Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race
followed seven sumpter-mules and a train of fifty-two men, so that the
clerics rode in almost royal state. "Seest thou yon monks?" said
Little John. "I will pledge my soul that they have brought our pay."
"But they are fifty-four, and we are but three," said Scarlet. "Unless
we bring them to dinner we dare not face our master," cried Little
John. "Look well to your bows, your strings and arrows, and have stout
hearts and steady hands. I will take the foremost monk, for life or
death."
The Capture of the Black Monk
The three outlaws stepped out into the road from the shelter of the
wood; they bent their bows and held their arrows on the string, and
Little John cried aloud: "Stay, churlish monk, or thou goest to thy
death, and it will be on thine own head! Evil on thee for keeping our
master fasting so long." "Who is your master?" asked the bewildered
monk; and Little John replied: "Robin Hood." The monk tossed his head.
"He is a foul thief," cried he, "and will come to a bad end. I have
heard no good of him all my days." So speaking, he tried to ride
forward and trample down the three yeomen; but Little John cried:
"Thou liest, churlish monk, and thou shalt rue the lie. He is a good
yeoman of this forest, and has bidden thee to dine with him this day";
and Much, drawing his bow, shot the monk to the heart, so that he fell
to the ground dead. The other black monk was taken, but all his
followers fled, except a little page, and a groom who tended the
sumpter-mules; and thus, with Little John's help and guidance, the
panic-stricken cleric and his train of baggage were brought to Robin
under the trysting tree.
The Outlaws' Feast
Robin Hood doffed his cap and greeted his guest with all courtesy, but
the monk would not reply, and Little John's account of their meeting
made it evident that he was a churlish and unwilling guest. However,
he was obliged to celebrate the three usual Masses, was given water
for his ablutions before the banquet, and then when the whole
fellowship was assembled he was set in the place of honour at the
feast, and reverently served by Robin himself. "Be of good cheer, Sir
Monk," said Robin. "Where is your abbey when you are at home, and who
is your patron saint?" "I am of St. Mary's Abbey, in York, and, simple
though I be, I am the high cellarer."
The High Cellarer and the Suretyship
"For Our Lady's sake," said Robin, "we will give this monk the best of
cheer. Drink to me, Sir Monk; the wine is good. But I fear Our Lady is
wroth with me, for she has not sent me my money." "Fear not, master,"
returned Little John; "this monk is her cellarer, and no doubt she has
made him her messenger and he carries our money with him." "That is
likely," replied Robin. "Sir Monk, Our Lady was surety for a little
loan between a good knight and me, and to-day the money was to be
repaid. If you have brought it, pay it to me now, and I will thank you
heartily." The monk was quite amazed, and cried aloud: "I have never
heard of such a suretyship"; and as he spoke he looked so anxiously at
his sumpter-mules that Robin guessed there was gold in their
pack-saddles.
The Monk is Searched
Accordingly the leader feigned sudden anger. "Sir Monk, how dare you
defame our dear Lady? She is always true and faithful, and as you say
you are her servant, no doubt she has made you her messenger to bring
my money. Tell me truly how much you have in your coffers, and I will
thank you for coming so punctually." The monk replied: "Sir, I have
only twenty marks in my bags"; to which Robin answered: "If that be
all, and you have told the truth I will not touch one penny; rather
will I lend you some if you need it; but if I find more, I will leave
none, Sir Monk, for a religious man should have no silver to spend in
luxury." Now the monk looked very greatly alarmed, but he dared make
no protest, as Little John began to search his bags and coffers.
Success of the Search
When Little John opened the first coffer he emptied its contents, as
before, into his cloak, and counted eight hundred pounds, with which
he went to Robin Hood, saying, "Master, the monk has told the truth;
here are twenty marks of his own, and eight hundred pounds which Our
Lady has sent you in return for your loan." When Robin heard that he
cried to the miserable monk: "Did I not say so, monk? Is not Our Lady
the best surety a man could have? Has she not repaid me twice? Go back
to your abbey and say that if ever St. Mary's monks need a friend they
shall find one in Robin Hood."
The Monk Departs
"Where were you journeying?" asked the outlaw leader. "To settle
accounts with the bailiffs of our manors," replied the cellarer; but
he was in truth journeying to London, to obtain powers from the king
against Sir Richard of the Lea. Robin thought for a moment, and then
said: "Ah, then we must search your other coffer," and in spite of the
cellarer's indignant protests he was deprived of all the money that
second coffer contained. Then he was allowed to depart, vowing
bitterly that a dinner in Blythe or Doncaster would have cost him much
less dear.
Sir Richard Arrives
Late that afternoon Sir Richard of the Lea and his little company
arrived at the trysting tree, and full courteously the knight greeted
his deliverer and apologised for his delay. Robin asked of his
welfare, and the knight told of his protection of the poor wrestler,
for which Robin thanked him warmly. When he would fain have repaid the
loan the generous outlaw refused to accept the money, though he took
with hearty thanks the bows and arrows. In answer to the knight's
inquiries, Robin said that he had been paid the money twice over
before he came; and he told, to his debtor's great amusement, the
story of the high cellarer and his eight hundred pounds, and
concluded: "Our Lady owed me no more than four hundred pounds, and she
now gives you, by me, the other four hundred. Take them, with her
blessing, and if ever you need more come to Robin Hood."
