And he ended his speech with the sonorous cry of his craft.
By this time the whole band was laughing uproariously at the tinker’s talk.
“What say you, fellows?” asked Robin. “Would not this tinker be a good recruit?”
“That he would!” answered Will Scarlet, clapping the new man on the back. “He will keep Friar Tuck and Much the miller’s son from having the blues.”
So amid great merriment and right good fellowship the outlaws shook Middle by the hand, and he took oath of fealty, and thought no more of the Sheriff’s daughter.
In Nottingham there lived a jolly tanner, With a hey down, down, a down down! His name was Arthur-a-Bland, There was ne’er a squire in Nottinghamshire
Dare bid bold Arthur stand. And as he went forth, in a summer’s morning, With a hey down, down, a down down! To the forest of merrie Sherwood, To view the red deer, that range here and there, There met he with bold Robin Hood.
The Sheriff’s daughter bided for several days in the faint hope that she might hear tidings of the prattling tinker. But never a word heard she, and she was forced to the conclusion that her messenger had not so much as laid eyes upon the outlaw. Little recked she that he was, even then, grinding sword-points and sharpening arrows out in the good greenwood, while whistling blithely or chatting merrily with the good Friar Tuck.
Then she bethought herself of another good man, one Arthur-a-Bland, a tanner who dwelt in Nottingham town and was far-famed in the tourneys round about. He had done some pretty tricks at archery, but was strongest at wrestling and the quarter-staff. For three years he had cast all comers to the earth in wrestling until the famous Eric o’ Lincoln broke a rib for him in a mighty tussle. Howsoever, at quarter-staff he had never yet met his match; so that there was never a squire in Nottinghamshire dare bid bold Arthur stand.
With a long pike-staff on his shoulder, So well he could clear his way That by two and three he made men flee And none of them could stay.
Thus at least runs the old song which tells of his might.
“This is just the man for me!” thought the Sheriff’s daughter to herself; and she forthwith summoned him to the Mansion House and commissioned him to seek out Robin Hood.