University of Virginia Library

ROBIN HOOD AND SHERWOOD FOREST.

While at Newstead Abbey I took great delight
in riding and rambling about the neighbourhood,
studying out the traces of merry
Sherwood Forest, and visiting the haunts of
Robin Hood. The relics of the old forest are
few and scattered, but as to the bold outlaw that
once held a kind of freebooting sway over it,
there is scarce a hill or dale, a cliff or cavern,
a well or fountain, in this part of the country,
that is not connected with his memory. The
very names of some of the tenants on the Newstead
estate, such as Beardall and Hardstaff,
sound as if they may have been borne in old times
by some of the stalwart fellows of the outlaw
gang.

One of the earliest books that captivated my
fancy when a child, was a collection of Robin
Hood ballads, “adorned with cuts,” which I
bought of an old Scotch pedler, at the cost of
all my holyday money. How I devoured its
pages, and gazed upon its uncouth wood cuts!
For a time my mind was filled with picturings

of “merry Sherwood,” and the exploits and
revelling of the bold foresters; and Robin Hood,
Little John, Friar Tuck, and their doughty compeers,
were my heroes of romance.

These early feelings were in some degree
revived when I found myself in the very heart
of the far-famed forest, and, as I said before, I
took a kind of schoolboy delight in hunting up
all traces of old Sherwood and its sylvan chivalry.
One of the first of my antiquarian rambles
was on horseback, in company with Colonel
Wildman and his lady, who undertook to guide
me to some of the mouldering monuments of the
forest. One of these stands in front of the very
gate of Newstead Park, and is known throughout
the country by the name of “the Pilgrim
Oak.” It is a venerable tree, of great size, over-shadowing
a wide area of the road. Under its
shade the rustics of the neighbourhood have
been accustomed to assemble on certain holydays,
and celebrate their rural festivals. This
custom had been handed down from father to
son for several generations, until the oak had
acquired a kind of sacred character.

The “old Lord Byron,” however, in whose
eyes nothing was sacred, when he laid his desolating
hand on the groves and forests of Newstead,
doomed likewise this traditional tree to
the axe. Fortunately the good people of Nottingham

heard of the danger of their favourite
oak, and hastened to ransom it from destruction.
They afterwards made a present of it to the
poet, when he came to the estate, and the
Pilgrim Oak is likely to continue a rural gathering
place for many coming generations.

From this magnificent and time-honoured tree
we continued on our sylvan research, in quest
of another oak, of more ancient date and less
flourishing condition. A ride of two or three
miles, the latter part across open wastes, once
clothed with forest, now bare and cheerless,
brought us to the tree in question. It was the
Oak of Ravenshead, one of the last survivers of
old Sherwood, and which had evidently once
held a high head in the forest; it was now a
mere wreck, crazed by time, and blasted by
lightning, and standing alone on a naked waste,
like a ruined column in a desert.

At no great distance from the Ravenshead
Oak is a small cave which goes by the name of
Robin Hood's stable. It is in the breast of a
hill, scooped out of brown freestone, with rude
attempts at columns and arches. Within are
two niches, which served, it is said, as stalls for
the bold outlaw's horses. To this retreat he
retired when hotly pursued by the law, for the
place was a secret even from his band. The
cave is overshadowed by an oak and alder, and
is hardly discoverable, even at the present day;
but when the country was overrun with forest
it must have been completely concealed.

There was an agreeable wildness and loneliness
in a great part of our ride. Our devious
road wound down, at one time, among rocky
dells, by wandering streams, and lonely pools,
haunted by shy water fowl. We passed through
a skirt of woodland, of more modern planting,
but considered a legitimate offspring of the
ancient forest, and commonly called Jock of
Sherwood. In riding through these quiet, solitary
scenes, the partridge and pheasant would
now and then burst upon the wing, and the hare
scud away before us.