So Sir Richard returned to Uterysdale, and long continued to use his
power to protect the bold outlaws, and Robin Hood dwelt securely in
the greenwood, doing good to the poor and worthy, but acting as a
thorn in the sides of all oppressors and tyrants.
CHAPTER XVI: HEREWARD THE WAKE
Introduction
In dealing with hero-legends and myths we are sometimes confronted
with the curious fact that a hero whose name and date can be
ascertained with exactitude has yet in his story mythological elements
which seem to belong to all the ages. This anomaly arises chiefly from
the fact that the imagination of a people is a myth-making thing, and
that the more truly popular the hero the more likely he is to become
the centre of a whole cycle of myths, which are in different ages
attached to the heroes of different periods. The folk-lore of
primitive races is a great storehouse whence a people can choose tales
and heroic deeds to glorify its own national hero, careless that the
same tales and deeds have done duty for other peoples and other
heroes. Hence it happens that Hereward the Saxon, a patriot hero as
real and actual as Wellington or Nelson, whose deeds were recorded in
prose and verse within forty years of his death, was even then
surrounded by a cloud of romance and mystery, which hid in vagueness
his family, his marriage, and even his death.
The Saxon Patriot
Hereward was, naturally, the darling hero of the Saxons, and for the
patriotism of his splendid defence of Ely they forgave his final
surrender to William the Norman; then they attributed to him all the
virtues supposed to be inherent in the free-born, and all the glorious
valour on which the English prided themselves; and, lastly, they
surrounded his death with a halo of desperate fighting, and made his
last conflict as wonderful as that of Roland at Roncesvalles. If
Roland is the ideal of Norman feudal chivalry, Hereward is equally
the ideal of Anglo-Saxon sturdy manliness and knighthood, and it seems
fitting that the Saxon ideal in the individual should go down before
the representatives, however unworthy, of a higher ideal.
Leofric of Mercia
When the weak but saintly King Edward the Confessor nominally ruled
all England the land was divided into four great earldoms, of which
Mercia and Kent were held by two powerful rivals. Leofric of Mercia
and Godwin of Kent were jealous not only for themselves, but for their
families, of each other's power and wealth, and the sons of Leofric
and of Godwin were ever at strife, though the two earls were now old
and prudent men, whose wars were fought with words and craft, not with
swords. The wives of the two great earls were as different as their
lords. The Lady Gytha, Godwin's wife, of the royal Danish race, was
fierce and haughty, a fit helpmeet for the ambitious earl who was to
undermine the strength of England by his efforts to win kingly power
for his children. But the Lady Godiva, Leofric's beloved wife, was a
gentle, pious, loving woman, who had already won an almost saintly
reputation for sympathy and pity by her sacrifice to save her
husband's oppressed citizens at Coventry, where her pleading won
relief for them from the harsh earl on the pitiless condition of her
never-forgotten ride. Happily her gentle self-suppression awoke a
nobler spirit in her husband, and enabled him to play a worthier part
in England's history. She was in entire sympathy with the religious
aspirations of Edward the Confessor, and would gladly have seen one of
her sons become a monk, perhaps to win spiritual power and a saintly
reputation like those of the great Dunstan.
Hereward's Youth
For this holy vocation she fixed on her second son, Hereward, a wild,
wayward lad, with long golden curls, eyes of different colours, one
grey, one blue, great breadth and strength of limb, and a wild and
ungovernable temper which made him difficult of control. This reckless
lad the Lady Godiva vainly tried to educate for the monkish life, but
he utterly refused to adopt her scheme, would not master any but the
barest rudiments of learning, and spent his time in wrestling, boxing,
fighting and all manly exercises. Despairing of making him an
ecclesiastic, his mother set herself to inspire him with a noble ideal
of knighthood, but his wildness and recklessness increased with his
years, and often his mother had to stand between the riotous lad and
his father's deserved anger.
His Strength and Leadership
When he reached the age of sixteen or seventeen he became the terror
of the Fen Country, for at his father's Hall of Bourne he gathered a
band of youths as wild and reckless as himself, who accepted him for
their leader, and obeyed him implicitly, however outrageous were his
commands. The wise Earl Leofric, who was much at court with the
saintly king, understood little of the nature of his second son, and
looked upon his wild deeds as evidence of a cruel and lawless mind, a
menace to the peace of England, while they were in reality but the
tokens of a restless energy for which the comparatively peaceable life
of England at that time was all too dull and tame.
Leofric and Hereward
Frequent were the disputes between father and son, and sadly did Lady
Godiva forebode an evil ending to the clash of warring natures
whenever Hereward and his father met; yet she could do nothing to
avert disaster, for though her entreaties would soften the lad into
penitence for some mad prank or reckless outrage, one hint of cold
blame from his father would suffice to make him hardened and
impenitent; and so things drifted from bad to worse. In all Hereward's
lawless deeds, however, there was no meanness or crafty malice. He