Ballads about Robin Hood

Beowulf

(...) Now many an earl

of Beowulf brandished blade ancestral3,

fain the life of their lord to shield,

their praised prince, if power were theirs;

never they knew, as they neared the foe,  

hardy-hearted heroes of war,

aiming their swords on every side

the accursed to kill, no keenest blade.

no fairest of falchions8 fashioned on earth,

could harm or hurt that hideous fiend!     

He was safe, by his spells, from sword of battle,

from edge of iron. Yet his end and parting

on that same day of this our life

woeful13 should be, and his wandering soul

far off flit14 to the fiends' domain15.   is

Soon he found, who in former days,

harmful in heart16 and hated of God,

on many a man such murder wrought,

that the frame of his body failed him now.

For him the keen-souled kinsman17 of Hygelac18 20

held in hand; hateful alive

was each to other. The outlaw dire19

:00k mortal hurt; a mighty wound

showed on his shoulder, and sinews20 cracked,

3nd the bone-frame21 burst. To Beowulf now 25

the glory was given, and Grendel thence22

ieath-sick his den in the dark moor sought23,

noisome abode24: he knew too well

mat here was the last of life, an end

of his days on earth.

Beowulf's warriors brandished many a sword, inheritances from the ancient days, trying to protect their chief, but that did no good: they could not have known, those brave warriors as they fought, striking from all sides, seeking to take Grendel's soul, that no battle sword could harm him -he had enchantment against the edges of weapons.

The end of Grendel’s life was miserable, and he would travel far into the hands of fiends. Grendel, the foe of God, who had long troubled the spirits of men with his crimes, found that his body could not stand against the hand grip of that warrior. Each was hateful to the other alive. The horrible monster endured a wound: the bone-locks of his shoulder gave way, and his sinews sprang out. The glory of battle went to Beowulf, and Grendel, mortally wounded, sought his sad home under the fen slope.

He knew surely that

his life had reached its end,

the number of his days gone.

Beowulf Mortally Wounds Grendel

GLOSSARY

1. earl: follower 2. brandish: hold and wave 3. blade ancestral: sword 4. fain: willing 5. shield: protect 6. foe: enemy 7. keen: sharp 8. falchion: sword 9. fashion: make 10. hideous: horrendous 11. fiend: wicked or cruel being; 12.spell: magic charm 13. woeful: painful 14. flit: fly 15.(fiends') domain: hell; 16. harmful in heart: evil 17.    kinsman: relative 18. Hygelac: king of the Geats; 19.dire: horrible 20.sinew: cord connecting muscle to bone 21.bone-frame: skeleton 22.thence: from there 23. sought: looked for 24. noisome abode: dirty and dark home.

Popular Ballads

Ballads are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral transmission. The English bal­lads were probably composed dur­ing the five-hundred year period from 1200 to 1700, but only a few of them were printed before the eighteenth century and some not until the nine­teenth, when writers and scholars began to collect and study them. In the fourteenth-seventeenth cen­turies, the ballads were transmitted mainly through broadsides ("broad­side" is a song or poem printed on one side of a large single sheet of paper, offered for sale on the streets by ballad sellers).

There are two main types of bal­lads to be distinguished, “traditional” and "street^”. The difference between them may be summed up as follows: traditional ballads are more often tragic, romantic and he­roic and their plot is more fragmen­tary. Traditional ballads appeared in the country. ’’Street" ballads were composed by the people living in town; they are more comic and unheroic, and their narrative is more circumstantial.

All ballads must not only tell a story in verse, but must also be able to be sung. For this reason, their narrative and style must be simple enough to be followed by the listeners.

Most of the best ballads have as their subject a tragic incident, often a murder or accidental death, gen­erally involving supernatural ele­ments. These motifs can be found in European folklore, and many of the English ballads resemble the folk poems of the same type in other lan­guages. To this class belong such famous ballads as Lord Randall", "Edward", "Barbara Allan", ’’The Wife of Usher‘s Well", and others.

Some ballads refer to actual his­torical incidents. A late song, ”The Bonny Earl of Murray", laments the political murder of a popular six­teenth-century Scots noble. The bal­lads which tell about Robin Hood, an outlaw hero of English folktales, are also well-known.

This is one of the oldest ballads, and it exists in many different forms. It is almost certainly based on an oral tradition and shows the characteris­tics of traditional ballads: a sombre supernatural elements. It was certainly sung (there is a melody associated with it), and may even have corresponded to communal dancing, with the group singing the refrains. As with much folk poetry, there are various levels of interpretation to the poem: there is some reference to the daily sacri­fice of Christ in Mass (celebration of the

The Three Ravens

Traditional Ballads

Eucharist); the doe (female deer) may be interpreted as the Christian soul come from Christ. On the other hand she may simply represent the knight’s lover changed into a doe.

 

THERE were three rauens sat on a tree,
Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe
There were three rauens sat on a tree,
With a downe
There were three rauens sat on a tree,	5
They were as blacke as they might be.
With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.
The one of them said to his mate,
“Where shall we our breakefast take?”
“Downe in yonder greene field,	10
There lies a knight slain vnder his shield.
“His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
So well they can their master keepe.
“His haukes they flie so eagerly,
There’s no fowle dare him come nie.” 1	15
Downe there comes a fallow doe,
As great with yong as she might goe.
She lift vp his bloudy hed,
And kist his wounds that were so red.
She got him vp vpon her backe,	20
And carried him to earthen lake. 2
She buried him before the prime,
She was dead herselfe ere euen-song time.
God send euery gentleman,
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman

 

 

Ballads about Robin Hood

Robin Hood is a legendary hero who lived in Sherwood Forest, in Nottingham, with his band of followers. Stories about him and his adventures began to appear in the fourteenth century, but the facts behind the legend are uncertain. One writer thinks Robin was born in 1160, at a time when there were many robbers living in the wood, stealing from the rich but only killing in self-defence.

Everyone knows that Robin Hood robbed ͣ rich to give to the poor. He chose to be an outlaw, that is, someone who lives “outside the law”, but he had his own ideas of right and wrong. He fought against unjustice, and tried to give ordinary people a share of the riches owned by people in authority and the Church. He had many qualities – he was a great sportsman, a brave fighter, and was very good with his bow and arrow.

He dressed in green, lived in the forest with his wife, Maid Marion, and his men, among them Friar Tuck, Allen a Dale, Will Scarlet, and Little John. For food, they killed the Kings deer, and many days were spent eating, drinking, and playing games. He robbed the rich by capturing them as they travelled through the forest and inviting them to eat with him. During the supper, someone looked in their bags to see how much money they had. When it was finished, Robin asked them to pay for the meal, and of course, he knew how much to ask for!

His main enemy was the Sheriff of Nottingham, who was always trying to capture Robin but never managed to do it. Some stories say that he killed Robin by poisoning him. In his dying moments, he shot a final arrow from his famous bow, and asked Little John to bury him where the arrow landed!