Recordings & Info 136. Robin Hood's Delight (Robin Hood, John, Scarlock and the Three Keepers)
[There is only one recording listed in the Child Collection Index.]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Child Collection Index
4) Folkopedia Listing
5) Wiki
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 3986: Robin Hood's Delight (6 Listings)
Alternative Titles
Robin Hood, John, Scarlock and the Three Keepers
"There's some will talk of Lords and Knights"
Traditional Ballad Index: Robin Hood's Delight [Child 136]
DESCRIPTION: Robin Hood, Little John, and Will Scarlock are met in the forest by three keepers. They fight. The keepers get the better of it. Robin asks to blow his horn but is refused. Robin invites them to compete at drinking sack instead. They become friends.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: 1663 (garland)
KEYWORDS: Robinhood fight drink
FOUND_IN:
REFERENCES: (4 citations)
Child 136, "Robin Hood's Delight" (1 text)
Bronson 135, comments only
BBI, RZN20, "There's some will talk of Lords and Knights"
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. 142-134, "Robin Hood and the Forresters 2" (1 text, generally close to the garlands)
Roud #3986
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. - RBW
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The Forresters manuscript version of "Robin Hood's Delight" [Child 136] corrects the "Scarlock" of the broadsides to "Scathlock," which Knight, p. xvii, declares the more traditional form. There is also an instance in the Forresters book where a later hand has corrected "Will Stutley" to "Will Scathlock" in the title of the ballad "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly" [Child 141] (Knight, pp. xxvi, 92), but the manuscript also has "Scarlett" and (once) "Scarett."
There is no obvious reason, based on internal evidence, to prefer either "Scarlock" or "Scathelok." Neither of the latter two, we should point out, appears to be attested as an earlier form of the word scarlet. If one has to choose a reading, "Scarlock" is perhaps the best, since this is the middle reading; both "Scarlet" and "Scathelock" can be derived from it by a single phoneme change. But this is a weak basis for a decision.
Child Collection- Child Ballad 136: Robin Hood’s Delight
Child --Artist --Title --Album --Year --Length --Have
136 Hester NicEilidh Robin Hood's Delight Robin Hood Ballad Project 2006 9:07 Yes
Folkopedia---136: Robin Hood's Delight From Folkopedia
This ballad was printed in the 1663 and 1670 Garlands and is on broadsides in the Wood (1660) and Pepys (1689) Collections. It was reprinted by Sheppard and by Evans, both of London, in the late eighteenth century. The Sheppard sheet (dated 1792) is an upmarket one with a large engraving.
Bronson gives no versions but comments on the designated tunes of 135 ‘R H and the Shepherd’ and 145 ‘R H and Queen Katherine’ which appear to be the same tune. He also refutes Ritson’s suggestion of a Scottish fiddle tune of the same name being used for this ballad on the grounds it is ‘unsingable’ and ‘it does not in the least match the stanza-form of the ballad.’
No oral versions found.
Robin Hood's Delight; From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robin Hood's Delight is Child ballad 136.[1]
Synopsis
Robin Hood, Will Scarlock, and Little John are walking in the forest when they met with three foresters, who fight with them. They refuse Robin permission to sound his horn, but Robin persuades them to go to an inn, and there they drink instead of fighting.
References
1.^ Francis James Child (1898). English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: [Houghton, Mifflin and Company]]. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch136.htm. Retrieved 12 August 2012.
External links"Robin Hood's Delight". Rochester, New York, USA: University of Rochester. http://library.rochester.edu/camelot/rh/chdelit.htm. Retrieved 12 August 2012.