A gesture of Robyn Hode
A Gest of Robyn Hode , to be translated as “The Story of Robin Hood”, is a ballad written in Middle English in the 15th century and first printed at the beginning of the 16th century . A Gest of Robyn Hode is recognized as the most important source text for today's research on the literary and presumed historical figure of Robin Hood . This poetry is unanimously counted among the oldest and most reliable traditions. The Gest of Robyn Hode is divided into eight fyttes (modern English: fits ), which can be roughly translated as “songs”. It consists of 456 four-line stanzas. The ballad is also known under the title A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode .
content
The Gest (cf. Latin gesta ) tells the deeds of Robyn Hodes (Robin Hood) and his companions Litell Johnn ( Little John ), Scarlok ( Will Scarlet ) and Much, the millers son (Much, the miller's son). Other main characters are the knight Richarde at the Lee (Richard of the Lee) and as an opponent of Robin Hood the Sheriff of Notyingham ( Sheriff of Nottingham ).
The Gest of Robyn Hode is set in the small region of Barnsdale in Yorkshire, England . The time frame of the ballad cannot be clearly clarified; Based on the legal, social and military structures described in the Gest of Robyn Hode , research suggests that the acts described there could have taken place in the 13th century .
action
After a brief introduction to the characters of the main characters and the location of the plot, the first two "fyttes" or songs initially tell less about Robin Hood's deeds, but rather focus on the impoverished knight Richard of the Lee and his arguments with a greedy abbot. Little John meets the worried-looking knight, whose name is not initially mentioned, and forces him to attend a dinner hosted by Robin Hood. The knight reveals that he only had 10 shillings left and explains that he had to spend his entire fortune and pledge his lands to save his son, who is accused of killing two men. Robin Hood lends the knight 400 pounds, which he urgently needs to pay off his remaining debt, and Little John accompanies him as a squire. The knight checks the abbot to whom he owes the money by pretending that he still does not have enough money to pay off his debts. He asks him to show mercy. But the abbot insists on payment, whereupon the knight reveals his deception and settles his debts. Then he saves to be able to repay the gang leader the borrowed money. In the course of the poetry a kind of friendship develops between him and Robin Hood.
In the third song, Little John retires from the knight's service, takes part in an archery competition and wins. Thereupon he becomes a servant of the sheriff under a false name. He beats himself drunk with his cook, persuades him to join Robin Hood and steals the sheriff's silver with him. Little John then lures the sheriff to the hideout of the Robin Hood gang. There the sheriff is captured and forced to participate in a meal together. He must swear that he will never harm any of Robin's companions again.
In the fourth song, a monk from St. Mary's Abbey has to take part in a meal with Robin Hood. He claims to have only 20 marks on him, but it soon turns out that he is actually carrying 800 pounds. Robin Hood takes this money from the man of God and in return allows the late arrival of the knight to repay the loan. When the knight gives the outlaws a hundred bows with arrows, Robin Hood pays him half of the stolen 800 pounds.
In the fifth song, the sheriff arranges an archery competition to lure Robin Hood into a trap. Robin wins the competition and flees with his companions to avoid capture, to the castle of Richard at the Lee, whom he helped and whose name is now mentioned for the first time. The sheriff can therefore not seize the outlaws and brings an action before the king, who wants to bring Robin and the knight to account.
In the sixth song, the sheriff makes one final effort to capture Robin Hood by capturing Richard of Lee and throwing him in jail. Robin rushes to the rescue of the knight at the request of Sir Richard's wife, kills the sheriff and frees Richard.
In the seventh and eighth songs, King Edward himself and some companions, disguised as monks, go to the Sherwood Forest to be taken by Robin Hood. In fact, the gang leader ambushes the disguised king and his men and forces them to dine with him. During the archery competition that followed, Robin missed the target and was punished by the "Abbot" slapping him in the face. Then the king reveals himself, pardons Robin and makes him a member of his court. But soon Robin longs for the former life, deceives the king, returns to the forest, regains his bonds and lives with them for 22 more years in the forest.
