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  Speaking of which, there is a single incident in the former ballad that has long cast its shadow upon the outlaw’s later manifestations, or at least threatened to cast its shadow, if it were not locked up in the secure vaults of academe; this being the murder – by Robin’s companion, ‘Much the miller’s son’ – of the monk’s little page, ‘for fear he should betray them’ (‘for ferd lest he wolde tell’).

  This incident is the centrepiece of the ensuing document, whereas it is only a passing morsel of action in the ballad, and uncoloured by any kind of moral comment or regret.

  It is, to my mind, this ballad of Robin and the monk in some much earlier form to which the author of the present manuscript refers several times as his own ‘infant’, cursing it as ‘disgusting’ or ‘crippled’: an emotional approach that may startle our modern sensibilities, for whom literature in whatever form has become a mere fireside pastime rather than the symbolic expression of our deepest souls and intents. In this regard, it may be of interest to note that in an early-sixteenth-century play quoted in Bishop Percy’s notes (Northumberland Houshold Book, 1770), it is none other than ‘Ygnoraunce’ who speaks the lines:

  But yf thou wylt have a song that is gode,

  I have one of Robin Hode

  The best that ever was made.

  As implied above, bits of our manuscript, apart from being error-strewn, are missing or made illegible through time’s vicissitudes, and I have left certain specimens of rhetoric, more suited to the taste of the Middle Ages than our own, for a forthcoming complete edition with scholarly footnotes. I have, it might be noted, mostly avoided modernising or ‘standardising’ the spelling of names (mostly kept in their English garb, with ecclesiastical or regal exceptions – Henricus etc. – they are islands of familiarity in the sea of Latin); sometimes left an English word in situ; and here and there used a word or a grammatical form that, although utterly dead or obsolete at the present time, may yet give the sharp, true note of medieval speech without falling into quaint or ‘Gothic’ floweriness.

  Much of the paragraphing, as well as the modern division into ‘parts’ and ‘chapters’, is my own, to make the unbroken blocks of text easier on the reader’s eye; I have introduced inverted commas wherever speech is distinguished, merely for clarification. I have echoed the medieval habit of using coordinate clauses linked by and or then, only because the Latin is similarly constructed, but endeavoured to modernise with more complex sentence patterns wherever the sense is not disturbed. Words left in italics are as they appear in the manuscript.

  As the author at several junctures claims the text to be a written confession, if primarily intended for the eyes of God, it is perhaps worth emphasising, in the light of the narrative’s content, that medieval adulthood began at the age of fourteen, which in the eyes of the Church meant that children younger than that age could not sin (in the conventional sense), and were therefore exempted from confession. However, this did not excuse even unbaptised infants from being shut out of Heaven, though most contemporary theologians agreed they would not suffer Hell’s agonies.

  Having a shard of plain medieval window-glass here on my desk before me, that I rescued from the shattered church mentioned above, and which, when brought to the eye, remains thoroughly opaque in that misty manner of its Roman equivalent, keeps me in mind of the truth of translation: that it is never (and should not ever suggest itself to be) entirely transparent.

  While we cannot be sure if this pious, ex-minstrel brother has always confined himself strictly to literal fact, what remains, with its picturesque incident and passionate narrative manner, I hope is sufficiently of interest (not only to those seeking enlightenment in the thickets of the Robin Hood legend, but also to anyone searching in our more distant past) to have justified my labours in a college room a few degrees warmer than the open cloister’s ‘outer bench’ complained of so frequently by the author in his extreme and (even for our time) astonishing old age.

  F. J. Belloes

  Ash Dunhay

  Dec. 3, 1921

  Publisher’s note: Since the above Preface was penned, a disastrous fire in Mr Belloes’s country home has spelt the complete destruction of the original manuscript. The planned scholarly edition will, therefore, not be forthcoming.

