The present tale, offered in the freewheeling, not overly scholarly spirit of the Robin Hood ballads, aims not at realism, but at a tapestry suggesting the Medieval era as I conceive its own people may have wanted to think of it. I have striven to strike a balance—for example, trying to make the dialogue sound authentic without seeming stilted.
GLOSSARY
(ENCYCLOPEDIA STYLE)
Atom of time: See Time measurements.
Broken meats: the medieval equivalent term for “leftovers.”
Moment: See Time measurements.
Pergatory, Seven Pains of: This passage is based on an actual, rhymed Medieval ms. Volume I perused once, decades ago, in the British Museum Reading Room. Unfortunately, already by the time I drafted my romance, the bibliographic details and any other hardcopy notes I may have taken had long gone missing, leaving only my own mental notes.
Rouncy: Since I have found the word “rouncy” in very few of the dictionaries I have spotchecked, let me cite OED’s definition: “A horse, esp. a riding-horse.”
Servers: Serving at a high table could be an honor both to server and servee: it was flattering to serve someone of high rank, and flattering to be served by someone of high rank.
Squires: An opinion seems to be cropping up that squires were “lowly.” After long and attentive study, I reject this notion. Squires were high in the social scale, and not merely as potential knights. As a class, they were well-born, entitled to coats of arms, and qualified to fight in tournament or battle. In 1224 the English authorities began forcing military tenants worth twenty pounds a year or more to receive knighthood or pay a composition. This was called “distraint of knighthood,” came to be regarded as a heavy oppression, and would hardly have existed at all if many military tenants had not felt they were getting along quite well without the undoubtedly high, noble, and even holy mystique of knighthood. If knights can be called the “black belts” of chivalry, then squires might be called the “brown belts.” Indeed, even pages must not always have been the children we usually think of. J. C. Holt cites an historical case (A.D. 1277) in which one Gilbert, page of a certain John de Lascelles, Steward of the Forest, was set—apparently alone— to keep guard over two arrested men, and was sorely beaten when twenty bowmen came to break them out. Surely Gilbert could have been no “little” page, to be charged with the custody of two potentially dangerous criminals.
Thee, Thou, Thy: I did used the second person singular, not for its archaic sound, but for its rich nuances—the simple word “thy” can constitute either an endearment or an insult. Whereas applying the second person plural—”you,” “ye,” “yours”—to a single individual carries a degree of deference or courtesy, addressing an individual in the second person singular—”thee,” “thou,” thy,” etc.—implies either affection and intimacy or condescension and even contempt. (To this day, the French, at least, have a verb for it: “tutoyer.”) Of course, it would be incorrect ever to address a group of two or more persons in the second person singular.
Time measurements: In that mine of information, the Oxford English Dictionary, under the entry for “atom,” can be found the following guide to medieval time measurements. (I give the modern equivalents in parentheses.)
47 atoms of time = 1 ounce (7.5 seconds)
8 ounces = 1 ostent (1 minute)
1 and a half ostents = 1 moment (1.5 minutes)
2 and two thirds moments = 1 part (4 minutes)
1 and one half part; or, 4 moments = 1 minute (6 minutes)
2 minutes = 1 point (12 minutes)
5 points = 1 hour (1 hour)
AFTERWORD
When I began this story, back in mid-November of 1983, I felt the strong presence of a collaborator, Corwin Davison Poe. I still feel that he deserves to be recorded as co-author. Seeing, however, that for all practical purposes he counts as one of my own fictional “creations,” born as he is in the third quarter of the Twenty-first century and in an alternate timeline, I have been prevailed upon to accept full responsibility in the byline. My original 1984 afterword follows, altered a little in accordance with the theory that I might be sole author:
Actually, the romance was completely plotted in all its essentials before I read the ballads according to Child or the historical study by Holt, but they helped immensely in fleshing out the details. I was delighted to find my own theory, that the many late ballads describing how Robin Hood met his match reflect a sort of initiation ritual for becoming a member of his band, borne out in Holt’s study.
