ready to run through the first that should enter, +and Robin and Marian each held a bow with the arrow drawn to its +head and pointed in the same direction. The cottager flourished +a strong cudgel (a weapon in the use of which he prided himself +on being particularly expert), and the wife seized the spit from +the fireplace, and held it as she saw the baron hold his spear. +The storm of wind and rain continued to beat on the roof and +the casement, and the storm of blows to resound upon the door, +which at length gave way with a violent crash, and a cluster +of armed men appeared without, seemingly not less than twelve. +Behind them rolled the stream now changed from a gentle and shallow +river to a mighty and impetuous torrent, roaring in waves of +yellow foam, partially reddened by the light that streamed through +the open door, and turning up its convulsed surface in flashes +of shifting radiance from restless masses of half-visible shadow. +The stepping-stones, by which the intruders must have crossed, +were buried under the waters. On the opposite bank the light +fell on the stems and boughs of the rock-rooted oak and ash +tossing and swaying in the blast, and sweeping the flashing +spray with their leaves. + +The instant the door broke, Robin and Marian loosed their arrows. +Robin's arrow struck one of the assailants in the juncture of the shoulder, +and disabled his right arm: Marian's struck a second in the juncture +of the knee, and rendered him unserviceable; for the night. +The baron's long spear struck on the mailed breastplate of a third, +and being stretched to its full extent by the long-armed hero, +drove him to the edge of the torrent, and plunged him into its eddies, +along which he was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream, +calling vainly on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost +in the mingled roar of the waters and the wind. A fourth springing +through the door was laid prostrate by the cottager's cudgel: +but the wife being less dexterous than her company, though an Amazon +in strength, missed her pass at a fifth, and drove the point of the spit +several inches into the right hand door-post as she stood close to +the left, and thus made a new barrier which the invaders could not pass +without dipping under it and submitting their necks to the sword: +but one of the assailants seizing it with gigantic rage, shook it at +once from the grasp of its holder and from its lodgment in the post, +and at the same time made good the irruption of the rest of his party +into the cottage. + +Now raged an unequal combat, for the assailants fell two to one +on Robin, Marian, the baron, and the cottager; while the wife, +being deprived of her spit, converted every thing that was +at hand to a missile, and rained pots, pans, and pipkins on +the armed heads of the enemy. The baron raged like a tiger, +and the cottager laid about him like a thresher. One of the soldiers +struck Robin's sword from his hand and brought him on his knee, +when the boy, who had been roused by the tumult and had been +peeping through the inner door, leaped forward in his shirt, +picked up the sword and replaced it in Robin's hand, who instantly +springing up, disarmed and wounded one of his antagonists, +while the other was laid prostrate under the dint of a brass +cauldron launched by the Amazonian dame. Robin now turned +to the aid of Marian, who was parrying most dexterously the cuts +and slashes of her two assailants, of whom Robin delivered +her from one, while a well-applied blow of her sword struck off +the helmet of the other, who fell on his knees to beg a boon, +and she recognised Sir Ralph Montfaucon. The men who were engaged +with the baron and the peasant, seeing their leader subdued, +immediately laid down their arms and cried for quarter. +The wife brought some strong rope, and the baron tied their +arms behind them. + +"Now, Sir Ralph," said Marian, "once more you are at my mercy." + +"That I always am, cruel beauty," said the discomfited lover. + +"Odso! courteous knight," said the baron, "is this the return you +make for my beef and canary, when you kissed my daughter's hand +in token of contrition for your intermeddling at her wedding? +Heart, I am glad to see she has given you a bloody coxcomb. +Slice him down, Mawd! slice him down, and fling him into the river." + +"Confess," said Marian, "what brought you here, and how did you +trace our steps?" + +"I will confess nothing," said the knight. + +"Then confess you, rascal," said the baron, holding his sword +to the throat of the captive squire. + +"Take away the sword," said the squire, "it is too near +my mouth, and my voice will not come out for fear: +take away the sword, and I will confess all." +The baron dropped his sword, and the squire proceeded; +"Sir Ralph met you, as you quitted Lady Falkland's castle, +and by representing to her who you were, borrowed from her such +a number of her retainers as he deemed must ensure your capture, +seeing that your familiar the friar was not at your elbow. +We set forth without delay, and traced you first by means +of a peasant who saw you turn into this valley, and afterwards +by the light from the casement of this solitary dwelling. +Our design was to have laid an ambush for you in the morning, +but the storm and your observation of my unlucky face through +the casement made us change our purpose; and what followed you +can tell better than I can, being indeed masters of the subject." + +"You are a merry knave," said the baron, "and here is a cup +of wine for you." + +"Gramercy," said the squire, "and better