In Scotland, “The game of Robin Hood was celebrated in the month of May. The populace assembled previous to {cvix} the celebration of this festival, and chose some respectable[103] member of the corporation to officiate in the character of Robin Hood, and another in that of Little John his squire. Upon the day appointed, which was a Sunday or holyday, the people assembled in military array, and went to some adjoining field, where, either as actors or spectators, the whole inhabitants of the respective towns were convened. In this field they probably amused themselves with a representation of Robin Hood’s predatory exploits, or of his encounters with the officers of justice [rather, perhaps, in feats of archery or military exercises]. “As numerous meetings for disorderly mirth are apt to engender tumult, when the minds of the people came to be agitated with religious controversy, it was found necessary to repress the game[104] of Robin Hood by public statute. The populace were by no means willing to relinquish their favourite amusement. Year after year the magistrates of Edinburgh were obliged to exert their authority[105] in repressing this game; often ineffectually. In the year 1561, the mob were so enraged at being disappointed in making a Robin Hood, that they rose in mutiny, seized on the city gates, committed robberies upon strangers; and one of the {cx} ringleaders being condemned by the magistrates to be hanged, the mob forced open the jail, set at liberty the criminal and all the prisoners, and broke in pieces the gibbet erected at the cross for executing the malefactor. They next assaulted the magistrates, who were[106] sitting in the council-chamber, and who fled to the Tolbooth for shelter, where the mob attacked them, battering the doors, and pouring stones through the windows. Application was made to the deacons of the corporations to appease the tumult. Remaining, however, unconcerned spectators, they made this answer: ‘They will be magistrates alone; let them rule the people alone.’ The magistrates were kept in confinement till they made proclamation be published, offering indemnity to the rioters upon laying down their arms. Still, however, so late as the year 1592, we find the General Assembly complaining of the profanation of the sabbath, by making[107] of Robin Hood plays” (Arnot’s History of Edinburgh, p. 77). Notwithstanding the above representation, it is certain that these amusements were considerably upon the decline before the year 1568. This appears from a poem by Alexander Scot, preserved in the Hyndford MS. (in the Advocates’ Library, compiled and written in that identical year), and inaccurately printed in The Evergreen: “In May quhen men zeid everichone With Robene Hoid and Littill Johne, To bring in bowis and birkin bobbynis: Now all sic game is fastlingis gone, But gif it be amangis clovin Robbynis.”