The end of the gesture portrays the treason committed by the Prioress von Kirklees to Robin Hood. At the instigation of her lover, Sir Roger of Doncaster, the prioress let Robin bleed to death in a bloodletting process .
reception
A Gest of Robyn Hode was created by amalgamating several older ballad cycles around the deeds of Robin Hood. Their dating is not certain; periods around the year 1400 (according to Francis James Child ) to 1450 (according to James Clarke Holt ) are assumed, with the later date being the more probable according to the judgment of most historians today. These ballads in turn had older models themselves, which probably date back to the 13th century. The first written evidence of their existence comes from a collection of popular poems written by William Langland around 1377 called The Vision of Piers Plowman . In one of the poems, a certain Sloth boasts that he can hardly remember the Lord's Prayer, but that he knows verses about Robin Hood by heart.
The ballad was first printed under the title A Gest of Robin Hood , formerly also known as the Lettersnijder Edition , in the years 1500 to 1510 by Jan van Doesbroch in Antwerp; one of these copies is now in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Another early print of the Gest was published by Wynkyn de Worde in London under the different title A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode around the years 1506 to 1510. It is possible that de Wordes version appeared earlier than the Antwerp edition. A copy of the Lytell Gesture of Robyn Hode is now in Cambridge University Library .
Around 1560, William Copland published the ballad under the title A Mery Geste of Robyn Hoode . Copland used the two older versions for his Gest, but also processed other fragments of the Gest known to him, including a printed text by Richard Pynson from around 1530 and some fragments from the so-called Douce Collection , which in turn were made from fragments of another early Print version of the Gest, presumably by Wynkyn de Worde, exists. A copy of the Copland edition is in the British National Library today .
The literary scholar Francis J. Child (1825-1896) collected the Gest of Robyn Hode and other ballads around Robin Hood in his standard work The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (published 1882-1889), which is still recognized today . Child was one of the first to determine that the gest must be based on several older ballad cycles. One of the arguments he made for this is the portrayal in the Gest that one of Robin Hood's companions covered the 80-kilometer journey from Nottingham to Barnsdale, the main location of the action, in less than a day - what with the im Middle Ages available means of transport was simply impossible. Child saw it as evidence that the Gest had already merged the locations and actions of at least two older ballad cycles.
literature
Text output
- A Gest of Robyn Hode ( Lettersnijder edn. ). Antwerp: Van Doesbroch, ca.1510. (now in the National Library of Scotland)
- A Lytell gesture of Robyn Hode . London: Wynkyn de Worde, ca. 1506-10. (now in the Cambridge University Library)
- A Mery Gesture of Robyn Hoode . London: Copland, ca.1560 (now in the British Library)
- Fragments of an early printed version, perhaps by Wynkyn de Worde, of the Gest. (Now in the Douce Collection , Bodleian Library , Oxford.)
- The Gest of Robin Hood. Toronto: Clawson, William H., 1909. (University of Toronto Library)
Secondary literature
- Bellamy, John. Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages . London: Routledge, 1973.
- Bellamy, John. Robin Hood: An Historical Inquiry . London: Croom Helm, 1985.
- Dobson, RB, and J. Taylor. Rhymes of Robin Hood: The Early Ballads and the Gest . In Carpenter, 1995.
- Fowler, DC A Literary History of the Popular Ballad . Durham: Duke University Press, 1968.
- James C. Holt: Robin Hood. The legend of Sherwood Forest , Düsseldorf 1991. ISBN 3-430-14771-9
- Child, FJ, ed. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads . 5 vols. Rpt. New York: Dover, 1965.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/gest-of-robyn-hode
- ↑ Kindler's Literature Lexicon ( Memento from January 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ The Robin Hood Child Ballad List ( Memento of February 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Robin Hood Project at the University of Rochester, u. a. with full text on A Gest of Robyn Hode and further information on other ballads about Robin Hood