late than never: +but I lacked a cup of this before. Had I been pot-valiant, I +had held you play." + +"Sir knight," said Marian, "this is the third time you have sought +the life of my lord and of me, for mine is interwoven with his. +And do you think me so spiritless as to believe that I can be yours +by compulsion? Tempt me not again, for the next time shall be the last, +and the fish of the nearest river shall commute the flesh of a +recreant knight into the fast-day dinner of an uncarnivorous friar. +I spare you now, not in pity but in scorn. Yet shall you swear +to a convention never more to pursue or molest my lord or me, +and on this condition you shall live." + +The knight had no alternative but to comply, and swore, +on the honour of knighthood, to keep the convention inviolate. +How well he kept his oath we shall have no opportunity of narrating: +Di lui la nostra istoria piu non parla. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Carry me over the water, thou fine fellowe. Old Ballad. + + +The pilgrims, without experiencing further molestation, arrived at +the retreat of Sir Guy of Gamwell. They found the old knight +a cup too low; partly from being cut off from the scenes of his +old hospitality and the shouts of his Nottinghamshire vassals, +who were wont to make the rafters of his ancient hall re-echo +to their revelry; but principally from being parted from his son, +who had long been the better half of his flask and pasty. +The arrival of our visitors cheered him up; and finding that +the baron was to remain with him, he testified his delight +and the cordiality of his welcome by pegging him in the ribs +till he made him roar. + +Robin and Marian took an affectionate leave of the baron and the old knight; +and before they quitted the vicinity of Barnsdale, deeming it prudent +to return in a different disguise, they laid aside their pilgrim's attire, +and assumed the habits and appurtenances of wandering minstrels. + +They travelled in this character safely and pleasantly, till one +evening at a late hour they arrived by the side of a river, +where Robin looking out for a mode of passage perceived +a ferry-boat safely moored in a nook on the opposite bank; +near which a chimney sending up a wreath of smoke through +the thick-set willows, was the only symptom of human habitation; +and Robin naturally conceiving the said chimney and wreath of smoke +to be the outward signs of the inward ferryman, shouted "Over!" +with much strength and clearness; but no voice replied, +and no ferryman appeared. Robin raised his voice, and shouted +with redoubled energy, "Over, Over, O-o-o-over!" A faint echo +alone responded "Over!" and again died away into deep silence: +but after a brief interval a voice from among the willows, +in a strange kind of mingled intonation that was half a shout +and half a song, answered: + + Over, over, over, jolly, jolly rover, + Would you then come over? Over, over, over? + Jolly, jolly rover, here's one lives in clover: + Who finds the clover? The jolly, jolly rover. + He finds the clover, let him then come over, + The jolly, jolly rover, over, over, over, + + +"I much doubt," said Marian, "if this ferryman do not mean by clover +something more than the toll of his ferry-boat." + +"I doubt not," answered Robin, "he is a levier of toll and tithe, +which I shall put him upon proof of his right to receive, +by making trial of his might to enforce." + +The ferryman emerged from the willows and stepped into his boat. +"As I live," exclaimed Robin, "the ferryman is a friar." + +"With a sword," said Marian, "stuck in his rope girdle." + +The friar pushed his boat off manfully, and was presently half +over the river. + +"It is friar Tuck," said Marian. + +"He will scarcely know us," said Robin; "and if he do not, +I will break a staff with him for sport." + +The friar came singing across the water: the boat touched the land: +Robin and Marian stepped on board: the friar pushed off again. + +"Silken doublets, silken doublets," said the friar: +"slenderly lined, I bow: your wandering minstrel is always +poor toll: your sweet angels of voices pass current for a bed +and a supper at the house of every lord that likes to hear +the fame of his valour without the trouble of fighting for it. +What need you of purse or pouch? You may sing before thieves. +Pedlars, pedlars: wandering from door to door with the small +ware of lies and cajolery: exploits for carpet-knights; +honesty for courtiers; truth for monks, and chastity for nuns: +a good saleable stock that costs the vender nothing, defies wear +and tear, and when it has served a hundred customers is as plentiful +and as marketable as ever. But, sirrahs, I'll none of your balderdash. +You pass not hence without clink of brass, or I'll knock your +musical noddles together till they ring like a pair of cymbals. +That will be a new tune for your minstrelships." + +This friendly speech of the friar ended as they stepped on the opposite bank. +Robin had noticed as they passed that the summer stream was low. + +"Why, thou brawling mongrel," said Robin, "that whether thou be thief, friar, +or ferryman, or an ill-mixed compound of all three, passes conjecture, +though I judge thee to be simple thief, what barkest thou at thus? +Villain, there is clink of brass for thee. Dost thou see this coin? +Dost thou hear this music? Look and listen: for touch thou shalt not: +my minstrelship defies thee. Thou shalt carry me on thy back over the water, +and receive nothing but a cracked sconce for thy trouble." + +"A bargain," said the friar: "for the water is low, the labour is light, +and