This tale is rightly called by Ritson a North Country composition of some antiquity, “perhaps Scottish.” Fragments of Robin Hood ballads, Motherwell informs us, were traditionally extant in his day which had not (and have not) found their way into printed collections, and we know from very early testimony that such ballads were current in Scotland. This is by far the best of the Robin Hood ballads of the secondary, so to speak cyclic, period. It has plenty of homely humor, but the heroic sentiment is gone. It does not belong to the iron, the cast-iron, age of Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, etc.; but neither does it belong to the golden age of Robin Hood and the Monk, or the Gest. It would be no gain to have Thersites drubbing Odysseus. Robin finds his match, for the nonce, in the Potter, but he does not for that depute two of his men to be the death of the Potter. It never occurred to Little John and Much to get a hundred pound from a beggar, kill him, and pocket the money. A story resembling that of the second part of this ballad occurs, as Ritson has observed, in Le moyen de parvenir, “1739, I, 304;” II, 94, London, 1786; p. 171, Paris, 1841. A friar encounters two footpads, who offer to relieve him of the burden of his frock. He asks them to let him take it off peaceably, puts his staff under his foot, takes off the frock and throws it before them. While one of the pair stoops to get it, the friar picks up the staff and hits the knave a blow which sends him headlong; the other runs off. Translated by Anastasius Grün, p. 180. 1 Lyth and listen, gentlemen, That’s come of high born blood; I’ll tell you of a brave booting That befel Robin Hood. 2 Robin Hood upon a day, He went forth him alone, And as he came from Barnesdale Into a fair evening, 3 He met a beggar on the way, That sturdily could gang; He had a pike-staff in his hand, That was baith stark and strang. 4 A clouted cloak about him was, That held him from the cold; The thinnest bit of it, I guess, Was more than twenty fold. 5 His meal-pock hang about his neck, Into a leathern fang, Well fastened with a broad buckle, That was both stark and strang. 6 He had three hats upon his head, Together sticked fast; He cared neither for wind nor weet, In lands wherever he past. 7 Good Robin coost him in his way, To see what he might be; If any beggar had money, He thought some part had he. 8 ‘Tarry, tarry,’ good Robin says, ‘Tarry, and speak with me;’ He heard him as he heard [him] not, And fast his way can hie. 9 ‘It be’s not so,’ says good Robin, ‘Nay, thou must tarry still;’ ‘By my troth,’ says the bold beggar, ‘Of that I have no will. 10 ‘It is far to my lodging-house, And it is growing late; If they have supt ere I come in, I will look wondrous blate.’