The oldest known Robin Hood ballads are five: “A Gest of Robyn Hode,” “R.H.’s Death,” “R.H. and Guy of Gisborne,” “R.H. and the Potter,” and “R.H. and the Monk.”
The “Gest” appears to be an early compilation of several ballads into a single more or less connected romance. It tells, among other things, how Robin Hood helped an impoverished knight identified as Sir Richard at the Lee, how he eventually made his peace with King Edward (note: Edward, not Richard!) but did not like the new life and went back to the old, and—very briefly—how he died. “R.H. and the Monk,” which ought not be confused with “R.H. and the Curtal Friar,” tells how Robin came down to St. Mary’s Church in Nottingham to attend Mass, how he was recognized by an unfriendly monk who took the news to the sheriff, how Robin was captured but freed—after about forty stanzas’ worth of adventure—by Much and Little John. In all, fifteen deaths are mentioned in “R.H. and the Monk,” making it perhaps the bloodiest ballad of all. I do not remember ever reading, as a child, any retellings that used either the “Gest” or the “Monk.” Nor did I use any incidents from either piece in the present story, except for Robin Hood’s reconciliation with the king, followed by his one-week leave that stretched into twenty-two years, and his death, the details of which came more from the ballad devoted entirely to it. I coud not figure out how to work any of the other episodes into the time schedule in such a way that they would not overpower the new plot. I did, however, throw in one courteous reference to the unnamed knights who may well include Sir Richard at the Lee, and I kept firmly before me such evidence as Robin’s greenwood luxury per the descriptions in the “Gest,” his piety as recorded in “R.H. and the Monk,” and such astonishing violence, for people raised on the heroic modern image of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, as this:
“Little John stood at a window in the morning,
And looked forth at a stage;
He was aware where the monk came riding,
And with him a little page.
...
“John smote off the monk’s head,
No longer would he dwell;
So did Much the little page,
For fear lest he would tell.”
(“R.H. and the Monk, stanzas 39 and 52; the “little page” is recorded as doing absolutely nothing to invite death except for being a witness. In fairness, however, cf. Holt’s evidence, cited above [in the Glossary, under “Squire”] of John de Lascelles’ page Gilbert.)
It is true that in one stanza of the “Gest” Robin includes any knight or squire “that will be a good fellow” among the parties his men are not to attack or rob; but other passages in the same work seem to give conflicting testimony; and, in any case, I very much doubt that Robin Hood would define any knight or squire stubbornly faithful to the sheriff as one “that would be a good fellow.” Besides, Much does kill that page.
I closely followed the ballads of “R.H. and Guy of Gisbourne” and “Robin Hood’s Death,” except that the version Child gives of Guy of Gisbourne has Little John’s arrow cleaving the sheriff’s heart in the last stanza, which I obviously had to explain away. And I followed the older version of “R.H.’s Death,” not the newer version which I remember as the one that most of the retellers I have read prefer, perhaps because the older one is fragmentary—which was as well for my own purpose.
I also used “R.H. and the Potter,” but combined it with a later version, “R.H. and the Butcher,” because I preferred the wordplay o
f the horned beasts and the sheriff’s motivation of going out to buy meat.
Of the later ballads, I used, besides “R.H. and the Butcher”: “R.H. and Allen a Dale,” “R.H. and the Golden Arrow,” “R.H. and the Bishop of Hereford,” “R.H.’s Golden Prize,” “R.H. Rescuing Will Stutly” and “R.H. Rescuing Three Squires,” combining the last two. The “Three Squires” ballad is the one in which Robin Hood and his men remove the Nottingham gallows to the greenwood and hang the sheriff, but for dramatic purposes it seemed better to down the three squires down into one Will Stutely. The two ballads appear to be more or less variants of each other anyway. For the Nottingham massacre, compare William of Cloudesley’s rescue by Adam Bell and Clim of the Clough—an outlaw tale partially contemporary with Robin Hood: Adam, Clim, and William leave justice, sheriff, mayor, all the constables, catchpoles, bailiffs, beadles, and forty foresters dead in Carlisle market-place! Moreover, at one point in the “Gest,” when the people of Nottingham think Robin Hood and his men are on the way to town, they all of them scurry in pure terror to find shelter, young and old and rich and poor alike.