  Part One

  1

  The seas are folded over us, above our heads, the lower sea becoming the upper sea and yet still blue when not girt with sea mist, which is grey and melancholy. Some men when they look up see birds, but I see only a kind of fish, sometimes in great shoals. These fish are beaked and feathered, as we all know, and return to dry land to nest in trees, shrubs, meadow grass or crops, rocks or walls, or even under our own thatch, where the nestlings make a great beseeching noise that might keep us from sleep.

  Only birds pass from the sky’s air to its water without harm, for they have the property, like the fish of the lower sea, of breathing underwater. And I have seen with my own eyes a cormorant swimming under the water of the lower sea, and a myriad of gannets plunging into its waves at a good distance from its cliffs. Likewise do birds plunge into and out of the blue of the upper sea without harm.

  If men sail far enough, namely a sufficient number of leagues beyond the horizon, they unwittingly pass over our heads, yet too high up to discern us or the dark of our forests through the blue of the waters of the upper sea.

  It has been recounted to me that mariners have lost knives overboard and that these same knives have been found caught in trees, or that they plunge through a [thatched] roof to stand upright and trembling in a table, to the surprise of those eating. And fish sometimes fall (as we know) from the sky, like arrow-struck birds, but with no visible wound.

  I myself once found a piece of cork ballast in the middle of a field, very far from the sea. I looked up and saw a dark cloud in the shape of a ship, as if I was perceiving it from underneath. In former ages perhaps men knew of such things, having greater clarity and knowledge, since it is well known that we have declined in wisdom, and are running further and further into ignorance as the world approaches its end in the manner that St Paul foretold. I myself have heard the faint echo of infernal torments discernible on the wind, as these come closer and closer towards us, heralded by the blast of trumpets.

  If I had happened not to have met with the outlaw called Robert Hod, so many years ago that none are still living from that time but myself, I would be less tormented in my spirit; for quite apart from the other matters it was Hodde3 who put strange ideas and questionings into my head.

  Alas, the autumn day I first saw him long ago was indeed grown so wet, that the upper seas must have spilt much of their waters in their seething. My master [brother Thomas] and I were travelling the main highway between Yorke and Dancaster: this being a journey of some ten hours,4 for we had set off at dawn. There was no thick, wild forest, as foolish men now tell when they sing of ‘Robyn’5 or cavort like buffoons in his plays, but only small woods or copses, though albeit dark and tangled, between uncultivated heathland [locis incultis].

  The chief vice of my master brother Thomas being that he loved wine immoderately, like a lecher loves women, he would pass easily from cheer of heart into sin, uttering gross words. And these sins of the tongue were worsened by his shrill voice, that despite his fatness was almost like a sparrow’s. He was the cellarer of his house, St Edmund’s of Dancaster; and he would say, when drunken, that the cellar was his stewe,6 full of smooth-limbed maidens besporting for his pleasure.

  My master having conducted his business at the Order’s house in Yorke (following the sudden migration to the Lord of brother Bernard, their own cellarer), we were returning thence to Danncaster. I accompanied my master everywhere, because he had a love of ballads and music, as much as he did of wine and fishing and roasted meat, and we had lessons together in writing and reading that the glory of books might be opened to me yet wider, for his great desire was that I might become a master scrivener [scriptor] – if not to take the cowl m
yself one day. It was well known that I was not merely a kitchen servant but brother Thomas’s page, and might have been an oblate7 were I the possessor of a parent with a fat purse.

  Brother Thomas was not a monk by choice, but by fate; he would ne’er call it God’s will. He had fled after scandal into the silence of the high walls of the monastery, from a family he claimed was noble and of Norman stock. Despite his reckless nature, he had a great fear of Hell, and of its heat and its cold, and when one day a fire consumed one of the abbey’s barns, the stink of charred wood that lingered afterwards made him very melancholy, at the thought of what might await him. He was very kind at times: when it was once extremely cold and I was feeble with a chill, I turned blue and seemed as if dead, and there being no heating except in the calefactory where I was not permitted, he and the other monks pressed me in a circle to their bosom (as a sow might warm its litter), and I was revived.