the reward is alluring." And he stooped down for Robin, who mounted +his back, and the friar waded with him over the river. + +"Now, fine fellow," said the friar, "thou shalt carry me back over the water, +and thou shalt have a cracked sconce for thy trouble." + +Robin took the friar on his back, and waded with him into the middle +of the river, when by a dexterous jerk he suddenly flung him off +and plunged him horizontally over head and ears in the water. +Robin waded to shore, and the friar, half swimming and +half scrambling, followed. + +"Fine fellow, fine fellow," said the friar, "now will I pay thee +thy cracked sconce." + +"Not so," said Robin, "I have not earned it: but thou hast earned it, +and shalt have it." + +It was not, even in those good old times, a sight of every day +to see a troubadour and a friar playing at single-stick by the side +of a river, each aiming with fell intent at the other's coxcomb. +The parties were both so skilled in attack and defence, that their +mutual efforts for a long time expended themselves in quick +and loud rappings on each other's oaken staves. At length Robin +by a dexterous feint contrived to score one on the friar's crown: +but in the careless moment of triumph a splendid sweep of the friar's +staff struck Robin's out of his hand into the middle of the river, +and repaid his crack on the head with a degree of vigour that might +have passed the bounds of a jest if Marian had not retarded its +descent by catching the friar's arm. + +"How now, recreant friar," said Marian; "what have you +to say why you should not suffer instant execution, +being detected in open rebellion against your liege lord? +Therefore kneel down, traitor, and submit your neck to the sword +of the offended law." + +"Benefit of clergy," said the friar: "I plead my clergy. +And is it you indeed, ye scapegraces? Ye are well disguised: +I knew ye not, by my flask. Robin, jolly Robin, he buys +a jest dearly that pays for it with a bloody coxcomb. +But here is balm for all bruises, outward and inward. +(The friar produced a flask of canary.) Wash thy wound twice +and thy throat thrice with this solar concoction, and thou shalt +marvel where was thy hurt. But what moved ye to this frolic? +Knew ye not that ye could not appear in a mask more fashioned +to move my bile than in that of these gilders and lackerers of +the smooth surface of worthlessness, that bring the gold of true +valour into disrepute, by stamping the baser metal with the fairer +im-pression? I marvelled to find any such given to fighting +(for they have an old instinct of self-preservation): but I +rejoiced thereat, that I might discuss to them poetical justice: +and therefore have I cracked thy sconce: for which, let this +be thy medicine." + +"But wherefore," said Marian, "do we find you here, when we left +you joint lord warden of Sherwood?" + +"I do but retire to my devotions," replied the friar. +"This is my hermitage, in which I first took refuge when I +escaped from my beloved brethren of Rubygill; and to which I +still retreat at times from the vanities of the world, +which else might cling to me too closely, since I have been +promoted to be peer-spiritual of your forest-court. For, +indeed, I do find in myself certain indications and admonitions +that my day has past its noon; and none more cogent than this: +that daily of bad wine I grow more intolerant, and of good wine +have a keener and more fastidious relish. There is no surer +symptom of receding years. The ferryman is my faithful varlet. +I send him on some pious errand, that I may meditate in ghostly +privacy, when my presence in the forest can best be spared: +and when can it be better spared than now, seeing that the +neighbourhood of Prince John, and his incessant perquisitions +for Marian, have made the forest too hot to hold more of us +than are needful to keep up a quorum, and preserve unbroken +the continuity of our forest-dominion? For, in truth, without your +greenwood majesties, we have hardly the wit to live in a body, +and at the same time to keep our necks out of jeopardy, +while that arch-rebel and traitor John infests the precincts +of our territory." + +The friar now conducted them to his peaceful cell, where he spread +his frugal board with fish, venison, wild-fowl, fruit, and canary. +Under the compound operation of this materia medica Robin's wounds +healed apace, and the friar, who hated minstrelsy, began as usual +chirping in his cups. Robin and Marian chimed in with his tuneful +humour till the midnight moon peeped in upon their revelry. + +It was now the very witching time of night, when they heard +a voice shouting, "Over!" They paused to listen, and the voice +repeated "Over!" in accents clear and loud, but which at +the same time either were in themselves, or seemed to be, +from the place and the hour, singularly plaintive and dreary. +The friar fidgetted about in his seat: fell into a deep musing: +shook himself, and looked about him: first at Marian, then at Robin, +then at Marian again; filled and tossed off a cup of canary, +and relapsed into his reverie. + +"Will you not bring your passenger over?" said Robin. The friar +shook his head and looked mysterious. + +"That passenger," said the friar, "will never come over. +Every full moon, at midnight, that voice calls, 'Over!' I and my +varlet have more than once obeyed the summons, and we have sometimes +had a glimpse of a white figure under the opposite trees: +but when the boat has touched the bank, nothing has been to be seen; +and the voice has been heard no more till the midnight of the +next full moon." + +"It