Tag: Robert Southey

Robert Southey’s “Wedding of Robin Hood and Maid Marian”

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By Stephen Basdeo

Dr Mark Truesdale and I are currently transcribing Robert Southey’s ‘Harold; or, The Castle of Morford’ (Bodleian MS Eng. Misc. e. 21), which was originally written in the summer of 1791.

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Robin Hood and Maid Marian, as printed in Life and Ballads of Robin Hood and Robin Hood’s Garland (Halifax: Milner and Sowerby, 1859)

Although in the marketing for our edition we have designated it as a novel, Southey’s text should be read more as a romance, a curious blend of the Gothic (which predominates whenever the outlaws leave the safety of Sherwood) and the pastoral, for in Sherwood an outlaw’s life is idyllic and divorced from the cares of the outside world.

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Depiction of Robin Hood, Little John, Will Scarlet, and Allen-a-Dale, as printed in Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood (1795). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, life in Sherwood was always pictured as a pastoral idyll. 

In Southey’s text, the usual stock characters from Robin Hood tales can be found: Little John, Will Scarlet, Maid Marian, the Bishop of Hereford; there are also several new characters, many of whom are taken from early modern plays such as Ben Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd (1641).

In keeping with previous portrayals of the outlaw legend, Robin Hood and Maid Marian are in love. Yet they are star-crossed lovers: Marian is the daughter of the wicked Baron Fitzosborne—the man who murdered the good Harold’s father—and the Baron, the main villain of the tale, naturally objects to his daughter’s marrying an outlaw.

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Another ‘romantic’ portrayal of Robin Hood from Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood (1795)

With such an impediment to their match, Robin kidnaps Marian when a jousting tournament is held at the Baron’s castle. The pair of them escape to Sherwood and immediately marry each other, presumably by Friar Tuck, although the marriage scene is not recorded in the novel and we jump to the post-nuptial feast scene.

After feasting on venison and ale—Southey has clearly done his Robin Hood homework—Robin asks for music to be played. What follows is the first of many instances throughout the novel where the young, barely 16-year-old Southey, exercises his budding poetical talents. In praise of the union between Robin and Marian, the Sherwood minstrel sings the following ballad:

Behold yon elm high towering lift his head

How brightly his foliage and how cool his shade

His branches wide and towering how they spread

And cast a grateful shadow o’er the glade.

Yet though he lift his head luxuriant high

And proudly seems to threat the neighbouring sky

Useless he flourishes there barren stands

Till doom’d to perish by the woodman’s hand.

Yet should some tender joy-inspiring wine

From some robuster tree that seeks support

Round his base trunk her circling arms entwine

The elm with pendant clusters black we see

The baron once now rich with choicest

Useless and barren were the elm alone

The vine unaided barren too had grown

Mutual assistance each to the other goes

And each by mutual kindness friended lives

Emblem expressive this of human life

The elm the husband and the vine the wife

How blest indeed the faces who truly know

The never ending bliss of wedded love.

Boudeville ended and received the applause of the whole company. Come Aeglamour, said Little John, try your skill and [illegible] happiness of the life we lead here. Were you once to experience the pleasures we enjoy, turning to Richard, you would love to die in the forest of merry Sherwood what are all the pleasures of a court to the pure entertainment of a country life! Richard was preparing to answer him when Aeglamour arose and began

Rises now with orient ray

Bright the gold on the orb of day

Aw’d by his effulgent light

Swiftly they the shades of night

On the leaves with silver hue

Glittering shines the pearly dew.

Scar’d by the hunters now the deer awakes

And swiftly scuds along through o’er bushes and o’er brakes.

What pleasures can the palace yield

Equal to these woodlands give

How blissfully the outlaws live.

Who roams at will [o’er] field and hill

How happily dwell we in the wood

And o’er the flowery field

How happy live we in the wood.

Beneath the sway of Robin Hood.

The deer with spreading antlers crowned

Stalks stately o’er the bower.

The bowman fits his dart

And fixes the sharp point within the victim’s heart

He falls upon the ground

We hail the prize with choral strain

Feast on his flesh and Nottingham brown ale

List to the minstrels song and merry outlaws tale

What pleasures can the palace yield?

 

Now we with sober mien comes

And darkness hides the sky

The labour of the day is done

And home the outlaws hie.

 

The cheerful dance and minstrels sing

The pleasures of the time prolong

We beat the ground with skilful [illegible]

With skill we separate with skill we meet

The wholesome beverage goes around

At last by calm repose the happy day is crown’d

What pleasures can the palace yield?

