Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times
"Now," said the Earl, when they were alone, "let us speak of more
important things;" but it being announced that supper was well-nigh
ready, the Earl of Ashby, who had an affection for the good things of
this life, proposed that any farther conversation should be put off
till after that meal. The other Earl, knowing that his placability
depended much upon the condition of his stomach, agreed to the
suggestion; and after the ceremony of washing hands had been performed,
the supper was served and passed over as such proceedings usually did
in those days, with huge feeding on the part of several present, and
much jesting on the part of the younger men. A good deal of wine was
also drank, notwithstanding a caution from the Earl of Monthermer to be
moderate. But moderation was little known at that time. Malvoisie was
added to Bordeaux, and the spiced wine, then called claret, succeeded
the Malvoisie; a cup of hippocras was handed round to sweeten the
claret, and the Earl of Ashby fell asleep at the very moment the
conference should have begun.
CHAPTER VI.
I cannot help grieving that amongst all the changes which have taken
place,--amongst all the worlds, if I may so call them, which have come
and gone in the lapse of time, the forest world should have altogether
departed, leaving scarcely greater or more numerous vestiges of its
existence than those that remain of the earth before the Flood. The
green and bowery glades of the old forest, their pleasant places of
sport and exercise, the haunts of the wild deer, the wolf, and the
boar, the fairy-like dingles and dells, the woodcraft that they
witnessed, the sciences, and the characters that were peculiar to
themselves, have now, alas! passed away from most of the countries of
Europe, and have left scarcely a glen where the wild stag can find
shelter, or where the contemplative man can pause under the shade of
old primeval trees, to reflect upon the past or speculate upon the
future. The antlered monarch of the wood is now reduced to a domestic
beast, in a walled park; and the man of thought, however much he may
love nature's unadorned face, however much he may feel himself cribbed
and confined amongst the works of human hands, must shut his prisoner
fancies within the bounds of his own solitary chamber, unless he is
fond to indulge them by the side of the grand but monotonous ocean. The
infinite variety of the forest is no longer his: it belongs to another
age, and to another class of beings.
In the times I write of, it was not so, and the greater part of every
country in Europe was covered with rich and ancient wood; but, perhaps,
no forest contained more to interest or to excite than that of merry
Sherwood--comprising within itself, as the reader knows, a vast extent
of very varied country, sweeping round villages, and even cities, and
containing, in its involutions, many a hamlet, the inhabitants of which
derived their sustenance from the produce of the forest ground.
The aspect of the wood itself was as different in different places as
it is possible to conceive. In some spots the trees were far apart,
with a wide expanse of open ground, covered by low brushwood, or the
shall shrub bearing the bilberry; in others, you came to a wide extent,
covered with nothing but high fern and old scrubbed hawthorn trees; but
throughout a great part of the forest the sun seldom if ever
penetrated, during the summer months, to the paths beneath, so thick
was the canopy of green leaves above, while those paths themselves were
generally so narrow that in many of them two men could not walk
abreast.
There were other and wider ways, indeed, through the wood, some of them
cart roads, for the accommodation of woodmen and carriers, some of them
highways from one neighbouring town to another: but the latter were not
very numerous or very much frequented--many a tale being told of
travellers lightened of their baggage, in passing through Sherwood;
and, to speak the truth, no one could very well say, at that time, who
and what were the dwellers in the forest, or their profession; so that
those who loved not strange company, kept to the more open country if
they could.
Nevertheless, it was a beautiful ride across almost any part of the
woodland, offering magnificent changes of scene at every step, and the
people of those times were not so incapable of enjoying it as has been
generally supposed; but still, with all the tales of outlaws and
robbers which were then afloat, it required a stout determination, or a
case of great necessity, to impel any of the citizens of the
neighbouring towns to make a trip across the forest in the spring or
autumn of the year. Those who did so, usually came back with some story
to tell, and some, indeed, brought home stripes upon their shoulders
and empty bags. The latter, however, were almost always of particular
classes. Rich monks and jovial friars occasionally fared ill; the petty
tyrants of the neighbouring shire ran a great risk, if they trusted
themselves far under the green leaf; the wealthy and ostentatious
merchant might sometimes return rather lighter than he went; but the
peasant, the honest franklin, the village curate, the young, and women
of all degrees, had generally very little to relate, except that they
had seen a forester here, or a forester there, who gave them a civil
word, and bade God speed them, or who aided them, in any case of need,
with skilful hands and a right good will.
Thus there was evidently a strong degree of favouritism shown in the
dealings of the habitual dwellers in the greenwood with the various
classes of travellers who passed through on business or on pleasure.
But, nevertheless, it was the few who complained, and the many who
lauded, so that the reputation of the merry men of Sherwood was high
amongst all the inferior orders of society at the time when this tale
begins.
So much was necessary to be said, to give the reader any idea of the
scene into the midst of which we must now plunge, leaving Barnsdale
behind us, and quitting Yorkshire for Nottingham.