  We were returning to St Edmund’s after an absence of six days. Although we had a pack pony, aside from my master’s mount, I was on foot. We knew it was a perilous journey, even by day, for that way crossed the high heathland; but in those times all journeyings had their perils where robbers and murtherers lurked behind trees or thickets – and we must trust ourselves to God e’en now, for nothing has changed for the better except that the Day of Judgement is closer, and perhaps very close, maybe but an hour or two off!

  Unlike our going northward, where there was a continual clatter of carts, pilgrims, pedlars and so forth, the way was emptier on our return. Because it was a Sunday, and the clouds most thick and dark to the west, and there being a witless rumour that a group of some twenty singing lepers were on the road, measling all in their path including pigs and cattle, there was no one else in view either way upon that wild stretch, which caused us much alarm.8

  The black clouds coming over our heads and their heavy load beginning to fall, our progress was slowed: my master’s horse slid about in the clay and my own tread was hampered by the sucking of the slippery earth. I might have been mounted with the baggage, but our pack pony [equus parvus clitellarius] breathed as though with small bellows,9 and my master having been given much weight of gifts (including a barrel of ale and a mantle furred with miniver), he said I must not overload the midriff.

  There being several steep declivities, the way became perilous, and the river where we must ford it was already swollen, so that the great crossing-stones were scarce visible.10 From thence we climbed the road with some difficulty onto Beornsdale Heath,11 past the three gibbets that let their miserable occupants look out from their bony sockets upon a great distance of hills.

  My master drank much from his leathern flask, for gladness and to keep himself warm; his tongue corrupted, he began to curse, the whiles I was struggling in silence with the pony, my precious harpe12 safe wrapped in leather upon mine own back. My master might have been very close to the Doom of Judgement (for we do not know what His Will bringeth after death), but not only was his tongue darting out and stinging me with words, he also began to blaspheme horribly, for there were neither people nor houses nearby: it was a wild, heathy part with many gorse bushes and heather, and not even fit for grazing. ‘By the Lord’s blood,’ he cried, and much that was most noyful to my ears; ‘I reck not the crust of a pie for your efforts, or for these windy horses, and would this Devil of a rainstorm be blown to Hell, where it belongs!’ Yet his horse was a handsome palfrey, for my master liked to hunt: how it gnawed at its snaffle!

  ’Tis true that the business matters at Yorke had tired him, and he had scarce slept for the scrabblings of rodents in the damp hospitium, before a servant stirred him at two o’clock for Matins – this poor servant receiving a night shoe on his head for his pains. How could I have comforted him? For then I was sitting with the kitchen servants before the fire, and slept there upon the straw. So my master took the name of the Lord in vain, and the Lord punished us swiftly.

  ‘Ey, Christ’s foe,’ he cried, ‘if thou dost not tread faster, and stop slipping at every step, we shall be caught on the road as night descendeth, and forced to stay in an inn, and innkeepers are oft in the pockets of the outlaws!’ He also had a great fear of those wrinkled goblins that, after nightfall, travel unseen on the saddle and, at a certain moment, take hold of the reins and bring you sideways into the ditch.

  He shouted down at me again, saying, ‘By God’s corpus, thou miserable hireling, I shall leave you behind to be dined on by the felons like a rib of pork!’ For truly I was thin, as be many boys of fourteen or fifteen. I moved faster, slipping and floundering, yet my mounted master began to draw ahead of me in the mistiness, and I began to curse the wet myself with a blasphemous muttering that ought to have blistered and scabbed my lips, setting them about with pustules of the kind that had already sprouted upon my cheeks and forehead, as they do upon many boys of that age, ruining their beauty. And raising my sodden head, I perceived through the thickened atmosphere that my master was falling off his saddle, but in a slow manner, and that dark shadows were clustered about his grey horse – that was soon joining him on the ground like a newborn foal.

