Robin Hood Newly Revived [Child 128]

DESCRIPTION: Robin sees a young man skillfully kill a deer, offers him a place, is answered disdainfully. They fight. Impressed, Robin asks the stranger who he is. He is Robin's sister's son, who has slain his father's steward. Robin makes him next under Little John
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1663 (Garland)
KEYWORDS: Robinhood fight family
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Child 128, "Robin Hood Newly Revived" (1 text)
Bronson 128, comments only
Ritson-RobinHood, pp. 152-163, "Robin Hood and the Stranger" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 380-383, "Robin Hood Newly Revived" (1 text)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, RZN7, "Come listen a while you Gentlemen all"
DT 128, RHNEWREV
ADDITIONAL: Stephen Knight, editor (with a manuscript description by Hilton Kelliher), _Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript_ (British Library Additional MS 71158), D. S. Brewer, 1998, pp. 101-104, "Robin Hood and the Stranger" (1 text)
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. 499-506, "Robin Hood and Will Scarlet" (1 text, based on the Onley broadside)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSForresters}, London, British Library MS. Additional 71158, the "Foresters Manuscript," item 16
Roud #3956
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood" [Child 132] (theme)
NOTES [237 words]: For background on the Robin Hood legend, see the notes on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117].
Fully half the Robin Hood ballads in the Child collection (numbers (121 -- the earliest and most basic example of the type), 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, (133), (134), (135), (136), (137), (150)) share all or part of the theme of a stranger meeting and defeating Robin, and being invited to join his band. Most of these are late, but it makes one wonder if Robin ever won a battle.
This particular Robin Hood ballad does have interesting aspects, however. Robin's unknown opponent turns out to be Young Gamwell, his nephew -- a name possibly related to Gandelyn, hero of the romance of the same name. And he is taken into the band as Will Scarlet -- and the earliest ballad versions of Robin Hood's band seems to have consisted of four men, Robin, Little John, Much the Miller's Son, and WIll Scarlock/Scathelock/Scarlet. This raises the possibility that there is some old tradition behind the broadsides. The language of the ballad, however, can hardly be older than the seventeenth century, and the poetry is poor.
There is some dispute about the relationship between this song and "The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood" [Child 132]; see the notes to that song.
The Forresters manuscript is one of several sources to call this "Robin Hood and the Stranger," but it is likely that several pieces used that name. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: C128

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