It was about two o'clock, on the second of May, then, that a party of
horsemen reached a spot in the midst of Sherwood, where the road--after
having passed for nearly two miles through a dense part of the wood,
which the eye could not penetrate above fifteen or twenty yards on
either side--ran down a slight sandy descent, and entered upon a more
open scene, where the trees had been cleared away not many years
before, and where some two hundred acres of ground appeared covered
with scattered brushwood and bilberry bushes, sloping down the side of
a wide hill, at the bottom of which the thick wood began again,
extending in undulating lines for many a mile beneath the eye of the
traveller.
The number of the journeyers was five; and they pulled in the rein to
let their horses drink at a clear stream which crossed the road, and
bubbling onward, was soon lost amongst the bushes beyond. Four of them
were dressed as yeomen attached to some noble house; for although
liveries, according to the modern acceptation of the word, were then
unknown, and the term itself applied to quite a different thing, yet
the habit was already coming in, of fixing a particular badge or
cognizance upon all the followers or retainers of great noblemen, as
well as of kings, whereby they might know each other in any of the
frequent affrays which took place in those times. Sometimes it was
fixed upon the breast, sometimes upon the back, sometimes upon the arm,
where it appeared in the present instance. Each of the yeomen had a
sword and buckler, a dagger on the right side, and a bow and a sheaf of
arrows on the shoulders; and all were strong men and tall, with the
Anglo-Saxon blood shining out in the complexion.
The fourth personage was no other than Ralph Harland, the stout young
franklin, of whom we have already spoken. He, too, was well armed with
sword and buckler, though he bore no bow. Besides the usual dagger,
however, he wore, hanging by a green cord from his neck, a long,
crooked, sharp-pointed knife, called in those days an anelace, which
was, I believe, peculiar to the commons of England and Flanders, and
which was often fatally employed in the field of battle in stabbing the
heavy horses of the knights and men-at-arms.
The horses of this party were evidently tired with a long, hot ride,
and the horsemen stopped, as I have said, to let their beasts drink in
the stream before they proceeded onward. As they pulled up, a fat doe
started from the brushwood about thirty yards distant, and bounded away
towards the thicker parts of the forest, and at the same moment a loud,
clear, mellow voice, exclaimed--"So, ho, madam! nobody will hurt you in
the month of May! Give you good day, sirs!--whither are ye going?"
The eyes of all but young Harland had been following the deer, and his
had been bent, with a look of sad and stern abstraction, upon the
stream, but every one turned immediately as the words were uttered; and
there before them on the road, stood the speaker. How he came there,
however, no one could tell, for the moment before, the highway was
clear for a quarter of a mile, and there seemed no bush or tree in the
immediate neighbourhood sufficiently large to conceal a full grown man.
The personage who accosted them was certainly full-grown, and very well
grown, too. He was in height about five feet eleven, but not what could
be called large in the bone; at least, the proportion of the full and
swelling muscle that clothed his limbs made the bone seem small. His
foot, too, was less than might have been expected from his height; and
though his hand was strong and sinewy, the shape was good, and the
fingers were long. His breadth over the chest was very great; but he
was thin in the flank, and small in the waist; and when his arm hung
loosely by his side, the tip of his middle finger reached nearly to his
knee. His countenance was a very fine one; the forehead high and broad,
but with the brow somewhat prominent above the eyes, giving a keen and
eagle-like look to a face in every other respect frank and gentle. His
well rounded chin, covered with a short curling beard, of a light brown
hue, was rather prominent than otherwise, but all the features were
small and in good proportion; and the clear blue eye, with its
dark-black eyelashes, and the arching turn of the lip and mouth, gave a
merry expression to the whole, rather reckless, perhaps, but open and
free, and pleasant to the beholder.
In dress he was very much like the foresters whom we have before
described; he wore upon his head a little velvet cap, with a gold
button in the front, and a bunch of woodcock's feathers therein. He had
also an image, either in gold or silver gilt, of St. Hubert on
horseback, on the front of the cross-belt in which his sword was hung.
The close-fitting coat of Lincoln green, the tight hose of the same,
the boots of untanned leather, disfigured by no long points, the sheaf
of arrows, the bow, the sword, and bracer, were all there; and,
moreover, by his side hung a pouch of crimson cloth called the
gipciere, and, resting upon it, a hunting horn, tipped with silver. As
the fashion of those days went, his apparel was certainly not rich, but
still it was becoming, and had an air of distinction which would have
marked him out amongst men more splendidly habited than himself.
Such was the person who stood before the travellers when they looked
round, but taken by surprise, none of the party spoke in answer to his
question.
"What!" he said, again, with a smile, "as silent as if I had caught you
loosing your bow against the king's deer in the month of May? I beseech
you, fair gentlemen, tell me who you are that ride merry Sherwood at