Fordun the Scotish historian, who wrote in the fourteenth century, and who speaks of the celebration of the story of these persons in the theatrical performances of his time, and of the minstrels songs relating to them, which he says the common people preferred to all other romances".

III. FRIAR TUCK. There is no very ancient mention of this person, whose history is very uncertain. Drayton has thus recorded him, among other companions of Robin Hood;

“Of Tuck the merry friar which many a sermon made

In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade*.” He is known to have formed one of the characters in the May games during the reign of Henry the Eighth, and had been probably introduced into them at a much earlier period. From the occurrence of this name on other occasions, there is good reason for supposing that it was a sort of generic appellation for any friar, and that it originated from the dress of the order, which was tucked or folded at the waist by means of a cord or girdle. Thus Chaucer, in his prologue to the Canterbury tales, says of the Reve;

"Tucked he was, as is a frere aboute :"

Fordun's Scotichronicor, 1759, folio, tom, ii. p. 101.
Polyollion, song xxvi.

And he describes one of the friars in the Somp nour's tale:

"With scrippe and tipped staff, ytucked hie."

This friar maintained his situation in the morris under the reign of Elizabeth, being thus mentioned in Warner's Albion's England:

"Tho Robin Hood, liell John, frier Tucke and Marian deftly play :"

but is not heard of afterwards. In Ben Jonson's Masque of gipsies, the clown takes notice of his

omission in the dance".

IV. MAID MARIAN. None of the materials that constitute the more authentic history of Robin Hood, prove the existence of such a character in the shape of his mistress. There is a pretty French pastoral drama of the eleventh or twelfth century, entitled Le jeu du berger et de la bergere, in which the principal characters are Robin and Marion, a shepherd and shepherdess. Mr. Warton thought that our English Marian might be illustrated from this composition; but Mr. Ritson is unwilling to assent to this opinion, on the ground that the French Robin and Marion "are not the

y Ben Jonson's Works, 1756, vol. vi. p. 93.

Robin and Marian of Sherwood.". Yet Mr. Warton probably meant no more than that the name of Marian had been suggested from the above drama, which was a great favourite among the common people in France, and performed much about the season at which the May games were celebrated in England. The great intercourse between the countries might have been the means of importing this name amidst an infinite variety of other matters; and there is indeed no other mode of accounting for the introduction of a name which never occurs in the page of English history. We have seen that

z Marian, or as it is more frequently written Marion, is not formed, as some French writers have supposed, from Mary and Ann, but more probably from Mariamne the wife of Herod, whose name seems borrowed from that of Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron. Miriam is said to come from a Syrian word signifying mistress, or from marar, bitterness. The name of Mary, evidently contracted from Miriam or Mariamne, does not occur till the time of the daughter of Joachim and Anne, the mother of Christ, at which period we find other Maries in the New Testament. It is remarkable that Maria, from Marius, should not occur among the Roman names of women, in like manner as we have Julia, Cornelia, Fulvia, Proba, Valeria, &c., from Julius, Cornelius, Fulvius, Probus, and

the story of Robin Hood was, at a very early period, of a dramatic cast; and it was perfectly natural that a principal character should be transferred from one drama to another. It might be thought likewise that the English Robin deserved his Marian as well as the other. The circumstance of the French Marian being acted by a boy contributes to support the above opinion; the part of the English character having been personated, though not always, in like manner. Little, if any, stress can be laid on the authority of an old play cited by Mr. Steevens to prove that "Maid Marian was originally a name assumed by Matilda the daughter of Robert Lord Fitzwater, while Robin Hood remained in a state of outlawry." This is rather to be considered as a dramatic fiction, designed to explain a character the origin of which had been long forgotten.

Maid Marian not only officiated as the paramour of Robin Hood in the May games, but as the queen or lady of the May, who seems to have

Valerius. The facetious and eccentric Edmund Gayton, in the dedication to his Festivous notes on Don Quixote, speaks of Mayd Myriam. He perhaps imagined that the morris dance had been suggested by the prophetess and her dancing women with their timbrels.

» Steevens's Shaksp. viii. 530.

been introduced long before the games of Robin Hood. In the isle of Man they not only elected a queen of May, but likewise a queen of winter, Gatherings for the May lady, as anciently for Robin Hood, were lately kept up at Cambridge, but in a corrupted form, the real occasion of this ceremony being, in all probability, quite unknown to the gatherers. There can be no doubt that the queen of the May is the legitimate representative of the Goddess Flora in the Roman festival.

The introduction of Robin Hood into the celebration of May probably suggested the addition of a king or lord of the May. In the year 1306 Robert Bruce caused himself to be crowned at Scone, and a second time by the hands of his mistress, the adulterous wife of the earl of Bowhan, who changed his name to David. It is reported that he said to his own wife on this occasion, "Yesterday we were but earl and countess, to day we are king and queen;" to which she replied, "True, you are now a summer king, but you may not chance to be a winter one." Matthew of Westminster has recorded this fact,

b Waldron's History of the isle of Man, 12mo, p. 95, where he has described the mock battle between the queens.