May 15th, 2009

A bit ago, I received a comment from somebody on my Robin Hood King of the Sea post. He said:

This is a version of an old ballad about Sir Andrew Barton, who was High Admiral of Scotland in the late 15th/early 16th century (effectively a pirate licensed by the Scottish Crown). The name was changed to Henry Martyn in the 16th century as there was another famous ballad about Andrew Bartin.

The Robin Hood version was later and, whilst it’s good fun, clearly it doesn’t make sense in the context of the legend.

Oho. So now we get to it! Pseudo-historicity, an ignored and unpointed-out problem. Haha. Fella, y’got t’be kidding. This place/person/time attachment-stuff which was massively undertaken in the 1800’s (and further back than that) is really, for anyone who takes the trouble to analyze the ballads, instead of simply categorizing them, pointless and extremely ridiculous.

What it all comes down to is this: th’ballads are not unique, autonomous, end-unto-themselves pieces of literature. There are usually 7 different versions of a story (myth!), with the people switched around, the songs more or less corrupted and/or switched around, sequences lost, sequences swapped, the rhymes in differing stages of disrepair and bad memory-syndrome, and the songs more or less merged with other songs! It’s absolutely terrible! A complete mess!

The particular song you’ve chosen to gripe on is actually one of the best ones to, um, do that on, because it’s indefensibly Robin Hood who’s doing the action, not some 16th century pirate/commander whose name has been accidentally inserted much later in the process. It’s in old dialect too, unfortunately for you (I rhyme) which means that its origins date at least back to the early 1400’s, before that kind of thing fell out of style and people actually forgot how to write ballads at all.

It doesn’t fit in with the Robin Hood legend, so it’s not

Whose Robin Hood legend, dude? Hollywood’s? The next rabid professor’s? Dobson and Taylor’s? Wikipedia’s? Or your own, carefully constructed/crafted from all of them?

Y’see, y’gotta understand that the legend is all coming from the ballads. And behind the ballads, there were ballads! And behind those ballads, there were ballads! And behind those ballads, there were songs! And there’s, basically, so much Robin Hood stuff out there—real stuff—authentic—that this blog hasn’t even scraped the surface yet.

I mean, you got to be kidding. There’s children’s plays, there’s rhymes—nursery rhymes, place name rhymes, sayings and proverbs, place-name stories, local legends, songs, and sooooooo much more in the ballads than you ever, ever, dreamed.

Monsieur: a word with you. Allow me to introduce Charles Nevill, Captain Ward, Robin Hood Goes Fishing, Hugh Spenser & comrades, and the Three Merry Mariners—Herman, Watkin, and Willkin. And a whole lot more.

Now allow me to explain: we must inspect the shared story of these differing ballads with differing names. If you look closely enough, they’re all the same myth. And it’s not just Andrew Bartin. It’s Charles Nevill and Howard and Herman and Hugh and Robin Hood. As in Robin Hood Goes Fishing and Robin Hood King of the Sea, which has the best lyrics and dialect of all.

Charles Nevill (its story starts out pretty similar to the Robin Hood ballad of Hobbie Noble):

They had not sailed upon the sea
Not one day and month-es three,
But they were {a}ware of a noble ship,
That five tops bare all so high.

Recognize this verse from Robin Hood King of the Sea?

Follow up:

Second example—The King says to Hugh: (synonym for Robin Hood, owing to the similarity of Hobbie to Hughie in the Scotch ballads)

For you sunk my ships, slew my men,
and thus did ye;
And the last time peace was broken,
it was ne’er along of me.

Third example, from Captain Ward:

‘I never wrongd an English ship,
But Turk and King of Spain,
For and the jovial Dutch-man
As I met on the main.

‘Go tell the King of England,
Go tell him thus from me,
If he reign king of all the land,
I will reign king at sea.’

So, on this evidence, I stick to my point. I say, unequivocally, that there is a common plot, common sequences, shared between these ballads, that the Robin Hood variant has the best, clearest, most original wording, and that the other variants were written by hacks. I say there is a tradition of Robin Hood being on the sea. And if only King of the Sea and Robin Hood Goes Fishing indicated a sea-legend—I’d say that were enough. But noooooo it’s a whole network of co-relating sea-tales. End of Argument.

Enter the world of ballads,

Adele: )