English and Scottish Ballads, Volume V — Reading Notes

Combat as Dialogue

The bridge fight in 'Robin Hood and Little John' is less a brawl than a formalized exchange of words and blows. The stranger's opening challenge—'Thou talk'st like a coward'—prompts Robin to set down his bow and take up a staff, a gesture that signals a shift from ranged threat to close-quarters negotiation. The blows themselves are described with agricultural simile: 'As if they had been threshing of corn.' Each strike is answered in kind, and the rhythm of stanza and refrain mirrors the back-and-forth of the combat.

Child's text preserves the ballad's characteristic use of direct speech to advance action. The stranger's 'damnable look' and the blow that 'laid him full low' are followed by laughter and a taunt: 'I prithee, good fellow, O where art thou now?' Robin's reply—'Good faith, in the flood'—maintains the tone of rueful humor. The fight ends not in death but in a ritual surrender, after which Robin blows his horn to summon his band. This pattern of challenge, combat, and reintegration recurs throughout the volume, suggesting that physical conflict is a means of testing worth and establishing hierarchy.

Naming and Renaming

The ballad's climax is not the victory but the christening. After Robin acknowledges the stranger's prowess, William Stutely declares himself godfather and proposes a name change: 'His name shall be alter'd.' The stranger, originally John Little, is renamed Little John—a comic inversion, since he is described as 'seven foot high' and 'an ell in the waste.' The ceremony is a parody of baptism, complete with a feast of 'a brace of fat does' and 'humming strong liquor.'

Child's edition includes multiple ballads where naming is a central act. In 'Robin Hood and the Potter' (2a) and 'Robin Hood and the Butcher' (2b), the outlaw adopts disguises that involve false names. The appendix ballads, such as 'Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage,' offer origin stories that fix his identity. The editor's inclusion of variant texts—like the two versions of 'Robin Hood and the Beggar' (9a and 10a)—allows readers to compare how different ballads handle the same motif of renaming. The christening scene in the excerpt is a microcosm of this larger concern: identity in the greenwood is fluid, conferred by deeds and ratified by the group.

Pace and the Editorial Frame

Child's editorial choices affect the pace at which a reader encounters these ballads. The volume opens with a scholarly introduction (pages vii–?), then proceeds ballad by ballad, each with its own footnotes and textual notes. The excerpt from 'Robin Hood and Little John' moves quickly: the fight occupies 80 lines, from the initial challenge to Robin's emergence from the brook. But the surrounding apparatus slows the reading. Footnotes explain archaic terms ('crack on the crown'), and the presence of multiple versions (9a through 9l) invites comparison rather than linear consumption.

The ballads themselves vary in tempo. 'A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode' (ballad 4) is a long, episodic narrative, while 'Robin Hood and the Curtall Fryer' (ballad 11) is a shorter comic encounter. Child's arrangement groups ballads by theme or character—the 'Robin Hood and the Beggar' cluster, for instance—creating a rhythm of variation and repetition. The appendix adds seven more ballads, some of which ('A True Tale of Robin Hood') are later literary treatments. This structure encourages readers to move between versions, noting how the same story is compressed or expanded, and how the pace of the verse shifts with each retelling.

Child's volume rewards readers who attend to the ballads' own rhythms: the repeated formulas ('bend but my bow,' 'blow'd a loud blast'), the sudden shifts from dialogue to action, and the way each encounter ends with a feast or a new recruit. The editorial notes, while scholarly, do not overwhelm the verse. For those interested in how oral tradition was transcribed and collated in the nineteenth century, this edition offers a clear window into Child's methods—and into the boisterous, rule-bound world of the greenwood.

There’s something about the way Child’s notes linger over each Robin Hood variant—the small shifts in wording, the almost ritualistic courtesy before the blows—that made me think of another afternoon, another book. It wasn’t the fighting or the greenwood, but that same quiet patience with tradition. The Earthly Paradise: A Poem (Part II) — Reading Notes felt equally unhurried, like sitting with old stories until they mellow into something gentler than their plot.