Various - Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850

In the Vision of Piers Ploughman are two remarkable passages in which mention is made of "Roberd the robber," and of "Roberdes knaves."

In a note on the second passage, Mr. Wright quotes a statute of Edw. III., in which certain malefactors are classed together "qui sont appellez Roberdesmen , Wastours, et Dragelatche:" and on the first he quotes two curious instances in which the name is applied in a similar manner,—one from a Latin song of the reign of Henry III.:

It seems not impossible that we have in these passages a trace of some forgotten mythical personage. "Whitaker," says Mr. Wright, "supposes, without any reason, the 'Roberde's knaves' to be 'Robin Hood's men.'" (Vol. ii. p. 506.) It is singular enough, however, that as early as the time of Henry III. we find the term 'consors Roberto' applied generally, as designating any common thief or robber; and without asserting that there is any direct allusion to "Robin Hood's men" in the expression "Roberdes knaves," one is tempted to ask whence the hero of Sherwood got his own name?

Grimm ( Deutsche Mythol. , p. 472.) has suggested that Robin Hood may be connected with an equally famous namesake, Robin Goodfellow; and that he may have been so called from the hood or hoodikin, which is a well-known characteristic of the mischievous elves. I believe, however, it is now generally admitted that "Robin Hood" is a corruption of "Robin o' th' Wood" equivalent to "silvaticus" or "wildman"—a term which, as we learn from Ordericus, was generally given to those Saxons who fled to the woods and morasses, and long held them against their Norman enemies.

It is not impossible that "Robin o' the Wood" may have been a general name for any such outlaws as these and that Robin Hood, as well as "Roberd the Robbere" may stand for some earlier and forgotten hero of Saxon tradition. It may be remarked that "Robin" is the Norman diminutive of "Robert", and that the latter is the name by which we should have expected to find the doings of a Saxon hero commemorated. It is true that Norman and Saxon soon came to have their feelings and traditions in common; but it is not the less curious to find the old Saxon name still traditionally applied by the people, as it seems to have been from the Vision of Piers Ploughman .

Whether Robin Goodfellow and his German brother "Knecht Ruprecht" are at all connected with Robin Hood, seems very doubtful. The plants which, both in England and in Germany, are thus named, appear to belong to the elf rather than to the outlaw. The wild geranium, called "Herb Robert" in Gerarde's time, is known in Germany as "Ruprecht's Kraut". "Poor Robin", "Ragged Robin", and "Robin in the Hose", probably all commemorate the same "merry wanderer of the night."

The late Mr. Baron Field, in his Conjectures on some Obscure and Corrupt Passages of Shakspeare , published in the "Shakspeare Society's Papers," vol. ii. p. 47., has the following, note on The Merry Wives of Windsor , Act ii. Sc. 2.:—

"' Falstaff. I myself sometimes having the fear of heaven on the left hand, and hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch; and yet you, you rogue, will esconce your rags , your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases and your bold-beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour.'

"Pistol, to whom this was addressed, was an ensign, and therefore rags can hardly bear the ordinary interpretation. A rag is a beggarly fellow, but that will make little better sense here. Associated as the phrase is, I think it must mean rages , and I find the word used for ragings in the compound bard-rags , border-ragings or incursions, in Spenser's Fairy Queen , ii. x. 63., and Colin Clout , v. 315."

Having on one occasion found that a petty larceny committed on the received text of the poet, by taking away a superfluous b , made all clear, perhaps I may be allowed to restore the abstracted letter, which had only been misplaced and read brags , with, I trust, the like success? Be it remembered that Pistol, a braggadocio, is made up of brags and slang; and for that reason I would also read, with Hanmer, bull-baiting , instead of the unmeaning " bold-beating oaths."

I well know with what extreme caution conjectural emendation is to be exercised; but I cannot consent to carry it to the excess, or to preserve a vicious reading, merely because it is warranted by the old copies .

Regretting, as I do, that Mr. Collier's, as well as Mr. Knight's, edition of the poet, should both be disfigured by this excess of caution, I venture to subjoin a cento from George Withers, which has been inscribed in the blank leaf of one of them.

October.

Chaucer's Damascene. —Warton, in his account of the physicians who formed the Library of the Doctor of Physic, says of John Damascene that he was "Secretary to one of the caliphs, wrote in various sciences before the Arabians had entered Europe, and had seen the Grecian philosophers." ( History of English Poetry , Price's ed., ii. 204.) Mr. Saunders, in his book entitled Cabinet Pictures of English Life , "Chaucer", after repeating the very words of this meagre account, adds, "He was, however, more famous for his religious than his medical writings; and obtained for his eloquence the name of the Golden-flowing" (p 183.) Now Mr. Saunders certainly, whatever Warton did, has confounded Damascenus, the physician, with Johannes Damascenus Chrysorrhoas, "the last of the Greek Fathers," (Gibbon, iv. 472.) a voluminous writer on ecclesiastical subjects, but no physician, and therefore not at all likely to be found among the books of Chaucer's Doctour,

"Whose studie was but litel on the Bible."

Chaucer's Damascene is the author of Aphorismorum Liber , and of Medicinæ Therapeuticæ , libri vii. Some suppose him to have lived in the ninth, others in the eleventh century, A.D.; and this is about all that is known about him. (See Biographie Universelle , s.v.)