Low shouts of applause proclaimed the universal approbation. This is the life, said Robin Hood turning to Marian, this is the life we lead. You have exchanged pomp and pageantry for the wild uncultivated pleasures of simple nature. But they are pleasures which art can never equal. I have exchanged a life of trouble and of care replied Marian sweetly smiling for one of happiness of liberty of love. She looked tenderly upon her husband and blush’d. Robin kiss’d her to hide it. In the meantime Richard enquired of Little John who sat next to him the manner in which Marian had been so successfully carried off.[i]

Mark and I are, to put it mildly, very excited at the prospect of seeing Southey’s unpublished novel finally in book form. For now, let’s hope that this ‘sneak preview’ of it has whetted your appetites.

In the meantime, see some of my work on other eighteenth century portrayals of Robin Hood:

“If they must have a British Worthy, they would have Robin Hood”: Joseph Addison’s remarks on Robin Hood.

John Winstanley’s Robin Hood poems from 1742.

Portrayals of Robin Hood in eighteenth-century true crime literature.

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From Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood (1795)

[i] Robert Southey, ‘Harold; or, The Castle of Morford’ (1791). Bodleian MS Eng. Misc. e. 21, ff. 11r–13r.

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Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Tale of Vagrancy and Imprisonment, by Robert Southey (1774-1843)

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One of the writers that I have encountered frequently in my research upon both Robin Hood and Wat Tyler is the Romantic author and Poet Laureate, Robert Southey (1774–1843).[i] Southey’s contribution to popular culture has, in my opinion, been very understated: he authored the first Robin Hood novel;[ii] the publication of his Wat Tyler (1817) by several radical printers is one of the most enduring portrayals of the rebel leader;[iii] in his poem Thalaba (1801) we see the first vampire to appear in English literature;[iv] and he was the guy who was the first to use the word ‘zombie’ in the English language (although not in the context that we would use it today).[v] He is also the creator of the popular children’s story of Goldilocks and the three bears, which was first published in The Doctor (1837).[vi] However, Southey’s original tale is a little different to the one which you see in children’s books today.[vii]

delphi-complete-poetical-works-of-robert-southey-illustrated-robert-southey-google-books
Robert Southey (1774-1843)

The story is framed as one which ‘may content the minds of learned men and grave philosophers’.[viii] The story begins typical fairy tale fashion, and we are introduced to the three bears:

Once upon a time there were three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own in a wood. One of them was a Little, Small, Wee Bear; and one was a Middle-sized Bear, and the other was a Great, Huge Bear. They had each a pot for their porridge, a little pot for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a middle-sized pot for the Middle Bear; and a great pot for the Great, Huge Bear. And they had each a chair to sit in: a little chair for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a middle-sized chair for the Middle Bear; and a great chair for the Great, Huge Bear. And they had each a bed to sleep in: a little bed for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; and a middle-sized bed for the Middle Bear; and a great bed for the Great, Huge Bear.[ix]

So far, this introduction may be familiar: we are introduced to the bears and their lifestyle, and we are then told that the mother bear has made some porridge but before the family of bears eats it they decide to go for a walk.[x] It has to be remembered that breakfast during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was not eaten as early as it is today, and it could be taken at quite a late hour of the morning. We have evidence of this in contemporary novels: in Jane Austen’s Emma (1815), John Keightley and his boys go for a walk before breakfast; in Austen’s Persuasion (1817), Anne and Henrietta take a stroll along the beach before their morning meal, which, in this period, was usually eaten at either 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.[xi]

Casual Ward workshouse
Tramps and homeless families waiting outside a workhouse casual ward during the nineteenth century (c) Wikimedia Commons

The bears then leave their house unguarded and this provides a perfect opportunity for somebody, usually up to no good, to enter the house. We all imagine the protagonist of the tale, Goldilocks (although she is not called by this name in Southey’s version), to be an innocent young girl. But in Southey’s version we are told that

She could not have been a good, honest, old woman; for, first, she looked in at the window, and then she peeped in at the keyhole, and, seeing nobody in the house, she lifted the latch […in fact] she was an impudent, bad old woman, and set about helping herself.[xii]