is very strange," said Robin. + +"Wondrous strange," said the friar, looking solemn. + +The voice again called "Over!" in a long plaintive musical cry. + +"I must go to it," said the friar, "or it will give us no peace. +I would all my customers were of this world. I begin to think +that I am Charon, and that this river is Styx." + +"I will go with you, friar," said Robin. + +"By my flask," said the friar, "but you shall not." + +"Then I will," said Marian. + +"Still less," said the friar, hurrying out of the cell. +Robin and Marian followed: but the friar outstepped them, +and pushed off his boat. + +A white figure was visible under the shade of the opposite trees. +The boat approached the shore, and the figure glided away. +The friar returned. + +They re-entered the cottage, and sat some time conversing +on the phenomenon they had seen. The friar sipped his wine, +and after a time, said: + +"There is a tradition of a damsel who was drowned here some years ago. +The tradition is----" + +But the friar could not narrate a plain tale: he therefore cleared +his throat, and sang with due solemnity, in a ghostly voice: + + A damsel came in midnight rain, + And called across the ferry: + The weary wight she called in vain, + Whose senses sleep did bury. + At evening, from her father's door + She turned to meet her lover: + At midnight, on the lonely shore, + She shouted "Over, over!" + + She had not met him by the tree + Of their accustomed meeting, + And sad and sick at heart was she, + Her heart all wildly beating. + In chill suspense the hours went by, + The wild storm burst above her: + She turned her to the river nigh, + And shouted, "Over, over!" + + A dim, discoloured, doubtful light + The moon's dark veil permitted, + And thick before her troubled sight + Fantastic shadows flitted. + Her lover's form appeared to glide, + And beckon o'er the water: + Alas! his blood that morn had dyed + Her brother's sword with slaughter. + + Upon a little rock she stood, + To make her invocation: + She marked not that the rain-swoll'n flood + Was islanding her station. + The tempest mocked her feeble cry: + No saint his aid would give her: + The flood swelled high and yet more high, + And swept her down the river. + + Yet oft beneath the pale moonlight, + When hollow winds are blowing, + The shadow of that maiden bright + Glides by the dark stream's flowing. + And when the storms of midnight rave, + While clouds the broad moon cover, + The wild gusts waft across the wave + The cry of, "Over, over!" + + +While the friar was singing, Marian was meditating: +and when he had ended she said, "Honest friar, you have misplaced +your tradition, which belongs to the aestuary of a nobler river, +where the damsel was swept away by the rising of the tide, +for which your land-flood is an indifferent substitute. +But the true tradition of this stream I think I myself possess, +and I will narrate it in your own way: + + It was a friar of orders free, + A friar of Rubygill: + At the greenwood-tree a vow made he, + But he kept it very ill: + A vow made he of chastity, + But he kept it very ill. + He kept it, perchance, in the conscious shade + Of the bounds of the forest wherein it was made: + But he roamed where he listed, as free as the wind, + And he left his good vow in the forest behind: + For its woods out of sight were his vow out of mind, + With the friar of Rubygill. + + In lonely hut himself he shut, + The friar of Rubygill; + Where the ghostly elf absolved himself, + To follow his own good will: + And he had no lack of canary sack, + To keep his conscience still. + And a damsel well knew, when at lonely midnight + It gleamed on the waters, his signal-lamp-light: + "Over! over!" she warbled with nightingale throat, + And the friar sprung forth at the magical note, + And she crossed the dark stream in his trim ferryboat, + With the friar of Rubygill. + + +"Look you now," said Robin, "if the friar does not blush. +Many strange sights have I seen in my day, but never till this +moment did I see a blushing friar." + +"I think," said the friar, "you never saw one that blushed not, +or you saw good canary thrown away. But you are welcome to laugh +if it so please you. None shall laugh in my company, though it +be at my expense, but I will have my share of the merriment. +The world is a stage, and life is a farce, and he that laughs +most has most profit of the performance. The worst thing is good +enough to be laughed at, though it be good for nothing else; +and the best thing, though it be good for something else, +is good for nothing better." + +And he struck up a song in praise of laughing and quaffing, without further +adverting to Marian's insinuated accusation; being, perhaps, of opinion, +that it was a subject on which the least said would be the soonest mended. + +So passed the night. In the morning a forester came to the friar, +with intelligence that Prince John had been compelled, by the urgency +of his affairs in other quarters, to disembarrass Nottingham Castle +of his royal presence. Our wanderers returned joyfully to their +forest-dominion, being thus relieved from the vicinity of any more +formidable belligerent than their old bruised and beaten enemy +the sheriff of Nottingham. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + Oh! this life + Is nobler than attending for a check, + Richer than doing nothing for a bribe + Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk.--Cymbeline. + + +So Robin and Marian dwelt and reigned in the forest, ranging the glades +and the greenwoods from the matins of the lark to the vespers +of the nightingale, and administering natural justice according +to Robin's ideas of rectifying the inequalities of human condition: +raising genial dews from the bags of the rich and idle, and returning +them in fertilising showers on the poor and industrious: +an operation which more enlightened statesmen have happily reversed, +to the unspeakable benefit of the community at large. +The light footsteps of Marian were impressed on the morning dew beside +the firmer step of her lover, and they shook its large drops about them +as they cleared themselves a passage through the thick tall fern, +without any fear of catching cold, which was not much in fashion +in the twelfth century. Robin was as hospitable as Cathmor; +for seven men stood on seven paths to call the stranger to his feast. +It is true, he superadded the small improvement of making +the stranger pay for it: than which what could be more generous? +For Cathmor was himself the prime giver of his feast, +whereas Robin was only the agent to a series of strangers, +who provided in turn for the entertainment of their successors; +which is carrying the disinterestedness of hospitality to its acme. +Marian often killed the deer, + + Which Scarlet dressed, and Friar Tuck blessed + While Little John wandered in search of a guest. + +Robin was very devout, though there was great unity in his religion: +it was exclusively given to our Lady the Virgin, and he never set forth +in a morning till he had said three prayers, and had heard the sweet +voice of his Marian singing a hymn to their mutual patroness. Each of +his men had, as usual, a patron saint according to his name or taste. +The friar chose a saint for himself, and fixed on Saint Botolph, +whom he euphonised into Saint Bottle, and maintained that he was +that very Panomphic Pantagruelian saint, well known in ancient +France as a female divinity, by the name of La Dive Bouteille, +whose oracular monosyllable "Trincq,', is celebrated and under-stood +by all nations, and is expounded by the learned doctor Alcofribas,[6] +who has treated at large on the subject, to signify "drink." +Saint Bottle, then, was the saint of Friar Tuck, who did not yield +even to Robin and Marian in the assiduity of his devotions to his +chosen patron. Such was their summer life, and in their winter caves +they had sufficient furniture, ample provender, store of old wine, +and assuredly no lack of fuel, with joyous music and pleasant discourse +to charm away the season of darkness and storms. + + +[6] Alcofribas Nasier: an anagram of Francois Rabelais, +and his assumed appellation. + +The reader who desires to know more about this oracular divinity, +may consult the said doctor Alcofribas Nasier, who will usher him +into the adytum through the medium of the high priestess Bacbuc. + + + +Many moons had waxed and waned, when on the afternoon of a lovely +summer day a lusty broad-boned knight was riding through the forest +of Sherwood. The sun shone brilliantly on the full green foliage, +and afforded the knight a fine opportunity of observing picturesque +effects, of which it is to be feared he did not avail himself. +But he had not proceeded far, before he had an opportunity of observing +something much more interesting, namely, a fine young outlaw leaning, +in the true Sherwood fashion, with his back against a tree. +The knight was preparing to ask the stranger a question, the answer +to which, if correctly given, would have relieved him from a doubt +that pressed heavily on his mind, as to whether he was in the right +road or the wrong, when the youth prevented the inquiry by saying: +"In God's name, sir knight, you are late to your meals. +My master has tarried dinner for you these three hours." + +"I doubt," said the knight, "I am not he you wot of. +I am no where bidden to day and I know none in this vicinage." + +"We feared," said the youth, "your memory would be treacherous: +therefore am I stationed here to refresh it." + +"Who is your master?" said the knight; "and where does he abide?" + +"My master," said the youth, "is called Robin Hood, and he abides hard by." + +"And what knows he of me?" said the knight. + +"He knows you," answered the youth "as he does every way-faring +knight and friar, by instinct." + +"Gramercy," said the knight; "then I understand his bidding: +but how if I say I will not come?" + +"I am enjoined to bring you," said the youth. "If persuasion avail not, +I must use other argument." + +"Say'st thou so?" said the knight; "I doubt if thy stripling rhetoric +would convince me." + +"That," said the young forester, "we will see." + +"We are not equally matched, boy," said the knight. +"I should get less honour by thy conquest, than grief +by thy injury." + +"Perhaps," said the youth, "my strength is more than my seeming, +and my cunning more than my strength. Therefore let it please +your knighthood to dismount." + +"It shall please my knighthood to chastise thy presumption," +said the knight, springing from his saddle. + +Hereupon, which in those days was usually the result of a meeting +between any two persons anywhere, they proceeded to fight. + +The knight had in an uncommon degree both strength and skill: +the forester had less strength, but not less skill than the knight, +and showed such a mastery of his weapon as reduced the latter +to great admiration. + +They had not fought many minutes by the forest clock, the sun; +and had as yet done each other no worse injury than that +the knight had wounded the forester's jerkin, and the forester +had disabled the knight's plume; when they were interrupted +by a voice from a thicket, exclaiming, "Well