Except for Allen a Dale (who is too fine a character to leave out, even if his story is a late reworking of an earlier one that starred Will Scarlet as the bridegroom), I have ignored the ballads describing how Robin meets his various companions. Most of these seem to be late afterthoughts made up to account for friendships that had already long existed in popular lore. Even (alas, for I still think it in many ways one of the best Robin Hood stories) the famous account of his meeting with Little John! Besides, such tales did not fit easily into the viewpoint of the present romance.
Of these meeting ballads, the one called “R.H. and the Curtal Friar” has become the standard basis for explaining Friar Tuck’s appearance. But Child and Holt agree that the identification of Tuck with this Curtal Friar may well be a mistake, of however long standing. I kept a hint of the Curtal Friar’s dogs, but opted for the alternate explanation of Friar Tuck: that he came in, along with Maid Marian, from the May Games and mumming dances. Thus, I made Tuck Marian’s chaplain and sidekick, not Robin’s.
Although Marian and her friar may have come late into the Robin Hood legend, I postulate that their independent lineage is at least as old as his, possibly much older and more mystical. Indeed, it might be more accurate to say that Robin Hood and Little John joined Marian and Tuck late in the history of the May Games.
Although according to the “Gest” Robin Hood scorns to rob poor people, and although the last stanza of that work ends, “He was a good outlaw, and did poor men much good,” the vision of robbing the rich in order to give to the poor as being the chief keynote to Robin Hood’s whole character and mystique seems to be an invention or pretty heavy re-interpretation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I felt I could not totally ignore it, though that might have been more artistic; but I compromised by giving it my own new re-interpretation.
The image of Robin Hood as an outlawed nobleman is older than the “rob the rich to help the poor” motif, but still comparatively recent. It may sound incongruous in a writer who has concentrated on her own new gently-born hero, but I rather resent the way in which later romanticism robbed the middle, yeoman class of one of its most striking folk heroes and turned him over to the aristocratic class, which already had heroes of its own aplenty. So I returned Robin to the good, solid yeoman class. Not, mark you, the peasant class—that, as far as I can tell, is a purely twentieth-century notion of the ash-can school of “stark realism” (which is as distorted and inaccurate in its own way as the more roseate romantic school, and often seems to have forgotten the differences between yeoman, peasant, and beggar, as well as many other nuances of the Medieval centuries) ... even though, otherwise, “Robin and Marian” is among the very best of the Robin Hood movies.
We moderns have come almost to take for granted that Robin was contemporary with Richard the Lionheart and “Bad” King John. Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe seems to be responsible. But in fact Robin Hood’s dates have been given as early as mid-twelfth century and as late as fourteenth century; and, indeed, the mere presence of a friar in Robin’s band ought to mark him as later than Richard the Lionheart’s era, even though Scott was guilty of the same anachronism. By carefully omitting to name the king, I attempted to lend my setting an apolitical vagueness.
All the stanzas that I have included, except the last four rhymed lines in Chapter 15, “Thus they quit them, blow for blow...” are paraphrases from authentic Robin Hood ballads.
The Kirkly Priory that has long claimed to be the site of Robin Hood’s death (“priory” being a house either of monks or of nuns ruled by a prior or prioress: a larger house would have either an abbot or an abbess with the prior/ess as second in command) lies very far from Nottingham. To get around this difficulty, I invented “Little Kirkly” and placed it more or less in a line between Nottingham and Derby, much closer to Nottingham. A map in Holt’s book shows a little piece of Sherwood looping around Nottingham to the Trent River. I hypothesize that Little Kirkly lay somewhere at the far end of that narrow branch of forest.
The late James Haff and I used to have an annual exchange at the International Wizard of Oz Convention. It would go something like this:
Jim. Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood is absolutely the best version ever written.
Phyllis. Well, maybe, but you can’t really expect a girl to like a version the best in which there’s nothing about Maid Marian except one quick reference, can you?
I would, however, like to add this acknowledgement to Howard Pyle and Jim Haff’s assessment: that Pyle’s was the version which first got me fascinated with the figure of the sheriff’s wife.