You may wonder what exactly an old homeless woman was doing in the middle of the forest on her own during the nineteenth century. England in this period certainly had a problem with homelessness, or vagrancy as governments of the day termed it. These people were destitute and wandered about from place to place seeking alms, and even sometimes engaging in petty crime just to survive. Of course, nineteenth-century governments did not view it as their responsibility to help anybody. The only measure they took to getting these people off the streets was to expand the workhouse system, which took place a few years earlier with the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834). Tramps and vagrants, if they needed to, could apply for admission to a workhouse casual ward where they would receive a very uncomfortable bed for the night, as well as a small meal, in return for a day’s work. However, one would only go to one of these institutions if they were desperate because they were intended to be harsh and foreboding institutions.[xiii] It was not unusual for many vagrants to take refuge in the forest. After all, it could be easy to go poaching in rural forest areas and sustain yourself relatively well, in contrast to subsisting on the harsh fare provided by the workhouse casual ward.[xiv] Thus, as Paul Lawrence notes, ‘vagrancy is a crime or social problem which blurs notions of an urban/rural divide – quite simply, vagrants continually cross from rural to urban areas and back again’.[xv]

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Illustrations from the 1839 adaptation of Southeys Tale.

After the woman enters the bears’ house, the story looks a little bit more familiar to us. She tastes the porridge, but finds two of the bears’ meals not to her liking. Baby bear’s porridge, however, is just right. She then decides to enter the lounge and try the chairs. As we all know, it is only baby bear’s chair which is comfortable. Growing tired, she enters the bears’ bedroom, and it is only baby bear’s bed which is the comfiest. She then settles down for a nap.

Meantime, the three bears return and see that someone has been helping themselves to their porridge. They inspect the house and eventually find the woman sleeping in baby bear’s bed:

The little old woman had heard in her sleep the great, rough, gruff voice of the Great, Huge Bear, but she was so fast asleep that it was no more to her than the moaning of wind or the rumbling of thunder. And she had heard the middle voice of the Middle Bear, but it was only as if she had heard someone speaking in a dream. But when she heard the little, small, wee voice of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, it was so sharp and so shrill that it awakened her at once. Up she started, and when she saw the three bears on one side of the bed she tumbled herself.[xvi]

Startled, the woman jumps out of baby bear’s bed and then jumps out of the open window to get away from the bears. As she is running away, a constable finds her, arrests her, and she is sent to the House of Correction. While we noted above that the government made some provisions for tramps and wanderers in requiring workhouses to have casual wards, vagrancy was still a crime. If the police thought that a person with no abode was up to no good, they could arrest them, especially if they had been caught begging. In the words of the Act,

Every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence and not giving a good account of himself or herself […] it shall be lawful for any justice of the peace to commit such offender (being thereof convicted before him by the confession of such offender, or by the evidence on oath of one or more credible witness or witnesses, to the house of correction, for any time not exceeding three calendar months.[xvii]

(This act has not yet been repealed: in 2014, two homeless men were arrested under this act for stealing food from a dumpster outside an Iceland supermarket store).[xviii] Alas, poor Goldilocks! – a starving, homeless pauper who just wanted a meal and somewhere to sleep, but who ended up in the House of Correction!

[i] Michael Gamer, ‘1813: The Year of the Laureate’, in The Regency Revisited, ed. by Tim Fulford & Michael E. Sinatra (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 93-104 (p. 107): The position of Poet Laureate was originally offered to Walter Scott (1771–1832). He refused this, however, because he feared that taking the position would tie him into artistic servitude to the Prince Regent who, if he was honest, he did not like very much.

[ii] Robert Southey, ‘Harold; or, The Castle of Morford’, Bodleian MS. Eng. misc. e. 21 (Summary Catalogue 31777).

[iii] Robert Southey, Wat Tyler: A Dramatic Poem (London: W. Hone, 1817).

[iv] Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, 2 Vols. (London: Longman, 1801), 2: 102.

[v] Robert Southey, History of Brazil, 3 Vols. (London: Longman, 1810–19), 3: 24-28, 787.

[vi] Iona Opie & Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales (Oxford University Press, 1974; repr. 1992), p. 199: A similar story to Southey’s was written slightly earlier by Eleanor Mure.

[vii] Southey is also noteworthy as a historian of South America. For further information see the following article: Rebecca Nesvet, ‘Robert Southey, Historian of El Dorado’, Keats-Shelley Journal, 61 (2012), 116-121.

[viii] Robert Southey, ‘The Story of the Three Bears’, in The Doctor, by the Late Robert Southey, ed. by J. Wood Warter, rev. ed. (London: Longman, 1848), pp. 327-29.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] See also Jane Newham, ‘Bear facts and fiction in 19th and 20th century children’s books’, New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 3: 1 (1997), 65-74.

