Recordings and Info: 128. Robin Hood Newly Revived
[There are no known US or Canadian traditional versions of this ballad. There are no known recordings.]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Wiki
4) Robin Hood and Will Scarlet: Introduction; Edited by Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 3956: Robin Hood and the Newly Revived (7 Listings)
Alternative Titles
Robin Hood and the Valiant Knight; together with an account of his Death and Burial, &c.
Robin Hood and the Stranger
Robin Hood and Will Scarlet
Traditional Ballad Index: 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 (7 citations):
Child 128, "Robin Hood Newly Revived" (1 text)
Bronson 128, comments only
Leach, pp. 380-383, "Robin Hood Newly Revived" (1 text)
BBI, 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 Oudlaw 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)
Roud #3956
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood" [Child 132] (theme)
NOTES: 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
Robin Hood Newly Revived From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robin Hood Newly Revived is Child ballad 128, and an origin story for Will Scarlet
Synopsis
Robin Hood and Little John are hunting when they see a finely dressed stranger shoot a deer. Robin says if he accepts it, he can be a yeoman in their band. The stranger threatens him, and forbids him to sound his horn. They aim arrows at each other, and Robin proposes that they fight with swords instead. They strike some blows. Robin asks him who he is, and he is Young Gamwell, and, because he killed his father's steward, he is seeking his uncle, who is called Robin Hood. That stops their fight, and they join the band. Little John asks why he is gone so long, and Robin says they were fighting, but Little John must not fight him. He names his nephew Scarlet.
See also
Another variation of this story was collected as Child ballad 132, The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood.
ROBIN HOOD AND WILL SCARLET: INTRODUCTION
Robin Hood and Will Scarlet: Introduction
Edited by Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren
Originally Published in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales
Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997
This ballad is found in seventeenth-century broadsides and early garlands under the title Robin Hood Newly Revived. Child printed it under that title, which has been generally accepted. Ritson, however, decided this was Robin Hood and the Stranger, for which a tune was known (and other ballads were said to be sung to it) but no words. Ritson's title is not appropriate because other ballads are as well qualified for that title, but Robin Hood Newly Revived is itself a poor name as it has nothing to do with the content of the ballad and is basically a publicist's blurb. In this edition the ballad is named Robin Hood and Will Scarlet because it appears to be dedicated to explaining the arrival in the outlaw band of a well-known figure (like other ballads in this section) and so deserves a parallel name.
However, the outlaw who is introduced seems quite different from the hard-handed figure who began his career as Will Scathelock and stood with Little John beside his leader as Cai and Bedwyr support Arthur in early Welsh tradition. This ballad uses the "prequel" pattern as a way of absorbing into the tradition the materials surrounding Gamelyn, hero of a separate epic romance, and perhaps also as a way of using materials from the lyric ballad Robin and Gandelyn.
Robin Hood and Will Scarlet has a familiar set of opening moves, so familiar they may smack of a written rather than oral tradition: a "Come all ye" opening; the motif of adventure before food; Robin meets a stranger in the forest. This stranger is distinctly aggressive (as others have been, like the Beggar and the Tinker whom Robin meets in minor ballads, Child nos. 133 and 127). Robin's threat to shoot is matched by the stranger and it seems that the fatal situation of Robin and Gandelyn is developing. But instead a fierce sword fight follows.
So much is familiar in the "Robin Hood meets his match" tradition. But the stranger reveals he is "Young Gamwell," who is fleeing to seek his uncle, Robin Hood. This action is reminiscent of Gamelyn, where the hero flees to the forest having killed his brother's porter and is welcomed by the outlaw king. Gamwell, it transpires, is Robin's sister's son (an especially strong version of the uncle-nephew relationship) and he is welcomed, absorbed into the band and immediately becomes one of the inner group, with Little John and Robin (as seen in The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield and other ballads).
In form the ballad seems relatively early and not too heavily marked as literary. It has some strong colloquial diction, as in For we have no vittles to dine (line 9) or Go play the chiven (line 30), and the ballad in general lacks the elaborate diction and internal third-line rhyme that tend to mark the commercial products of the period; the occasional weak rhyme also looks back to the earlier and orally oriented performed ballads.
However, unlike other seventeenth-century ballads, there are no other references to suggest that this story existed early, though the title Robin Hood Newly Revived might be taken to suggest that a previous text had been reshaped for publication. In its earliest form, as its final lines indicate, it has attached to it seven stanzas of Robin Hood and the Scotchman, and there is a second part to this ballad which exists separately as Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon. In spite of the possibility that an earlier ballad existed connecting Gamwell directly to the Robin Hood tradition, there is nothing to suggest that this whole ballad was not itself produced in the commercial context by a writer particularly well attuned to the earlier style of ballad. Intriguing as the connections of this ballad may be, all that can be said certainly is, as Child sums up, that it appears to "have been built up on a portion of the ruins, so to speak, of the fine tale of Gamelyn" (III, 144).