Another of these rambling rides in quest of
popular antiquities, was to a chain of rocky

cliffs, called the Kirkby Crags, which skirt the
Robin Hood hills. Here, leaving my horse at
the foot of the crags, I scaled their rugged
sides, and seated myself in a niche of the rocks,
called Robin Hood's chair. It commands a
wide prospect over the valley of Newstead, and
here the bold outlaw is said to have taken his
seat, and kept a look out upon the roads below,
watching for merchants, and bishops, and other
wealthy travellers, upon whom to pounce down,
like an eagle from his eyrie.

Descending from the cliffs and remounting
my horse, a ride of a mile or two further along
a narrow “robber path,” as it was called, which
wound up into the hills between perpendicular
rocks, led to an artificial cavern cut in the face
of a cliff, with a door and window wrought
through the living stone. This bears the name
of Friar Tuck's cell, or hermitage, where, according
to tradition, that jovial anchorite used
to make good cheer and boisterous revel with
his freebooting comrades.

Such were some of the vestiges of old Sherwood
and its renowned “yeomandrie,” which I
visited in the neighbourhood of Newstead. The
worthy clergyman who officiated as chaplain at
the Abbey, seeing my zeal in the cause, informed
me of a considerable tract of the ancient forest,
still in existence about ten miles distant. There

were many fine old oaks in it, he said, that had
stood for centuries, but were now shattered and
“stag headed,” that is to say, their upper branches
were bare, and blasted, and straggling out like
the antlers of a deer. Their trunks, too, were
hollow, and full of crows and jackdaws, who
made them their nestling places. He occasionally
rode over to the forest in the long summer evenings,
and pleased himself with loitering in the
twilight about the green alleys and under the
venerable trees.

The description given by the chaplain made
me anxious to visit this remnant of old Sherwood,
and he kindly offered to be my guide and
companion. We accordingly sallied forth one
morning on horseback on this sylvan expedition.
Our ride took us through a part of the country
where King John had once held a hunting seat;
the ruins of which are still to be seen. At that
time the whole neighbourhood was an open
royal forest, or Frank chase, as it was termed; for
King John was an enemy to parks and warrens,
and other enclosures, by which game was fenced
in for the private benefit and recreation of the
nobles and the clergy.

Here, on the brow of a gentle hill, commanding
an extensive prospect of what had once been
forest, stood another of those monumental trees,
which, to my mind, gave a peculiar interest to

this neighbourhood. It was the Parliament Oak,
so called in memory of an assemblage of the
kind held by King John beneath its shade. The
lapse of upwards of six centuries had reduced
this once mighty tree to a mere crumbling fragment,
yet, like a gigantic torso in ancient statuary,
the grandeur of the mutilated trunk gave
evidence of what it had been in the days of its
glory. In contemplating its mouldering remains,
the fancy busied itself in calling up the scene
that must have been presented beneath its shade,
when this sunny hill swarmed with the pageantry
of a warlike and hunting court. When silken
pavilions and warrior tents decked its crest,
and royal standards, and baronial banners, and
knightly pennons rolled out to the breeze. When
prelates and courtiers, and steel-clad chivalry
thronged round the person of the monarch, while
at a distance loitered the foresters in green, and
all the rural and hunting train that waited upon
his sylvan sports.

Such was the phantasmagoria that presented
itself for a moment to my imagination, peopling

the silent place before me with empty shadows
of the past. The reverie however was transient;
king, courtier, and steel-clad warrior, and forester
in green, with horn, and hawk, and hound, all
faded again into oblivion, and I awoke to all that
remained of this once stirring scene of human
pomp and power—a mouldering, oak and a tradition.

