With respect to Frier Tuck, “thogh some say he was an other kynd of religious man, for that the order of freyrs was not yet sprung up” (MS. Sloan.), yet as the Dominican friers (or friers preachers) came into England in the year 1221, upward of twenty years before the death of Robin Hood, and several orders of these religious had flourished abroad for some time, there does not seem much weight in that objection: nor, in fact, can one pay much regard to the term frier, as it seems to have been the common title given by the vulgar (more especially after the Reformation) to all the regular clergy, of which the friers were at once the lowest and most numerous. If Frier Tuck be the same person who, in one of the oldest songs, is called the curtail frier of Fountains-dale, he must necessarily have been one of the monks of that abbey, which was of the Cistercian order. However this may be, Frier Tuck is frequently noticed by old writers as one of the companions of Robin Hood, and as such was an essential character in the morris-dance (see Note 34). He is thus mentioned by Skelton, laureat, in his “goodly interlude” of Magnificence, written about the year 1500, and with an evident allusion to some game or practice now totally forgotten and inexplicable: “Another bade shave halfe my berde, And boyes to the pylery gan me plucke, And wolde have made me freer Tucke, To preche oute of the pylery hole.” In the year 1417, as Stow relates, “one, by his counterfeite name, called Frier Tucke, with manie other malefactors, committed many robberies in the counties of Surrey & Sussex, whereupon the king sent out his writs for their apprehension” (Annales, 1592). George a Green is George o’ the green, meaning perhaps the town-green, in which the pound or pinfold stood of which he had the care. He has been particularly celebrated, and {xxvii} “As good as George a Green” is still a common saying.[17] Drayton, describing the progress of the river Calder, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, has the following lines: “It chanc’d she in her course on ‘Kirkley’ cast her eye, Where merry Robin Hood, that honest thief, doth lie; Beholding fitly too before how Wakefield stood, She doth not only think of lusty Robin Hood, But of his merry man, the pindar of the town Of Wakefield, George a Green, whose fames so far are blown For their so valiant fight, that every freeman’s song Can tell you of the same; quoth she, be talk’d on long, For ye were merry lads, and those were merry days.” Thus, too, Richard Brathwayte, in his poetical epistle “to all true-bred northerne sparks of the generous society of the Cottoneers” (Strappado for the Divell, 1615): “But haste, my muse, in colours to display Some auncient customes in their high-roade way, * * * * * At least such places labour to make knowne As former times have honour’d with renowne. * * * * *