Old Robin of Portingale [Child 80]

DESCRIPTION: Old Robin's young wife arranges with her lover Sir Gyles for 24 men to kill Robin. Warned by a page, he kills Gyles, then cuts off his wife's breasts and ears. He makes the page his heir, burns a cross into his shoulder and goes to the holy land.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1750 (Percy folio)
KEYWORDS: betrayal husband wife injury death fight travel lastwill
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Child 80, "Old Robin of Portingale" (1 text)
Hales/Furnival-BishopPercysFolioManuscript, volume I, pp. 235-240, "Old Robin of Portinga[le]" (1 text)
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry III, pp. 50-58, "Old Robin of Portingale" (2 texts, the second being that of the folio manuscript and the first being Percy's rewrite)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 53, "Old Robin of Portingale" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library MS. Additional 27879, page 90
Roud #3971
NOTES [189 words]: This ballad is so thoroughly nasty, I'm surprised it isn't more popular. - PJS
The likely explanation is that it is literary; there is no evidence that it ever entered oral tradition. According to David C. Fowler, A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, Duke University Press, 1968, p. 158 n. 25, this is one of eighteen ballads in the Child collection found only in the Percy Folio. And the moral, that young women should not marry old men, is adequately taught in other songs.
Fowler also suggests that this is based in part on "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" [Child 81], but given that that ballad is clearly traditional, and this is not, it would be hard to prove the connection.
MidwestFolklore, Helen Sewell, "Shakespeare and the Ballad," Volume 12, Number 4 (Winter 1962) p. 230, suggests that the line "Sleepst or wakest though jolly shepherd," "King Lear" III.vi.41 in the Riverside edition, is a citation of a "Sleep you wake you" theme also used in "Old Robin." However, Shakespeare quotes four lines in this scene, and the four lines have not been traced. I strongly doubt direct dependence in either direction. - RBW
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File: C080

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