"Robin Hood and his fellow, Little John," says Motherwell, "were popular with the minstrels of Scotland as they were with those of England. Our early poets and historians never tired of alluding to songs current in their own times, relative to these waithmen and their merry men. Even to this day there are fragments of songs regarding them, traditionally extant in Scotland, which have not yet found their way into any printed collection of ballads commemorative of these celebrated outlaws. Were they carefully gathered they would form an interesting addition to Ritson's _Robin Hood_. In that collection, the ballad of _Robin Hood and the Beggar_ is evidently the production of a Scottish minstrel, pretty early stall copies of which were printed both at Aberdeen and Glasgow."--_Minstrelsy_, p. xliii. Ritson printed this ballad (_Robin Hood_, ii. 97,) from a modern copy printed at Newcastle. He remarks that a similar story may be found in _Le Moyen de parvenir_, (i. 304, ed. 1739, _Comment un moine se débarasse des voleurs_.) We have adopted a superior version given by Gutch, which was from an Aberdeen copy in the Ashmolean Museum, without date.--(Gutch's _Robin Hood_, ii. 233.) _Robin Hood and the Beggar_, with the nine pieces which are now immediately subjoined, the first part of the tenth, (which has the same title as the present,) and the first part of _Robin Hood and the Stranger_, in the Appendix, contains a story essentially the same with the first part of the ancient ballad of _Robin Hood and the Potter_, p. 17. Lyth and listen, gentlemen, That's come of high born blood, I'll tell you of a brave booting That befel Robin Hood. Robin Hood upon a day, 5 He went forth alone; And as he came from Barnesdale Into fair evening, He met a beggar on the way, Who sturdily could gang; 10 He had a pike-staff in his hand That was baith stark and strang. A clouted cloak about him was, That held him frae the cold; The thinnest bit of it, I guess, 15 Was more then twenty fold. His meal-pock hang about his neck, Into a leathern fang, Well fasten'd with a broad buckle, That was baith stark and strang. 20 He had three hats upon his head, Together stickèd fast, He car'd neither for wind nor weet, In lands where'er he past. Good Robin coost him in his way, 25 To see what he might be, If any beggar had monèy, He thought some part had he. "Tarry, tarry," good Robin says, "Tarry, and speak with me;" 30 He heard him as he heard him not, And fast on his way can hie. "It be's not so," says good Robin, "Nay, thou must tarry still;" "By my troth," said the bold beggar, 35 "Of that I have no will.