[xi] Eileen Sutherland, ‘Dining at the Great House: Food and Drink in the Time of Jane Austen’, Persuasions: A Publication of the Jane Austen Society of North America, 12 (1990), 88-98, online edn. http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number12/sutherland2.htm Accessed 21 December 2017.

[xii] Southey, ‘The Story of the Three Bears’, p. 327.

[xiii] Peter Higginbotham, ‘Tramps and Vagrants’, in The Workhouse: The Story of an Institution, ed. by Peter Higginbotham, online edn. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/vagrants/index.shtml Accessed 21 December 2017.

[xiv] Harvey Osbourne & Michael Winstanley, ‘Rural and Urban Poaching in Victorian England’, Rural History, 17: 2 (2006), 187-212.

[xv] Paul Lawrence, ‘The Police and Vagrants in France and England during the Nineteenth Century’, in Polizia, ordine pubblico e crimine tra città e campagna: un confronto comparative. Stato, esercito controllo del territorio, ed. by Livio Antonielli (Manelli: Rubbettino, 2011), pp. 49-60 (p. 49).

[xvi] Southey, ‘The Story of the Three Bears’, p. 329.

[xvii] An Act for the Punishment of Idle and Disorderly Persons, Rogues and Vagabonds, 5 Geo. IV c. 83 (London: HMSO, 1824), online edn. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo4/5/83/section/4 [Accessed 21 December 2017].

[xviii] BBC News, 29 January 2014, online edn. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25950761 Accessed 21 December 2017.

The First Robin Hood Novel: Robert Southey’s “Harold, or, The Castle of Morford” (1791)

SB4 Comments

(This is an updated version of an earlier post I made)

Scholars generally point to 1819 as the year that the first Robin Hood novels appeared, these being the anonymous Robin Hood: A Tale of the Olden Time and Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.[i] However, an attempt was made during the late eighteenth century, well before the aforementioned works, by Robert Southey, to give Robin Hood his ‘big break’ in that most famous of literary genres. Held in the archives of the Weston Library, Oxford is an unpublished manuscript by Robert Southey for a Robin Hood novel entitled ‘Harold; or, the Castle of Morford’ (1791).[ii]

delphi-complete-poetical-works-of-robert-southey-illustrated-robert-southey-google-books
Robert Southey

Southey (1774-1843) was born in Bristol to a middle-class family of linen drapers. At an early age his mother sent him to live with his aunt, and it is under the guidance of his aunt that his love of literature was encouraged. He was a pioneering medievalist, for in addition to ‘Harold’ he authored Wat Tyler (1794), Joan of Arc (1796), and also edited a version of the Icelandic Edda in 1797 and a version of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in 1817 (to Southey is credited the first English prose account of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, as well as the first use in English of the word ‘zombie’, although the word was used in a different context than it is understood today).[iii]

There is one main issue with the manuscript: it was bound in a codex at some point during the nineteenth century; while such a practice has the obvious advantages of keeping all of the pages together, it has also meant that many of the words on the margins of the leaves have been obscured. While close attention to the context can offer clues as to the meaning, ultimately it means that oftentimes, when these words are not clear, you are guessing what Southey originally wrote. Furthermore, binding all of the leaves so tightly together has meant that, in some cases, the ink from one page has rubbed off on to the opposite page, which can in some cases render the job of transcription even more difficult. The saving grace, as far as practical issues are concerned, is that the young Southey’s handwriting is neat and legible.

The novel was clearly envisaged as a gothic tale. It opens with the short and perhaps rather dramatic sentence: ‘it was night’, which anticipates Edward Bulwer Lytton’s ‘it was a dark and stormy night’ from Paul Clifford (1830).[iv] Further gothic motifs include aristocratic villains, family secrets, betrayals, murder, as well as ghostly visions in ruined castles, as related in the following scene:

Harold […] arrived at the borders of the forest about midnight. By the pale light he discovered a castle which at first struck him as his paternal seat he advanced towards it with a hasty step. It was [illegible] and he concluded that it was not the Castle of Alnwick. He roam’d for some time amongst the ruined courts in an agony of grief the stair case was entire he determined to explore the building and if possible acquire some spot where he might rest in safety. He ascended and passed along an extensive gallery with several apartments on either side. He entered one of the smaller ones and threw himself upon the ground determined there to pass the night. He had not remained long in this situation the dismal toll of a bell from the turret roused him […] The firm footsteps of a person in the gallery struck his ear he rush’d into it and beheld at the northern end a figure in armour stalking along it turned and look’d at him by the moon beams which shone thro the broken pane he perceived the armour was bloody. He exclaimed My Father! The spectre turned into a room at the farther end of the gallery. Harold followed him but he saw no more. The appearance overcame him entirely.[v]

