Bluegrass Messengers

 Recordings & Info 147. Robin Hood's Golden Prize

[There are no known US or Canadian traditional versions of this ballad. There are three known recordings.]

CONTENTS:

 1) Alternative Titles
 2) Traditional Ballad Index 
 3) Child Collection
 4) Robin Hood's Golden Prize: Introduction  

ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
  1) Roud No. 3989: Robin Hood's Golden Prize (9 Listings)  

Alternative Titles

Robin Hood and the Preists 

Traditional Ballad Index: Robin Hood's Golden Prize [Child 147]

NAME: Robin Hood's Golden Prize [Child 147]
DESCRIPTION: Robin, disguised as a friar, asks alms of two priests in the wood. They claim that they were robbed and have nothing. Robin follows them and forces them to reveal the gold they are carrying. He makes them vow never to lie or cheat in the future
AUTHOR: unknown (Wing suggested Laurence Price, whose initials appear in one early copy)
EARLIEST_DATE: 1663 (garland); what seems to be this ballad was registered 1656 in the Stationer's Register and Wing dates one broadside version to 1650
KEYWORDS: Robinhood money clergy lie
FOUND_IN:
REFERENCES: (7 citations)
Child 147, "Robin Hood's Golden Prize" (1 text)
Bronson 147, comments only
Leach, pp. 420-422, "Robin Hood's Golden Prize" (1 text)
OBB 123, "Robin Hood's Golden Prize" (1 text)
BBI, RZN11, "I have heard talk of Robin Hood"
ADDITIONAL: Stephen Knight, editor (with a manuscript description by Hilton Kelliher), _Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript_ (British Library Additional MS 71158), D. S. Brewer, 1998, pp. 2-5, "Robin Hood and the Preists" (1 text, with few significant differences from the broadsides)
Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, editors, _Robin Hood and Other Oudlaw Tales_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000, pp. 556-562, "Robin Hood's Golden Prize" (1 text, newly edited from the sources)
Roud #3990
NOTES: For background on the Robin Hood legend, see the notes on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117].
Wing's attribution of this piece to Laurence Price seems to be widely accepted; Chappell mentioned it in his book on the Roxburghe Ballads, and Knight, p. 77,  says that it is "apparently written" by Price. Dobson/Taylor, p. 48, seem to have no doubts in the matter. This would explain the strong anti-clerical tone of the piece; Price was active in the middle part of the seventeenth century (Chappell dates his work "before the restoration"), when England was extremely anti-Catholic.
Price himself is such an obscure figure that (as of October 2010) he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. Nor have I found biographies of him in my literary references. The few poems I've manage to find (such as those in Chappell) did not impress me. - RBW
>>BIBLIOGRAPHY<<
Dobson/Taylor: R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, _Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw_, University of Pittsburg Press, 1976
Knight: Stephen Knight, editor (with a manuscript description by Hilton Kelliher), _Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript_ (British Library Additional MS 71158), D. S. Brewer, 1998
 

Child Ballad 147: Robin Hood’s Golden Prize

Child-- Artist-- Title-- Album-- Year-- Length-- Have
147 Ed McCurdy & Michael Kane Robin Hood's Golden Prize The Legend of Robin Hood 1973 5:44 Yes
147 Hermes Nye Robin Hood's Golden Prize Ballads Reliques - Early English Ballads from the Percy and Child Collections 1957 3:14 Yes
147 Kathleen Danson Read Robin Hood's Golden Prize Spoken Literature of Early English Ballads 1956 4:13 Yes 

This is a mid-seventeenth-century ballad found in broadsides and garlands, and recorded in the Stationers' Register in 1656. The story, Child notes (III, 208), is one found in folklore, the essence being that the outlaw plays a trick on someone - usually a priest - by pretending that a miracle has occurred and money has emerged in return for prayer, when he knew quite well the money was there all the time. This robbery by cunning fits well with the trickster element of Robin Hood and also supports anti-clerical feeling, so strong a strain in the tradition in this period.

The ballad has a commercial ring in its opening, with elaborate language (accoutered in his array, line 12; Come riding gallantly, line 18). The first stanzas also advertize the Robin Hood connection and the special quality of this tale (line 8). But for the most part this is a fast-moving tale of Robin Hood's justified robbery, without the ferocity of the early ballads; as the verse introduction states, this is a "jest" of Robin Hood in both its senses, adventure and trick.

The image of a friar, fully realized in Catholic form (lines 11-13), does seem an odd choice in the protestant seventeenth century for Robin's disguise in which to humiliate the equally Catholic monks. This suggests either a remarkably tolerant audience or that the early idea that friars are more acceptable to the outlaw spirit than other regular clergy has somehow survived the reformation, and indeed lasted to the present. However, the somewhat pompous tone of the commercial ballad asserts itself finally as Robin returns to the green wood: With great joy, mirth, and pride (line 98).