ABSTRACT
In its bare bones the Tale of Gamelyn might be just another story of Robin Hood, for in essentials their outlines are the same. Its incident belongs to the same common stock of tradition; we shall find the identical situations of the tale over and over again in the ballads of Robin, that of the knight deprived of his land by the machinations of evil men; the rescue of the captured outlawed chief from the sheriff, the final pardon obtained from the King, even the same scene at the country wrestling match, with the ram and the ring set up for a prize and the franklin lamenting the death of his sons at the hands of the champion. There is nevertheless an immense difference between the two stories, but it is a difference not of plot but of literary form. The Tale of Gamelyn is a metrical romance composed by an author who used popular tradition but who also understood the art of literary narrative, and whose work bears, therefore, the stamp of his individual authorship. But the poems about Robin Hood are not romances but ballads, and it is this literary form which sets them apart from the other stories we have been reviewing, and which gives them authority as genuine guides to popular tastes. Ballads which were intended for recitation to an unlettered audience did not survive if they were not popular. Since it is this literary form that gives them their special 96importance to the historian, it becomes necessary to discuss just what the word ballad means.