As with most nineteenth-century Robin Hood novels, Robin Hood is not the main protagonist but is a man who comes to the aid of Harold and King Richard I, the latter who is in disguise as a knight-errant, in a similar manner to his role in Scott’s Ivanhoe. In fact, there are some passing resemblances to Ivanhoe which definitely are deserving of further consideration: Harold is a returning crusader, just like Scott’s eponymous title character; some of the characters also bear some curiously Saxon names which are comparable to those found in Ivanhoe: there is one character named Athelwold, similar to Athelstane in Ivanhoe (Southey actually misspells Athelwold as Athelstane on one occasion).[vi] A character named Ulfrida also appears in Southey’s novel, a name similar to the crazed Ulrica in Scott’s tale. The fact that Southey and Scott were friends may suggest that Scott knew about this MS. and borrowed ideas from his unpublished novel.

There is also a clear attempt by Southey to draw upon the early modern Robin Hood tradition. A character named Aeglamour is a member of Robin Hood’s band, which suggests that Southey was aware of Ben Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd (1641), in which Aeglamour is the eponymous sad shepherd who Robin assists with his troubles (Jonson’s work had been edited for a scholarly audience a few years prior to Southey’s authoring of Harold).[vii] The Bishop of Hereford makes an appearance as one of the villains who has deprived Harold’s brother, Tancred, of his estate.

The character of Robin Hood has all the usual traits, being described as,

the famous outlaw Robin Hood, a man worthy of a better fate; the spoils which he takes from the wealthy he distributes among the poor; his birth is unknown, and it is but a very few years since he chose this barbarous way of life.[viii]

Refreshingly, there is not attempt to ‘gentrify’ Robin Hood by making him a member of the upper classes. Instead, in keeping with earlier traditions, he is depicted as a yeoman forester. We first meet him when Richard and Tancred wander into the forest, and they find that Robin Hood has kidnapped Marian, the daughter of the villainous Baron of Morcar, to marry her:

Welcome my good friends exclaimed the outlaw and you too strangers my assistants in this happy enterprise welcome. Let all be happy. Mirth and pleasure reign. My trusty friends pay homage to the queen of the forest the wife of Robin Hood. For as such I may now present her to you. What monarch can be more blest than me?[ix]

Southey’s Robin Hood is also something of a political reformer, and resolves to help Richard to rid his land of corrupt politicians. The young Southey was a firm believer in the ideals of the French Revolution, and no doubt his portrayal of Robin Hood and Richard as a reformist king stems from his enthusiasm for the rights of man.

Southey also inserts several poems into his narrative which are written in the style of ballads. This is the song celebrating the outlaws’ life:

Rises now with orient ray

Bright the gold on the orb of day

Aw’d by his effulgent light

Swiftly they the shades of night

On the leaves with silver hue

Glittering shines the pearly dew.

Scar’d by the hunters now the deer awakes

And swiftly scuds along through o’er bushes and o’er brakes.

What pleasures can the palace yield

Equal to these woodlands give

How blissfully the outlaws live.

Who roams at will [illegible…illegible…] and field hill

How happily dwell we in the wood

And o’er the flowery field

How happy live we in the wood.

Beneath the sway of Robin Hood.

The deer with spreading antlers crowned

Stalks stately o’er the [illegible]

The bowman fits his dart

And fixes the sharp point within the victim’s heart

He falls upon the ground

We hail the prize with choral strain

Feast on his flesh and Nottingham brown ale

List to the minstrels song and merry outlaws tale

What pleasures can the palace yield?

Now we with sober mien comes

And darkness hides the sky

The labour of the day is done

And home the outlaws hie.[x]

All of Southey’s unpublished works remain in copyright until 2039, so there will be no edited version of the text before then. It is part of his juvenilia, and it is not his best work, therefore I doubt Robin Hood studies will suffer too much from its absence. Copyright issues prevent me from making my transcriptions of the manuscript publicly available, however I will be happy to answer any queries about it.

[i] See Stephen Knight, Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form and Reception in the Outlaw Myth (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).

