He had the English love of
fair play, the English readiness to shake hands and make up, and keep no
malice when worsted in a square fight. He beat and plundered the fat
bishops and abbots, who had more than their share of wealth, but he was
generous and hospitable to the distressed, and lived a free and careless
life in the good green wood. He was a mighty archer with those national
weapons, the long-bow and the cloth-yard shaft. He tricked and baffled
legal authority in the person of the proud sheriff of Nottingham,
thereby appealing to that secret sympathy with lawless adventure which
marked the free-born, vigorous yeomanry of England. And, finally, the
scenery of the forest gives a poetic background and a never-failing
charm to the exploits of "the old Robin Hood of England" and his merry
men.
The ballads came, in time, to have certain tricks of style, such as are
apt to characterize a body of anonymous folk-poetry. Such is their use
of conventional epithets; "the red, red gold," "the good green wood,"
"the gray goose wing." Such are certain recurring terms of phrase like,
But out and spak their stepmother.
Such is, finally, a kind of sing-song repetition, which doubtless helped
the ballad singer to memorize his stock, as, for example,
She had'na pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twae.
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