+Argument.+--For a jest, the king disguises himself and his men once more, this time in Lincoln green, which he purchases off Robin Hood. The whole party proceeds to Nottingham, where the appearance of so many green mantles causes a general flight of the inhabitants. The king, however, reveals himself, and after a feast, pardons the knight.
Robin dwells in the king’s court for fifteen months, at the end of which time he has spent much money, and has lost all his men except Little John and Scathlock. He therefore begs the king’s leave to go on a pilgrimage to a shrine of St. Mary Magdalen in Barnsdale, and the king consents, but allows him only seven nights’ absence. Robin comes to the greenwood, and shoots a great hart; and on blowing his horn, seven score yeomen come and welcome him back, and he dwells two-and-twenty years in the greenwood. In the end he was betrayed by his kinswoman, the Prioress of Kirkesly Abbey, and her lover, Sir Roger of Doncaster.
It has been suggested (by Professor Brandl) that the episode of the king’s disguise in green is an intentional variation of the episode in the Third Fytte, where the Sheriff of Nottingham is forced to wrap himself in a green mantle. In any case it is probable that most of this Eighth Fytte is the work of the compiler of the _Gest_; possibly even the delightful verses (stt. 445-6) in which the joy of greenwood life overcomes Robin.
One could wish the _Gest_ ended with st. 450; but it is clear that the compiler knew of a ballad which narrated the death of Robin Hood, no doubt an earlier version of the _Robin Hood’s Death_ of the Percy Folio, a ballad unfortunately incomplete (see p. 140).
Every famous outlaw of English tradition visits the king’s court sooner or later, and makes peace with the king; but Robin’s independence was too dear to him--and to the ballad-singers whose ideal he was--to allow him to go to the king voluntarily. Therefore the king must come to Robin; and here the compiler, perhaps, saw his opportunity to introduce the king-in-disguise theme, and so evolved the two last fyttes of the _Gest_.
418. ‘Haste thou ony grene cloth,’ sayd our kynge, ‘That thou wylte sell nowe to me?’ ‘Ye, for God,’ sayd Robyn, ‘Thyrty yerdes and three.’