Then John he took Guyes bow in his hand,
His boltes and arrowes eche one:

When the sheriffe saw Little John bend his bow,
He fettled him to be gone.

Towards his house in Nottingham towne,

He fled full fast away;

And soe did all his companye:

Not one behind wold stay.

But he cold neither runne soe fast,
Nor away soe fast cold ryde,

But Little John with an arrowe soe broad
He shot him into the syde.

O other memorial of these celebrated archers exists than the following ballad; and the incidental notices of them in the poets of the sixteenth century

are very rare.

The "English wood" which they are said to have frequented, is the forest of Inglewood, in Cumberland, sixteen miles in length, and reaching from Carlisle to Penrith: Edward I. whilst hunting in it, is said to have killed two hundred bucks in one day. It was disforested by Henry VIII. and is now "a dreary moor with high distant hills on both sides, and a few stone farm houses and cottages along the road."-Gough's Camden, vol. iii. p. 189.

The text is that of Percy (Reliques, vol. i. p.

160), corrected in some few instances by the edition of Ritson (Ancient Popular Poetry).

The following beautiful sonnet of Wordsworth's is a fit preface to the ballad :—

The forest huge of ancient Caledon

Is but a name, nor more is Inglewood,

That swept from hill to hill, from flood to flood:
On her last thorn the nightly moon has shone;
Yet still, though unappropriate wild be none,
Fair parks spread wide, where Adam Bell might deign
With Clym o' the Clough, were they alive again,
To kill for merry feast their venison.

Nor wants the holy Abbot's gliding shade
His church with monumental wreck bestrown;
The feudal warrior chief, a ghost unlaid,
Hath still his castle, though a skeleton,
That he may watch by night, and lessons con
Of power that perishes, and rights that fade.

ADAM BELL, CLYM OF THE CLOUGH,

AND WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLY,

FYTTE THE FIRST,

M2

ERY it was in the grene forest
Among the levès grene,

Wheras men hunt east and west
Wyth bowes and arrowes kene;

To raise the dere out of theyr denne;
Suche sightes hath ofte bene sene;
As by thre yemen of the north countrèy,
By them it is I meane.

The one of them hight Adam Bel,
The other Clym of the Clough,
The thyrd was William of Cloudesly,
An archer good ynough.

They were outlawed for venyson,

These yemen everychone;

They swore them brethren upon a day,
To Englyshe wood for to gone.

Now lith and lysten, gentylmen,

That of myrthes loveth to here; Two of them were single men,

The third had a wedded fere.1

Wyllyam was the wedded man,
Muche more then was hys care:
He sayde to hys brethren upon a day,
To Carleile he would fare,

For to speke with fayre Alyce his wife,
And with hys chyldren thre.
By my trouth, sayde Adam Bel,
Not by the counsell of me:

For if ye go to Carlile, brother,

And from thys wylde wode wende, If that the justice may you take, Your lyfe were at an ende.

If that I come not to-morrowe, brother,
By pryme to you agayne,
Truste you then that I am taken,
Or else that I am slayne.

He toke hys leave of hys brethren two,

And to Carlile he is gon;

There he knocked at his owne windowe

Shortlye and anone.

Companion.