  In great fear I turned in order to run away, but a felon stepped from the gorse with a knife. I was too frightened to move even my lips, and prayed in silence. The man was hooded [capite velato] so that I could not see his face clearly, just as Death hides his bony features in deep shadow under his cloak. He held the knife towards my throat; flight would have been but a helpless wallowing in the mire. Snatching the rope of the pack pony, he asked me what our business was – ‘So urgent seemeth it, that it bid you take to the road on such a foul day, with naught but a pair of worthless nags for company.’ And I answered him without thought: ‘Nay, God of truth, my master’s mount is no nag!’

  He laughed mightily, revealing a face as battered as his cudgel. ‘What is it then?’ he said. ‘A trick horse? A heifer?’ I replied that it was my master’s horse of excellent breeding and daintiness, adding: ‘He is a good and holy brother of the monastic house of St Edmund’s at Dancasster, which has a fine stables.’

  He struck me across the face so that I fell into the liquid suck, my harp uttering a complaint through the leathern bag. ‘No monk is good nor holy,’ he cried. ‘They are but a plague of lechers and devourers.’ Another hooded felon came over from where my master was shouting for mercy, and pulled the harp off my back, but with such violence that my right shoulder felt pulled like a candle from its stick: my heart was as a bridge sounds when a messenger crosses it, bearing urgent letters.

  I smelt ale on this other cut-throat’s skin, and I could see there were lines dug in the skin around his mouth, and a large well-pitted nose, but naught more. A third villain, of great lankiness, took the harp and the pack pony with all our baggage away into the bushes. I wept to see my harp disappear.

  Having a knife under my tunic, yet was I helpless to use it, being so outnumbered. They dragged me over to where my master was on his knees, his fleeced robes caked in filth, as was his mount all on one side, so that it was as Enyde’s horse in the tale.13 ‘My boy,’ he cried, as if I were present only to save him, ‘vouchsafe us a song! Quick, sound thy sweet voice, I beseech thee!’

  He was driven almost mad with fear, with a blade pressed to his throat by a giant felon with shoulders like a blacksmith’s, addressed by the others as John. Yet before I could e’en ope my mouth, my trembling master brought out the heavy purse from his black habit, in which a hundred pounds nestled – this being the amount due to our abbey, after the aforesaid business dealings with the brother house at Yorke.

  The one who took it had fingerless leather gloves with fine stitching, his features hidden under a grey hood [mitra]14, very like the wolf-cowls of Fountaynes or Byeland15 (though he was as truly close to them as be a swine to a saint). He untied the strings of the purse and bit upon a gold coin withdrawn from the jingling of its companions, and the outlaws were silent before its lustrous surface. My master was pleading for his life, while his palf
rey’s flanks shivered likewise.

  Then it was that the hood of this felon fell back and I saw him clearly. He was above twenty-five, by my reckoning, and his face was clean-shaven and handsome enough until he spoke: then his mouth moving in a curious way over uneven teeth, it seemed as though its lips were sucking on a plum or a sloe, not forming words. His eyebrows were thick and dark, meeting in the middle beneath a blemish of the skin, and the balls in his sockets were as if swollen, lending him an exalted look.

  ‘Harken to me, monk, lest your blood ooze [with?] the mud,’ he said. ‘The loss of your hundred pounds is due to the calamitous conditions of the highway; yet if you were to speak of it otherwise, and inform against us, then the lord of the outlaws – meaning myself – will descend upon you worse than twenty famished wolves.’ My master nodded fiercely, glad to be spared. And so was I glad, although the loss of my harp sore grieved me.

  Then the felons took my master’s palfrey, pack and saddle and all, and vanished into the bushes, remaining only as the phantasms of dreams sometimes do, to trouble us.

  Because they had robbed us of all our possessions, our backs at least felt not the loss of our horses, and proceeding on foot, and avoiding a flooded pit in the road by passing on a little way patched with stones for two miles, we reached by happy chance the first dwellings of a village straggled upon it. We knocked upon doors, until kindly received by a woman in a cot whose fresh thatch nigh touched the ground.16