[ii] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 is the original manuscript. There is also a duplicate of the novel, copied out, apparently, at some point during the nineteenth century: Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 114.

[iii] “Zombie”, in The Oxford English Dictionary Online

[iv] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 3v.

[v] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 15v.

[vi] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 21r.

[vii] Francis Waldron (ed.), The Sad Shepherd; or, A Tale of Robin Hood (London: J. Nicholls, 1783).

[viii] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 3r.

[ix] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 10r.

[x] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 121 12v-12r.

The First Robin Hood Novel: Robert Southey’s “Harold, or the Castle of Morford” (1791)

SB5 Comments

The first Robin Hood novel to be published was the anonymous Robin Hood: A Tale of the Olden Time (1819). A few months after this Walter Scott published his enormously influential Ivanhoe (1819). Yet these were not the first Robin Hood stories written: in the vaults of the Bodleian Library, Oxford there exists in manuscript form the first Robin Hood novel: Robert Southey’s Harold, or, the Castle of Morford (1791).[1]

Southey (1774-1843) was born in Bristol to a middle-class family of linen drapers. At an early age his mother sent him to live with his aunt, and it is under the guidance of his aunt that his love of literature was encouraged. When the French Revolution broke out, Southey, like many contemporary Romantic-era poets, found himself in agreement with the principles of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791).[2] Unfortunately, Southey abandoned his revolutionary principles in later life, and then became an ardent opponent of parliamentary reform in the early nineteenth century when he was appointed as Poet Laureate to George IV.

Southey wrote the novel in three weeks, from 13 July to 6 August 1791.[3] The young Robert Southey was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. And the novel, like his other work, Wat Tyler: A Dramatic Poem (1794), displays all of the young Southey’s revolutionary fervour. The two main protagonists of the novel are Robin Hood and King Richard II.

In the novel Richard is a reforming King committed to cleaning up Britain’s corrupt political establishment. Richard is also an atheist, evident when he exclaims:

I wish that Villain Constantine was now living. I would proclaim a Crusade against him!’[4]

It is doubtful that Richard I would ever have uttered such sentiments. But the young Southey, as Raimond highlights, never cared a fig for historical authenticity.[5]

There are clearly Gothic influences at play in the novel. Southey admitted that he was inspired to write it after having read Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).[6] Spenser’s influence can be seen in one of the songs that Robin sings in the novel:

A lovely damsel wanton played

Within the crystal tide

And oft beneath the glassy wave

Her dainty limbs would hide.

And oft above the waves appear’d

Her gently heaving breast.

That charm alone exposed to view

For waves obscured the rest.

‘Come Lancelot’ the nymph exclaim’d

‘Tis now the time for love

For silent is the midnight hour

And pleasant is the grove.’

With that she leapt from out the waves

Exposing all her charms

‘Come Lancelot’ again she cried

‘Come riot in my arms’.[7]

Oddly, while the manuscript has been known to Robert Southey scholars almost since time immemorial, it is not referenced in any Robin Hood scholars’ works (and believe me, I have combed through their indexes and bibliographies). Even Stephen Knight, whose work upon the later Robin Hood tradition is thorough, does not seem to have been aware of the novel, although he Knight is aware of Southey’s Robin Hood poem, Robin Hood: A Fragment (1847).

Yet the novel is significant for two reasons: first, and most obviously, it constitutes the first Robin Hood novel. Moreover, it is the first radical appropriation of Robin Hood, pre-dating Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads (1795).

The bad news at the moment is that the MS. is locked away in the Bodleian. The good news is that I have been in touch with the Director of Research at my university, Dr. Graham Roberts, and he is keen to allocate me funding in order to go and transcribe the novel and have it published.

Further updates will follow.

References

[1] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 114

[2] Geoffrey Carnall, ‘Southey, Robert (1774–1843)’ in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Online Edn. Jan 2011) [Internet <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26056> Accessed 18 Nov 2016]

[3] Jean Raimond, ‘Southey’s Early Writings and the Revolution’ The Yearbook of English Studies Vol. 19 (1989), pp.181-96 (p.183).

[4] Bodleian MS. Eng. Misc. e. 114, f. 180 cited in Raimond, ‘Southey’s Early Writings and the Revolution’, p.183.

[5] Raimond, ‘Southey’s Early Writings and the Revolution’, p.183.

[6] W. A. Speck, Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p.183.

[7] Speck, Robert Southey, p.184.