[60] Of this poem there have been at least five editions at London or Westminster, and one at Edinburgh. In a list of “bookes printed and . . . sold by Jane Bell, at the east end of Christ-church [1655],” in company with Frier Rush, The frier and the boy, &c., is “a book of Robin Hood and Little John.” Captain Cox of Coventry appears to have had a copy of some old edition: see Laneham’s Letter from Killingworth, 1575. [61] “Description of the Town of Tottenham-high-crosse,” &c. London (1631, 4to), 1781, 8vo. The invaluable MS. alluded to has been since discovered; and the entire poem, of which Mr. Ritson has here given a fragment, will be found in the Appendix.—ED. [62] The book, under the same title, printed by Wynken de Worde, in 1517, is a different translation in prose. [63] Mr. Warton reads _Toby_; and so, perhaps, it may be in former editions. [64] Honest Barnaby, _i.e._ Richard Brathwayte, who wrote or travelled about 1640, was well acquainted with our hero’s story. “Veni Nottingham tyrones Sherwoodenses sunt latrones. Instar Robin Hood, & servi Scarlet & Joannis Parvi; Passim, sparsim, peculantur, Cellis, sylvis deprædantur.” “Thence to Nottingham, where rovers, Highway riders, Sherwood drovers, Like old Robin Hood and Scarlet, Or like Little John his varlet; Here and there they shew them doughty, In cells and woods to get their booty.” Whitlock relates that “the [parliament] committee who carried the propositions of peace to Oxford, had the king’s answer sealed up and sent to them. They, upon advice together, thought it not fit for them to receive an answer in that manner . . . and made an address to his majesty that they might know what his answer was, and have a copy of it: to which his majesty replied, What is that to you, who are but to carry what I send, and if I will send the song of _Robin Hood and Little John_, you must carry it? To which the commissioners only said, that the business about which they came was of somewhat more consequence than that song” (_Memorials_, p. 115). [65] There is, in fact, such a place as Barnwood forest, in Buckinghamshire; but no one, except Mr. Hearne, has hitherto supposed that part of the country to have been frequented by our hero. Barnwood, in the case reported by Yelverton, has clearly arisen from a confusion of Barnsdale and green wood. “Robin Hood in the greenwood stood” was likewise the beginning of an old song now lost (see _post_, p. 197): and it is not a little remarkable that Jefferies, serjeant, on the trial of Pilkington and others, for a riot, in 1683, by a similar confusion, quotes the line in question thus: “Robin Hood upon Greendale stood” (State-trials, iii. 634). A third corruption has taken place in Parker, p. 131 (King _v._ Cotton), though expressly cited from Yelverton, viz. “Robin Hood in Barnwell stood.”