"
And they found fair lasses, too, in time, who, like Torfrida and Maid
Marian, would answer to their warnings against the outlaw life, with the
nut-browne maid, that--
"Amonge the wylde dere, such an archere
As men say that ye be,
He may not fayle of good vitayle
Where is so great plente:
And water clere of the rivere,
Shall be full swete to me,
With which in hele, I shall right wele,
Endure, as ye may see."
Then called they themselves "merry men," and the forest the "merry
greenwood"; and sang, with Robin Hood,--
"A merrier man than I, belyye
There lives not in Christentie."
They were coaxed back, at times, to civilized life; they got their grace
of the king, and entered the king's service; but the craving after the
greenwood was upon them. They dreaded and hated the four stone walls of a
Norman castle, and, like Robin Hood, slipt back to the forest and the
deer.
Gradually, too, law and order rose among them, lawless as they were; the
instinct of discipline and self-government, side by side with that of
personal independence, which is the peculiar mark and peculiar strength of
the English character. Who knows not how, in the "Lytell Geste of Robin
Hood," they shot at "pluck-buffet," the king among them, disguised as an
abbot; and every man who missed the rose-garland, "his tackle he should
tyne";--
"And bere a buffet on his head,
Iwys ryght all bare,
And all that fell on Robyn's lote,
He smote them wonder sair.
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