The following most vulgar and indecent rime, current among the peasantry in the North of England, may have been intended to ridicule the perpetual repetition of “Robin Hood in greenwood stood:” Robin Hood In green-wood stood. With his back against a tree; He fell flat Into a cow-plat, And all besh—n was he [66] It is possible that, amid these absurdities, there may be other lines of the old song of Robin Hood, which is the only reason for reviving them. “O sleepst thou, or wakst thou, Jeffery Cooke?” occurs, likewise, in a medley of a similar description, in Pammelia 1609. [67] In “_Heraclitus ridens_, or a discourse between Jest and Earnest,” a periodical paper against the Whigs, published in 1681, and collected and republished in 1713 (No. 34), Jest begins singing: “Bills, bows, and axes, quoth Robin Hood, But I have not time to tell; Yonder’s the sheriff and his company, But I hope all will be well. Hei, down, derry, derry, down;” and says, “I hope I may sing of old Robin without offending a grand jury, or being presented for disuniting Protestants.” In The Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1790 is the first verse of a song used by the inhabitants of Helston in Cornwall on the celebration of an annual festivity on the 8th of May, called the Furry-day, supposed Flora’s day, not, it is imagined, “as many have thought, in remembrance of some festival instituted in honour of that goddess, but rather from the garlands commonly worn on that day.” (See the same publication for June and October 1790.) This verse was the whole that Mr. Urban’s correspondent could then recollect, but he thought he might be afterwards able “to send all that is known of it, for,” he says, “it formerly was very long, but is now much forgotten.” The stanza is as follows: “Robin Hood and Little John They are both gone to fair O; And we will go to the merry green-wood, To see what they do there O. With hel an tow, And rum-be-low, And chearily we’ll get up, As soon as any day O, All for to bring the summer home, The summer and the May O.”