Note 80 — 117 A GEST OF ROBYN HODE

Hunter asks if it is not possible to find in this Robert Hood of Wakefield, near Barnsdale, “the identical person whose name has been so strangely perpetuated.” This Robert Hood would be a person of some consideration, and he would thus be qualified “for his station among the vadlets of the crown,”—three-penny vadlets, Great Hob, Little Coll, Robert Trash, and their fellows. The Wakefield Robert’s wife was named Matilda, “and the ballad testimony is—not the Little Gest, but other ballads of uncertain antiquity,—that the outlaw’s wife was named Matilda, which name she exchanged for Marian when she joined him in the green-wood.” (Pp 46–48.) Hunter has made a trivial mistake about Matilda: she belongs to Munday’s play, and not to the ballads (ballad) he has in mind.