Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne [Child 118]

DESCRIPTION: Little John and Robin separate; Little John is taken after trying to stop an invasion by the Sheriff. Meanwhile, Robin meets Guy; they fight, and Robin slays Guy. He then takes his clothes and horn and rescues John
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1750 (Percy folio)
KEYWORDS: Robinhood outlaw fight rescue
FOUND IN: US(SE)?
REFERENCES (15 citations):
Child 118, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text)
Bronson 118, comments only; cf. Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic I, p. 277, "The Chirping of the Lark" (1 tune)
Hales/Furnival-BishopPercysFolioManuscript, volume II, pp. 227-237, "Guye of Gisborne" (1 text)
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry I, pp. 102-116, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, rewritten and with lacunae filled by Percy)
Ritson-RobinHood, pp. 83-90, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 32, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, said in the Brown collection to "certainly derive" from this piece, but this is a stretch. It may be this, but it is only a disordered fragment, which looks to me to combine aspects of several Robin Hood ballads; the only real link with this is the reported title "Robin Hood and Guy of Gusborne")
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 334-340, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 116, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, probably a modernized version of Child's text)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 68-76+320-321, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, conflating Hales/Furnivall and Child)
Whiting-TraditionalBritishBallads 26, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, probably a modernized version of Child's text)
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 396-397, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 excerpt, 1 tune; Bronson correctly says that the linkage of text and tune is not only conjectural but impossible)
DT 118, RHGISBOR
ADDITIONAL: R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, _Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw_, University of Pittsburg Press, 1976, pp. 141-145, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, newly edited from the Percy manuscript)
Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, editors, _Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000, pp. 169-183, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (1 text, newly edited from the sources)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library MS. Additional 27879, page 262
Roud #3977
NOTES [623 words]: According to Fowler, p. 158 n. 25, this is one of eighteen ballads in the Child collection found only in the Percy Folio.
It is considered by J. C. Holt (following Child and others), to be one of the five "basic" Robin Hood ballads. (The earliest known copy (from the Percy folio) is somewhat corrupt, but shows survivals of a much older text, and seems to be at least two centuries older than the manuscript. It is noteworthy that a fragment of the same story, in dramatic form, appears on the back of a slip of financial sheets from 1475/6 C.E. For more details on chronology see the notes on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117]).
Observe that, although the modern version of the legend calls Guy of Gisborne "Sir Guy," implying that he is a knight, stanza 22 clearly says that he and Robin are both yeomen.
Even by the standards of early Robin Hood ballads, it's hard to say much about the origins of this poem. Part of that is because portions have been lost. Part of it is because the Percy Folio, our only source, is prone to rewriting the material it contains. And part of it is because, although the story goes back at least to the fifteenth century, the Folio is from the seventeenth, so there has surely been much evolution -- in form and dialect -- along the way.
Still, the name "Guy of Gisborne" is intriguing. Although our earliest Robin Hood texts are from the fifteenth century, there is good reason to think that they are reflections of the fourteenth (certainly not the twelfth and the reign of Richard I!). And the association with Yorkshire in the early ballads is strong.
And it so happens that there was, in Yorkshire in the fourteenth century, an important family named "de Gysburn." According to Christian D. Liddy on p. 80 of Goldberg, "John de Gysburn... had been the most influential citizen of York of his generation, gaining election to the office of mayor on four occasions between 1371 and 1380"; his son-in-law would repeatedly be mayor a generation later. And he had corrupt allies, and enemies in the town.
Sarah Rees Jones, on pp. 228-229 of Goldberg, calls him "Gisburn" and says that "His entire career in city politics was attended by pronounced conflict with other members of the civic elite, culminating in the riots in York in 1380-1 in which he was expelled from the city and violently sought to re-enter it." It sounds as if he beliged to an elitist faction. The dating makes it quite possible that his father, grandfather, or uncle could have been a yeoman who made his money hunting down outlaws.
Note that I do not claim that this ballad is "about" the de Gysburns. Just that they would likely have been remembered in fifteenth century Yorkshire -- and very likely remembered as enemies of the common people, since they were opposed to the faction of the martyred Archbishop Scrope, widely held to be a saint by the common people. (For background on Scrope, see the notes to "The Death of Archbishop Scrope.")
Bronson notes that Chappell associated a tune with this piece, but that the association was Chappell's own, on weak grounds, and therefore does not cite the melody.
This leaves us with the problem of Brown's North Carolina version. W. E. Simeone, MidwestFolklore, Volume VIII.4, Winter 1957, p. 197, remarks that the complex origina "is shrunk in the North Carolina version into a bald little tale of murder told in a crude rimed prose," and one that includes only the first incident of the Folio version. Given that there has been no hint of the song between the time of the Percy Folio and the Brown collection, I wonder if they should be considered one song. I suspect that C. A. Wilson's text is a fragment of a reconstruction of the story, not a descendant of the Percy piece. - RBW
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File: C118

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