Glossary

The legend's vocabulary — Middle English words, book-history terms, and legal institutions — explained plainly.

Ballad and book terms

Ballad — A narrative song or poem, usually in stanzas with refrains, circulating by singing, recitation, or print. The Robin Hood ballads are narrative poems; whether they were sung or spoken is debated for individual texts.

Broadside — A single large sheet of paper printed on one side, sold cheaply (often for a penny) — the seventeenth century's mass medium. Most of the later Robin Hood ballads survive as broadsides.

Child ballad — One of the 305 ballads in Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1898). Robin Hood ballads are Child 117–154. "Child 117A" means ballad 117, version A (Child printed multiple versions of many ballads).

Fytte — A section or canto of a long poem; the Gest of Robyn Hode is divided into eight fyttes. (Modern spelling: "fit.")

Gest — From Old French geste: a tale of deeds, an epic narrative. A Gest of Robyn Hode is "a tale of the deeds of Robin Hood."

Percy Folio — A seventeenth-century manuscript collection of ballads and romances (British Library, Additional MS 27879), compiled around 1650; the sole source for Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne and Robin Hood's Death.

Roud number — The index number in Steve Roud's Folk Song Index, the modern supplement to Child's numbering for folk songs.

Social and legal terms

Yeoman — In the later Middle Ages, a freeborn commoner of respectable standing — below the gentry, above the peasantry; often a farmer, forester, or soldier. The ballads' Robin is emphatically a yeoman ("a gode yeman"), not a nobleman. The Earl of Huntingdon is a later invention.

Outlaw — Literally, one placed outside the law's protection: a person formally declared outside legal protection, whose goods were forfeit and who could be killed with impunity. Robin's outlawry is a legal status, not just a lifestyle.

Forest law — The special Norman legal regime governing royal forests: the king's deer and timber were protected by forest courts and severe penalties. Poaching the king's venison — the greenwood feast's main course — was a serious crime under forest law.

Royal forest — A district (not necessarily wooded) reserved for the king's hunting, subject to forest law. Sherwood was a royal forest; so was the Yorkshire country of the early ballads.

Sheriff — The crown's chief officer in a shire: tax-collector, court-holder, raiser of the hue and cry, executor of writs of outlawry. The Sheriff of Nottingham administered Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, including Sherwood Forest.

Husbandman — A small farmer who tills his own land — the class the Gest's code explicitly protects ("do no husbonde harme").

Abbot / bishop / archbishop — Heads of monasteries and dioceses; among the wealthiest and most powerful men in medieval England — and the Gest's designated targets.

Legend terms

Merry men — Robin's band; in Middle English "mery men" — companions, fellows. The merriment is fellowship, not comedy.

Lincoln green — Green-dyed woolen cloth associated with Lincoln, England; the traditional dress of Robin's band and the origin of the modern costume.

Kirklees (Churchlees) — The Cistercian priory in West Yorkshire where, in Child 120, Robin is treacherously bled to death by the prioress.

Barnsdale — The district in South Yorkshire (on Watling Street, the Great North Road) where the early ballads set Robin's ambushes; the Gest's home ground.

The Sayles — Clearings or open places in Barnsdale named in the Gest as the outlaws' haunt.

Source notes

• Definitions reflect standard Middle English and medieval-history usage; see sources.
• "Mery men" as "companions": the standard reading of Middle English mery in this context.

Limitations

• Middle English words shifted meaning over time; glosses give the sense relevant to the ballads.
• This glossary is selective, not a dictionary of Middle English.