Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly [Child 141]

DESCRIPTION: One of Robin's men, Will Stutly, is to be hanged. Robin and his men swear to rescue him or die trying. At the gallows Little John leaps from a bush, unbinds Will, and gives him a sword. They fight back to back as the archers chase the sheriff and his men
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1663 (garland)
KEYWORDS: Robinhood execution rescue fight
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Child 141, "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" (1 text)
Bronson 141, "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" (1 version)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 141, "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" (1 version)
Ritson-RobinHood, pp. 178-183, "Robn Hoods (sic.) Rescuing Will Stutly" (1 text)
Davis-TraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 32, "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" (1 text, 1 tune entitled "The Rescue of Will Stutly") {Bronson's [#1]}
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 402-403, "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" (1 text)
Wells-TheBalladTree, before p. 213, "Robin Hood's Rescuing Will Stutly" (reproduction of a broadside text)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, RZN21, "When Robin Hood in the Green wood"
DT 141, ROBHDWST*
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. 93-97, "Robin Hood and Will Scathlock" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSForresters}, London, British Library MS. Additional 71158, the "Foresters Manuscript, item 15
Roud #3957
NOTES [159 words]: For background on the Robin Hood legend, see the notes on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117].
Child considers this to be an "imitation" of "Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires [Child 140]." One or the other of these seems to have been known to the author of the Sloane MS. life of Robin (British Library, Sloane MS. 780), which presumably would date the story (as opposed to the song) before 1600.
Note that the Forresters version makes the victim "Will Scathlock," another name for the man whose name was eventually fixed as "Scarlet," rather than WIll Stut(e)ly, who is unknown in the older tradition.
The broadside in Wells-TheBalladTree lists the tune as "Robin Hood and Queen Catherine."
Both "Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires" [Child 140] and "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" [Child 141] open with variants on "Robin Hood in [the] greenwood stood," but this line is very much older; see the (shadow) entry for "Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood." - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: C141

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