_Hu._ Pes, man, pryk-song may not be dyspysyd, For therwith God is well plesyd. * * * * * _Yng._ Is God well pleasyd, trowest thou, therby? Nay, nay, for there is no reason why. For is it not as good to say playnly Gyf me a spade, As gyf me a spa ve va ve va ve vade? But yf thou wylt have a song that is good, I have one of Robyn Hode, The best that ever was made. {lxxx} _Hu._ Then a feleshyp, let us here it. _Yng._ But there is a bordon, thou must here it, Or ellys it wyll not be. _Hu._ Than begyn, and care not for . . . Downe downe downe, &c. _Yng._ Robyn Hode in Barnysdale stode, And lent hym tyl a mapyll thystyll; Than cam our lady & swete saynt Andrewe; Slepyst thou, wakyst thou, Geffrey Coke?[66] A c. wynter the water was depe, I can not tell you how brode; He toke a gose nek in his hande, And over the water he went. He start up to a thystell top, And cut hym downe a holyn clobbe; He stroke the wren betwene the hornys, That fyre sprange out of the pygges tayle. Jak boy is thy bow i-broke, Or hath any man done the wryguldy wrange? He plukkyd muskyllys out of a wyllowe, And put them in to his sachell. Wylkyn was an archer good, And well coude handell a spade; He toke his bend bowe in his hand, And set him downe by the fyre. He toke with hym lx. bowes and ten, A pese of befe, another of baken. Of all the byrdes in mery Englond, So merely pypys the mery bottel.” “The lives, stories, and giftes of men which are contained in the bible, they [the papists] read as thinges no more pertaining unto them than a tale of Robin Hood” (Tyndale, Prologue to the prophecy of Jonas, about 1531). Gwalter Lynne, printer, in his dedication to Ann, Duchess of Somerset, of “The true beliefe in Christ and his sacramentes,” 1550, says, “I woulde wyshe tharfore that al men, {lxxxi} women, and chyldren, would read it. Not as they haue bene here tofore accustomed to reade the fained storyes of Robin-hode, Clem of the Cloughe, wyth such lyke to passe the tyme wythal,” &c. In 1562, John Alde had license to print “a ballad of Robyn god,” a mistake, it is probable, for Robyn Hod. Alexander Hume, minister of Logie, about 1599, says in one of his “Hymnes or Sacred Songs,” printed in that year, that ――“much to blame are those of carnal brood, Who loath to taste of intellectual food, Yet surfeit on old tales of Robin Hood.” Complaint of Scotland, Edin. 1801, Dissertation, p. 221.