They consist, that is to say, of a few ballads of unknown antiquity.

These ballads, or others like them, are clearly the authority upon which the statements of the earlier chroniclers who take notice of Robin Hood are founded.

Various periods, ranging from the time of Richard the First to near the end of the reign of Edward the Second, have been selected by different writers as the age of Robin Hood; but (excepting always the most ancient ballads, which may possibly be placed within these limits) no mention whatever is made of him in literature before the latter half of the reign of Edward the Third.

"At this time, [sc. 1266,] from the number of those who had been deprived of their estates arose the celebrated bandit Robert Hood, (with Little John and their accomplices,) whose achievements the foolish vulgar delight to celebrate in comedies and tragedies, while the ballads upon his adventures sung by the jesters and minstrels are preferred to all others.

Mr. Hunter admits that Robin Hood "lives only as a hero of song"; that he is not found in authentic contemporary chronicles; and that, when we find him mentioned in history, "the information was derived from the ballads, and is not independent of them or correlative with them."

While making these admissions, he accords a considerable degree of credibility to the ballads, and particularly to the "Lytell Geste," the last two fits of which he regards as giving a tolerably accurate account of real occurrences.

The hero of the Camp of Refuge fills an ample place in the annals of his day; his achievements are also handed down in a prose romance, which presents many points of resemblance to the ballads of Robin Hood.

The story is romantic, and yet Adam Gordon was not made the subject of ballads.

They are contradicted by the spirit of the ballads.

What the tone of these ballads would have been, had Robin Hood been any sort of partisan, we may judge from the mournful and indignant strains which were poured out on the fall of De Montfort.

The Robin Hood of our ballads is neither patriot under ban, nor proscribed rebel.

Might not the ballads under consideration have a basis in the exploits of a real person, living in the forests, somewhere and at some time?

Mr. Wright has justly remarked, that either an express mention of this month, or a vivid description of the season, in the older ballads, shows that the feats of the hero were generally performed during this part of the year.

Why the adventures of Robin Hood should be specially assigned, as they are in the old ballads, to the month of May, remains unexplained.

We have no exquisite reason to offer, but we may perhaps find reason good enough in the delicious stanzas with which some of these ballads begin.

They do not go beyond the ballads.

In the reference to Wordsworth Lamb pokes fun at the statement, in his friend's preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, that the purpose of that book was to relate or describe incidents and situations from common life as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men.

" "You don't mean to say that you trace back our north-country ballads to, what do you call him?" "Prudentius.

I show that there is much in his hymns that recalls the English ballads.

"I was saying just now that the hymns of Prudentius, by the dramatic rapidity of the narrative, by the composition of the strophe, and by their wit, remind me very forcibly of our English ballads.

Poems and Ballads of Goethe.

Ballads of battle, by Will Harvey.

He made cheerful noises by breaking off the necks of the bottles with several of his wife's wedding-present dinner-plates, and during the earlier part of this great drunk he sang divers merry ballads.

His accomplishments were many; and when the guests assembled in the great hall to make the walls ring with their laughter over cups of mead and ale, he could take his turn with the harpers and minstrels to improvise one of those sturdy bold ballads that stir the blood to-day with their stately rhythms and noble themes.

" Alfred's value to literature is this: he placed by the side of Anglo-Saxon poetry,consisting of two great poems, Caedmon's great song of the 'Creation' and Cynewulf's 'Nativity and Life of Christ,' and the unwritten ballads passed from lip to lip,four immense translations from Latin into Anglo-Saxon prose, which raised English from a mere spoken dialect to a true language.