"Weep, weep, ye woodmen, wail, Your hands with sorrow wring, Your master Robin Hood lies dead, Therefore sigh as you sing. "Here lie his primer and his beads, His bent bow and his arrows keen, His good sword and his holy cross: Now cast on flowers fresh and green; "And as they fall, shed tears and say, Wella, wella-day! wella, wella-day: Thus cast ye flowers and sing, And on to Wakefield take your way." After his demise poor Marion is so tormented by her royal persecutor that she seeks refuge in Dunmow Abbey, where she is poisoned by the king's order. In each play the outlaw is extolled so highly, and made so admirable in every way, that in spite of the quaintness one is moved to honest admiration. His dying scene is most pathetic, and there is no doubt that the simple country audience would weep as though for a dearly loved friend. The airs pertaining to the Robin Hood literature are merry in the extreme--delicious, sparkling waves of melody, to which thousands of country dances have been performed. They sprang from the heart, and even to-day, if offered to the public, might win popular success. All are "lusty fellows with good backbones", such as Shakespeare in his salad days must have listened to and admired. Gay, in his pastoral _The Flights_, gives a charming picture of Bowzybeus delighting the reapers with one of these ballads, ere falling asleep midst happy laughter. In folklore are still preserved a few relics. "To go round by Robin Hood's barn" is to travel in a roundabout fashion, and "to sell Robin Hood's pennyworths", to sell much below value, as a generous robber might. His "feather" is the Traveller's Joy, his "hatband" the club-moss. His "men" or his "sheep" are the bracken, and his "wind" a wind that brings on a thaw. We are told that Robin could stand anything but a "tho wind". The Red Campion, the Ragged Robin, and the Herb Robert are known in several counties by his name. His greatest claim to popularity was that he took away the goods of none save rich men, never killed any person except in self-defence, charitably fed the poor, and was in short, as an old writer tells us, "the most humane and the prince of robbers". WELBECK ABBEY