Kirkleys was beautiful of old, Like Winifrid’s of Wales, By whose fair well strange cures are told In legendary tales. Upon his grave was laid a stone, Declaring that he dy’d, And tho so many years ago, Time can’t his actions hide. _At the end is the epitaph, wanting in_ #a#. Robin Hood’s Epitaph, set on his tomb by the Prioress of Kirkley Monastry, in Yorkshire. Robert Earl of Huntington Lies under this little stone. No archer was like him so good, His wildness nam’d him Robin Hood. Full thirteen years and something more These no[r]thern parts he vexed sore: Such out-laws as he and his men May England never know again. 121 ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER Library of the University of Cambridge, MS. E e. 4. 35, fol. 14 b, of about 1500. Printed from the manuscript in Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1795, I, 81; here from a transcript of the original, carefully revised by Rev. Professor Skeat. Robin Hood sees a potter driving over the lea; the potter has been in the habit of passing that way, and never has paid toll. Little John has had a brush with the potter, and offers to lay forty shillings that no man can make him leave a pledge. Robin accepts the wager, stops the potter, and demands a “pledge”; the potter refuses to leave pledge or pay toll, takes a staff from his cart, knocks Robin’s buckler out of his hand, and, ere Robin can recover it, fells him with a blow in the neck. Robin owns that he has lost. The potter says it is no courtesy to stop a poor yeoman thus; Robin agrees heartily, and proposes fellowship, also to change clothes with the potter and sell his ware at Nottingham. The potter is willing; John warns his master to beware of the sheriff. Robin takes his stand near the sheriff’s gate, and offers his pots so cheap that soon there are but five left; these he sends as a gift to the sheriff’s wife, who in return asks him to dinner. While they are at their meal, two of the sheriff’s men talk of a shooting-match for forty shillings: this the potter says he will see, and after a good dinner goes with the rest to the butts. All the archers come half a bow’s length short of the mark; Robin, at his wish, gets a bow from the sheriff, and his first shot misses the mark by less than a foot, his second cleaves the central pin in three. The sheriff applauds; Robin says there is a bow in his cart which he had of Robin Hood. The sheriff wishes he could see Robin Hood, and the potter offers to gratify this wish on the morrow. They go back to the sheriff’s for the night, and early the next day set forth; the sheriff riding, the potter in his cart. When they come to the wood, the potter blows his horn, for so they shall know if Robin be near; the horn brings all Robin’s men. The