As the old “Robin Hood” TV series starring Richard Greene as Robin was the thing that first got me fascinated with the potential of the sheriff of Nottingham. I can’t cite the actor’s name, but he struck my adolescent self as downright “sexy” (in the late 1950s-1960s sense of that word) in the role. Dame Alice de Flechedor as a female sheriff is my own original character, as are Denis FitzMaurice, Midge the miller’s daughter (the name Midge does appear in early Robin Hood ballads, but as a variant of the name Much), Sir Hugh of Doncaster, Thomas Courtland, the sheriff’s named ladies and other people, Nippet, Nick Shore, the tanner and his son, and Ragnild Greenleaf. I have made Will Stutely considerably worse than he is in most versions—indeed, it is hardly uncommon to see him and Will Scarlet rolled into a single character—but for the others, I have tried to paint them very much as they seem to me in the ballads and those retellings most closely derived from same.
ALTERNATE AFTERWORD (SPRING 2001)
The word processor I used in 1984 had neither DOS nor ASCII, nor any other text generally translatable; and its accompanying printer eventually developed terminal aphasia. Meanwhile, to everybody’s astonishment, all ready-to-submit printout copies made from this antiquated equipment went into deep hiding, so that when at length the chance finally came for publication, I had to retype and partially recreate the text from my earliest “draft typing” and—chapters 1 and 5 and the epilogue having vanished from that typing (probably abstracted for reading aloud at SF conventions), from the holograph ms. and from an abortive attempt at splicing a short-story together out of chapter 5 and the epilogue, omitting any reference to Denis and Midge. Since I am incapable of retyping my own work without touching it up, this novel now exists—somewhere—in two alternate polishings; but I doubt that any reader save a diligent scholar collating all available versions side by side would see very many of the differences.
While searching out my ms., I was amused to come across the draft of a long letter dated May 15, 1984, to the enthusiastic young woman who was my agent at that time. This letter contains my response to her report on Gallows. Where her report might be now, I have no idea; but what she said seems largely reconstructable from my reply, which may suggest why the book has been so long in finding a publisher, and which I reproduce here with only minor re
touching:
* * * *
I’m sure that in all good faith you think you’re asking for a few small changes with a minimum of disruption to what is already written. In fact, you are asking for a completely new and different book.
The most nearly feasible of your suggestions is the idea of a prologue. I don’t want to use one, however, because it would destroy the effect of the very best narrative hook I have ever yet been able to come up with.
The sheriff and some of her people are in fact introduced in Chapter 2, before any of the outlaws except Midge. It might be possible to juggle a longer explanatory flashback into this chapter. I hesitate to do this, for fear of interrupting the narrative flow for too long a time; that later chapter in which the sheriff spends her night thinking back over her previous encounters with Hood seems to me to be in much more nearly the right place for all this explanation. Nevertheless, I would be able to consider reshuffling the flashbacks, if that were all the trouble. It is not nearly all!
You ask, “Would it be possible that she be Vice-Sheriff before her marriage to him [Sir Roger]?” No. We have only one precedent for making her sheriff ... Granted, it is a thin precedent, but at least it is historical. I have found no precedent whatsoever for a woman as official vice-sheriff. As unofficial vice-sheriff, perhaps. Yesterday I found the case of one Richenda, wife of one of the fellows King Richard Lionheart left in charge of England when he went off on Crusade. Richenda’s husband left her in acting charge of one of his castles for a time. It appears that women could serve as constables of castles without raising eyebrows. But if Dame Alice were acting as a sort of unofficial vice-sheriff, she would have no grounds at all for turning into sheriff on her husband’s death. He would have had to be sheriff in his own right, and such an office would not pass on legally to his wife—if hereditary, it would go to his closest male heir. The only way I can see of having a lady sheriff even for purely literary purposes is to stick as closely as possible to the one historical precedent and have the office hereditary in her family, with herself the last of the family. Or did you mean “acting sheriff in her own right” before she married Sir Roger, and was the term “vice-sheriff” a slip? But then I would lose the identification of her with the Sheriff’s Wife of the ballads.
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 16