fought, girl: +well fought. Mass, that had nigh been a shrewd hit. +Thou owest him for that, lass. Marry, stand by, I'll pay +him for thee." + +The knight turning to the voice, beheld a tall friar issuing from the thicket, +brandishing a ponderous cudgel. + +"Who art thou?" said the knight. + +"I am the church militant of Sherwood," answered the friar. +"Why art thou in arms against our lady queen?" + +"What meanest thou?" said the knight. + +"Truly, this," said the friar, "is our liege lady of the forest, +against whom I do apprehend thee in overt act of treason. +What sayest thou for thyself?" + +"I say," answered the knight, "that if this be indeed a lady, +man never yet held me so long." + +"Spoken," said the friar, "like one who hath done execution. +Hast thou thy stomach full of steel? Wilt thou diversify thy repast +with a taste of my oak-graff? Or wilt thou incline thine heart +to our venison which truly is cooling? Wilt thou fight? or wilt thou +dine? or wilt thou fight and dine? or wilt thou dine and fight? +I am for thee, choose as thou mayest." + +"I will dine," said the knight; "for with lady I never fought before, +and with friar I never fought yet, and with neither will I ever +fight knowingly: and if this be the queen of the forest, I will not, +being in her own dominions, be backward to do her homage." + +So saying, he kissed the hand of Marian, who was pleased most graciously +to express her approbation. + +"Gramercy, sir knight," said the friar, "I laud thee for +thy courtesy, which I deem to be no less than thy valour. +Now do thou follow me, while I follow my nose, which scents +the pleasant odour of roast from the depth of the forest recesses. +I will lead thy horse, and do thou lead my lady." + +The knight took Marian's hand, and followed the friar, who walked +before them, singing: + + When the wind blows, when the wind blows + From where under buck the dry log glows, + What guide can you follow, + O'er brake and o'er hollow, + So true as a ghostly, ghostly nose? + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +Robin and Richard were two pretty men. Mother Goose's Melody. + + +They proceeded, following their infallible guide, first along a light +elastic greensward under the shade of lofty and wide-spreading trees +that skirted a sunny opening of the forest, then along labyrinthine paths, +which the deer, the outlaw, or the woodman had made, through the close shoots +of the young coppices, through the thick undergrowth of the ancient woods, +through beds of gigantic fern that filled the narrow glades and waved their +green feathery heads above the plume of the knight. Along these sylvan alleys +they walked in single file; the friar singing and pioneering in the van, +the horse plunging and floundering behind the friar, the lady following +"in maiden meditation fancy free," and the knight bringing up the rear, +much marvelling at the strange company into which his stars had thrown him. +Their path had expanded sufficiently to allow the knight to take Marian's +hand again, when they arrived in the august presence of Robin Hood +and his court. + +Robin's table was spread under a high overarching canopy of living boughs, +on the edge of a natural lawn of verdure starred with flowers, +through which a swift transparent rivulet ran sparkling in the sun. +The board was covered with abundance of choice food and excellent liquor, +not without the comeliness of snow-white linen and the splendour +of costly plate, which the sheriff of Nottingham had unwillingly +contributed to supply, at the same time with an excellent cook, +whom Little John's art had spirited away to the forest with the contents +of his master's silver scullery. + +An hundred foresters were here assembled over-ready for their dinner, +some seated at the table and some lying in groups under the trees. + +Robin bade courteous welcome to the knight, who took his seat between +Robin and Marian at the festal board; at which was already placed +one strange guest in the person of a portly monk, sitting between +Little John and Scarlet, with, his rotund physiognomy elongated +into an unnatural oval by the conjoint influence of sorrow and fear: +sorrow for the departed contents of his travelling treasury, a good-looking +valise which was hanging empty on a bough; and fear for his personal safety, +of which all the flasks and pasties before him could not give him assurance. +The appearance of the knight, however, cheered him up with a semblance +of protection, and gave him just sufficient courage to demolish a cygnet +and a rumble-pie, which he diluted with the contents of two flasks +of canary sack. + +But wine, which sometimes creates and often increases joy, doth also, +upon occasion, heighten sorrow: and so it fared now with our portly monk, +who had no sooner explained away his portion of provender, than he began +to weep and bewail himself bitterly. + +"Why dost thou weep, man?" said Robin Hood. "Thou hast done +thine embassy justly, and shalt have thy Lady's grace." + +"Alack! alack!" said the monk: "no embassy had I, luckless sinner, +as well thou wottest, but to take to my abbey in safety the treasure +whereof thou hast despoiled me." + +"Propound me his case," said Friar Tuck, "and I will give +him ghostly counsel." + +"You well remember," said Robin Hood, "the sorrowful knight who dined +with us here twelve months and a day gone by." + +"Well do I," said Friar Tuck. "His lands were in jeopardy with a +certain abbot, who would allow him no longer day for their redemption. +Whereupon you lent to him the four hundred pounds which he needed, +and which he was