threw off his disguise, and Robin and his men knelt down before him and asked for pardon. The King said they should be pardoned all they had done if Robin would leave the forest and go and live with him at Court. So Robin went and lived among the knights and barons who stood around the King in the great halls of his palace; and many of his men were with him. And the King was proud of showing their skill in archery, and the wonderful things they could do with the bow and arrow, when guests came from foreign lands, or on holidays for the people. But Robin Hood only stayed

with the King for a year; but he grew weary of the Court, and pined for his merry greenwood and merry companions; so he begged of the King to let him go back, and the King did so. So he went back, and lived the same life as he had done before until he was an old man.

One day, being unwell, he said to his old friend Little John, "We have shot many a pound, but I am not able to shoot one shot more, my arrows will not flee." He said that he felt so ill that he must go to his cousin at Kirkley Hall, that she might bleed him. Now, Robin's cousin was not a good woman; yet, when he arrived at the Hall, she pretended to be very kind, and begged that he would have some wine; but Robin said that he would neither eat nor drink until she bled him. So she led him to a private room, and when she had bled him, she locked him in the room and left him alone. Now, this was a very wicked thing to do. About the middle of the next day, poor Robin, finding that no one came near him, knew that all was not right; so he thought he might escape by the window, but he was so weak and ill that he could not jump down. He then thought of his horn; so he blew three blasts, and although they were very weak, still they were strong enough to be heard by his constant and kind friend Little John, who soon broke the locks open, and was quickly at his master's side.

"O master, grant me a boon!" said Little John. "What is the boon?" said Robin.

The ballad tells us :

"A boon, a boon," cries Little John,

"Master, I beg of thee."

"What is that boon," quoth Robin Hood,

"Little John, thou begg'st of me?" "It is to burn fair Kirkley Hall.

And all their nunnery."

"That I may burn this fair Kirkley Hall for the injury that has been done to you, my kind master," replied Little John. Then Robin answered, "No, I have never injured a woman in my life, nor man in woman's company, and I will not do

so now."

This was right of Robin, who, although he had been an outlaw, knew how to RETURN GOOD FOR EVIL.

Feeling himself dying, he asked for his bow and arrows, and begged Little John to prop him up, that he might shoot one arrow more before he died. And when he had shot it through the window, he said they were to bury him where it fell; that they were to lay a green sod under his head, and that as in life the greensward had been his pillow so it should be likewise in death. And he particularly asked that his grave should be so dug that he might have length and breadth enough," for this bold Robin had been used to have a wide domain, and the wild wood had been his hall. And as they placed a sod under his head, they should put

66

another under his feet; that his bows and arrows should be laid by his side; and that his grave was to be made of "gravel and green," that the people might say, "Here lies bold Robin Hood." All this was readily promised, which pleased him very much, and "there they buried bold Robin Hood, near to the fair Kirkleys."

NOTE.

"ROBIN HOOD was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, in the reign of King Henry the Second, and about the year of Christ 11C0. His extraction was noble, and his true name ROBERT FITZOOTH, which vulgarly pronounced easily corrupted into ROBIN HOOD. He is trequently styled, and commonly reputed to have been, EARL of HUNTINGDON; a title to which, in the latter part of his life at least, he actually appears to have had some sort of pretension. In his youth he is reported to have been of a wild and extravagant disposition, insomuch that his inheritance being consumed or forfeited by his excesses, and his person outlawed for debt, either from necessity or choice, he sought an asylum in the woods and forests, with which immense tracts, especially in the northern parts of the kingdom, were at that time covered. Of these he chiefly affected Barnsdale in Yorkshire; Sherwood in Nottinghamshire; and, according to some, Plumpton park in Cumberland. Here he either found, or was afterwards joined by, a number of persons in similar circumstances, who appear to have considered and obeyed him as their chief or leader, and of whom his principal favourites, or those in whose courage and fidelity he most confided, were LITTLE Joun (whose surname is said to have been Nailor), WILLIAM SCADLOCK (Scathlock, or Scarlet), GEORGE A GREEN, pinder (or pound-keeper), of Wakefield, Muci, a miller's son, and a certain monk or friar, named TUCK. He is likewise said to have been accompanied in his retreat by a female, of whom he was enamoured, and whose real or adopted name was MARIAN.

"Having, for a long series of years, maintained a sort of independent sovereignty, and set kings, judges, and magistrates at defiance, a proclamation was published offering a considerable reward for bringing him in either dead or alive; which, however, seems to have been productive of no greater success than former attempts for that purpose. At length, the infirmities of old age increasing upon him, and desirous to be relieved, in a fit of sickness, by being let blood, he applied for that purpose to the prioress of Kirkleys Nunnery in Yorkshire, his relation, (women, and particularly religious women, being in those times, somewhat better skilled in surgery than the sex is at present), by whom he was treacherously suffered to bleed to death. This event happened on the 18th of November, 1247, being the thirty-first year of King Henry III. and (if the date assigned to his birth be correct), about the 87th of his age. He was interred under some trees, at a short distance from the house; a stone being placed over his grave, with an inscription to his memory." -Ritson.