A ride of a few miles further brought us at length
among the venerable and classic shades of Sherwood.
Here I was delighted to find myself in
a genuine wild wood, of primitive and natural
growth, so rarely to be met with in this thickly
peopled and highly cultivated country. It reminded
me of the aboriginal forests of my native
land. I rode through natural alleys and green
wood groves, carpeted with grass and shaded by
lofty and beautiful birches. What most interested
me, however, was to behold around the mighty
trunks of veteran oaks, old monumental trees,
the patriarchs of Sherwood Forest. They were
shattered, hollow, and moss-grown, it is true, and
their “leafy honours” were nearly departed; but
like mouldering towers they were noble and picturesque
in their decay, and gave evidence, even
in their ruins, of their ancient grandeur.

As I gazed about me upon these vestiges of

once “Merrie Sherwood,” the picturings of my
boyish fancy began to rise in my mind, and
Robin Hood and his men to stand before me.

The horn of Robin Hood again seemed to
sound through the forest. I saw his sylvan chivalry,
half huntsmen, half freebooters, trooping
across the distant glades, or feasting and revelling
beneath the trees; I was going on to embody
in this way all the ballad scenes that had
delighted me when a boy, when the distant
sound of a wood cutter's axe roused me from
my day dream.

The boding apprehensions which it awakened
were too soon verified. I had not ridden much
further, when I came to an open space where the
work of destruction was going on. Around me
lay the prostrate trunks of venerable oaks, once
the towering and magnificent lords of the forest,
and a number of wood cutters were hacking and
hewing at another gigantic tree, just tottering to
its fall.

Alas! for old Sherwood Forest: it had fallen
into the possession of a noble agriculturist.
a modern utilitarian, who had no feeling for poetry
or forest scenery. In a little while and this
glorious woodland will be laid low; its green
glades turned into sheep walks; its legendary
bowers supplanted by turnip fields; and “Merrie
Sherwood” will exist but in ballad and tradition.

“O for the poetical superstitions,” thought I,
“of the olden time! that shed a sanctity over
every grove; that gave to each tree its tutelar
genius or nymph, and threatened disaster to all
who should molest the hamadryads in their leafy
abodes. Alas! for the sordid propensities of
modern days, when every thing is coined into
gold, and this once holyday planet of ours is
turned into a mere `working day world.”'

My cobweb fancies put to flight, and my feelings
out of tune, I left the forest in a far different
mood from that in which I had entered it,
and rode silently along until, on reaching the
summit of a gentle eminence, the chime of evening
bells came on the breeze across a heath from
a distant village.

I paused to listen.

“They are merely the evening bells of Mansfield,”
said my companion.

“Of Mansfield!” Here was another of the
legendary names of this storied neighbourhood,

that called up early and pleasant associations.
The famous old ballad of the King and the Miller
of Mansfield came at once to mind, and the
chime of the bells put me again in good humour.

A little further on, and we were again on the
traces of Robin Hood. Here was Fountain dale
where he had his encounter with that stalworth
shaveling Friar Tuck, who was a kind of saint
militant, alternately wearing the casque and the
cowl:

The moat is still shown which is said to have
surrounded the strong hold of this jovial and
fighting friar; and the place where he and Robin
Hood had their sturdy trial of strength and
prowess, in the memorable conflict which lasted

and ended in the treaty of fellowship. As to
the hardy feats, both of sword and trencher, performed
by this “curtal fryar,” behold are they
not recorded at length in the ancient ballads, and
in the magic pages of Ivanhoe?

The evening was fast coming on, and the twilight
thickening, as we rode through these haunts

famous in outlaw story. A melancholy seemed
to gather over the landscape as we proceeded,
for our course lay by shadowy woods, and
across naked heaths, and along lonely roads,
marked by some of those sinister names by
which the country people in England are apt
to make dreary places still more dreary. The
horrors of “Thieves' Wood,” and the “Murderers'
Stone,” and “the Hag Nook,” had all to
be encountered in the gathering gloom of evening,
and threatened to beset our path with more
than mortal peril. Happily, however, we passed
these ominous places unharmed, and arrived in
safety at the portal of Newstead Abbey, highly
satisfied with our greenwood foray.