to repay this day, though he had no better security +to give than our Lady the Virgin." + +"I never desired better," said Robin, "for she never yet failed +to send me my pay; and here is one of her own flock, this faithful and +well-favoured monk of St. Mary's, hath brought it me duly, principal and +interest to a penny, as Little John can testify, who told it forth. +To be sure, he denied having it, but that was to prove our faith. +We sought and found it." + +"I know nothing of your knight," said the monk: "and the money was our own, +as the Virgin shall bless me." + +"She shall bless thee," said Friar Tuck, "for a faithful messenger." + +The monk resumed his wailing. Little John brought him his horse. +Robin gave him leave to depart. He sprang with singular nimbleness +into the saddle, and vanished without saying, God give you good day. + +The stranger knight laughed heartily as the monk rode off. + +"They say, sir knight," said Friar Tuck, "they should laugh who win: +but thou laughest who art likely to lose." + +"I have won," said the knight, "a good dinner, some mirth, +and some knowledge: and I cannot lose by paying for them." + +"Bravely said," answered Robin. "Still it becomes thee to pay: +for it is not meet that a poor forester should treat a rich knight. +How much money hast thou with thee?" + +"Troth, I know not," said the knight. "Sometimes much, sometimes little, +sometimes none. But search, and what thou findest, keep: +and for the sake of thy kind heart and open hand, be it what it may, +I shall wish it were more." + +"Then, since thou sayest so," said Robin, "not a penny will I touch. +Many a false churl comes hither, and disburses against his will: +and till there is lack of these, I prey not on true men." + +"Thou art thyself a true man, right well I judge, Robin," +said the stranger knight, "and seemest more like one bred +in court than to thy present outlaw life." + +"Our life," said the friar, "is a craft, an art, and a mystery. +How much of it, think you, could be learned at court?" + +"Indeed, I cannot say," said the stranger knight: +"but I should apprehend very little." + +"And so should I," said the friar: "for we should find very little of our +bold open practice, but should hear abundance of praise of our principles. +To live in seeming fellowship and secret rivalry; to have a hand for all, +and a heart for none; to be everybody's acquaintance, and nobody's friend; +to meditate the ruin of all on whom we smile, and to dread the secret +stratagems of all who smile on us; to pilfer honours and despoil +fortunes, not by fighting in daylight, but by sapping in darkness: +these are arts which the court can teach, but which we, by 'r Lady, +have not learned. But let your court-minstrel tune up his throat +to the praise of your court-hero, then come our principles into play: +then is our practice extolled not by the same name, for their Richard +is a hero, and our Robin is a thief: marry, your hero guts an exchequer, +while your thief disembowels a portmanteau, your hero sacks a city, +while your thief sacks a cellar: your hero marauds on a larger scale, +and that is all the difference, for the principle and the virtue are one: +but two of a trade cannot agree: therefore your hero makes laws to get +rid of your thief, and gives him an ill name that he may hang him: +for might is right, and the strong make laws for the weak, and they +that make laws to serve their own turn do also make morals to give +colour to their laws." + +"Your comparison, friar," said the stranger, "fails in this: +that your thief fights for profit, and your hero for honour. +I have fought under the banners of Richard, and if, as you phrase it, +he guts exchequers, and sacks cities, it is not to win treasure +for himself, but to furnish forth the means of his greater +and more glorious aim." + +"Misconceive me not, sir knight," said the friar. "We all love +and honour King Richard, and here is a deep draught to his health: +but I would show you, that we foresters are miscalled by opprobrious names, +and that our virtues, though they follow at humble distance, are yet +truly akin to those of Coeur-de-Lion. I say not that Richard is a thief, +but I say that Robin is a hero: and for honour, did ever yet man, +miscalled thief, win greater honour than Robin? Do not all men grace +him with some honourable epithet? The most gentle thief, the most +courteous thief, the most bountiful thief, yea, and the most honest thief? +Richard is courteous, bountiful, honest, and valiant: but so also +is Robin: it is the false word that makes the unjust distinction. +They are twin-spirits, and should be friends, but that fortune hath +differently cast their lot: but their names shall descend together +to the latest days, as the flower of their age and of England: +for in the pure principles of freebootery have they excelled all men; +and to the principles of freebootery, diversely developed, belong all +the qualities to which song and story concede renown." + +"And you may add, friar," said Marian, "that Robin, no less than Richard, +is king in his own dominion; and that if his subjects be fewer, yet are they +more uniformly loyal." + +"I would, fair lady," said the stranger, "that thy latter observation were not +so true. But I nothing doubt, Robin, that if Richard could hear your friar, +and see you and your lady, as I now do, there is not a man in England whom +he would take by the hand more cordially than yourself." + +"Gramercy, sir knight," said Robin---- But his speech was cut +short by Little John calling, "Hark!" + +All listened. A distant trampling of horses was heard. +The sounds approached rapidly, and at length a group of horsemen +glittering in holyday dresses was visible among the trees. + +"God's my life!" said Robin, "what means this? To arms, +my merrymen all." + +"No arms, Robin," said the foremost horseman, riding up and springing +from his saddle: "have you forgotten Sir William of the Lee?" + +"No, by my fay," said Robin; "and right welcome again to Sherwood." + +Little John bustled to re-array the disorganised economy of the table, +and replace the dilapidations of the provender. + +"I come late, Robin," said Sir William, "but I came by a wrestling, +where I found a good yeoman wrongfully beset by a crowd of sturdy varlets, +and I staid to do him right." + +"I thank thee for that, in God's name," said Robin, "as if thy good service +had been to myself." + +"And here," said the knight, "is thy four hundred pound; +and my men have brought thee an hundred bows and as many +well-furnished quivers; which I beseech thee to receive +and to use as a poor token of my grateful kindness to thee: +for me and my wife and children didst thou redeem from beggary." + +"Thy bows and arrows," said Robin, "will I joyfully receive: +but of thy money, not a penny. It is paid already. +My Lady, who was thy security, hath sent it me for thee." + +Sir William pressed, but Robin was inflexible. + +"It is paid," said Robin, "as this good knight can testify, +who saw my Lady's messenger depart but now." + +Sir William looked round to the stranger knight, and instantly fell +on his knee, saying, "God save King Richard." + +The foresters, friar and all, dropped on their knees together, +and repeated in chorus: "God save King Richard." + +"Rise, rise," said Richard, smiling: "Robin is king here, as his lady +hath shown. I have heard much of thee, Robin, both of thy present and thy +former state. And this, thy fair forest-queen, is, if tales say true, +the lady Matilda Fitzwater." + +Marian signed acknowledgment. + +"Your father," said the king, "has approved his fidelity to me, +by the loss of his lands, which the newness of my return, +and many public cares, have not yet given me time to restore: +but this justice shall be done to him, and to thee also, Robin, +if thou wilt leave thy forest-life and resume thy earldom, +and be a peer of Coeur-de-Lion: for braver heart and juster +hand I never yet found." + +Robin looked round on his men. + +"Your followers," said the king, "shall have free pardon, and such +of them as thou wilt part with shall have maintenance from me; +and if ever I confess to priest, it shall be to thy friar." + +"Gramercy to your majesty," said the friar; "and my inflictions +shall be flasks of canary; and if the number be (as in grave cases +I may, peradventure, make it) too great for one frail mortality, +I will relieve you by vicarious penance, and pour down my own +throat the redundancy of the burden." + +Robin and his followers embraced the king's proposal. +A joyful meeting soon followed with the baron and Sir Guy of Gamwell: +and Richard himself honoured with his own presence a formal +solemnization of the nuptials of our lovers, whom he constantly +distinguished with his peculiar regard. + +The friar could not say, Farewell to the forest, without something +of a heavy heart: and he sang as he turned his back upon its bounds, +occasionally reverting his head: + + Ye woods, that oft at sultry noon + Have o'er me spread your messy shade: + Ye gushing streams, whose murmured tune + Has in my ear sweet music made, + While, where the dancing pebbles show + Deep in the restless fountain-pool + The gelid water's upward flow, + My second flask was laid to cool: + + Ye pleasant sights of leaf and flower: + Ye pleasant sounds of bird and bee: + Ye sports of deer in sylvan bower: + Ye feasts beneath the greenwood tree: + Ye baskings in the vernal sun: + Ye slumbers in the summer dell: + Ye trophies that this arm has won: + And must ye hear your friar's farewell? + + +But the friar's farewell was not destined to be eternal. +He was domiciled as the family confessor of the earl and +countess of Huntingdon, who led a discreet and courtly life, +and kept up old hospitality in all its munificence, +till the death of King Richard and the usurpation of John, +by placing their enemy in power, compelled them to return to +their greenwood sovereignty; which, it is probable, they would +have before done from choice, if their love of sylvan liberty +had not been counteracted by their desire to retain the friendship +of Coeur-de-Lion. Their old and tried adherents, the friar +among the foremost, flocked again round their forest-banner; +and in merry Sherwood they long lived together, the lady still +retaining her former name of Maid Marian, though the appellation +was then as much a misnomer as that of Little John. + + +THE END. + + + + + + +VARIANTS IN THE TEXT + +Changes in spelling, use of capitals, punctuation and type are not recorded. + +P. 15, ll. 12-13. and the bishops: and bishops 1822. + +P. 46, l. 12. united: re-united 1822. + +P. 63, l. 14. a posse of men: fifty men 1822. + +P. 74, l. 6. privation: imprisonment and privation 1822. + +P. 80, l. 29. tone: toll 1822. + +P. 153, ll. 21-23. daily of bad wine . . . more fastidious relish: +every day I grow more intolerant of bad, and have a keener and more +fastidious relish of good wine 1822. + +P. 159, l. 20. passed: past 1822. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock + diff --git a/old/maidm10.zip b/old/maidm10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a6083e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/maidm10.zip |