“The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield”
Description
"Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John" trespass on the fields guarded by the Jolly Pinder. The Pinder challenges them; they fight. The Pinder holds off all three. Robin offers the Pinder a place in his band. The Pinder agrees to come once his present job is done
Notes
A pinder was an official charged with preventing trespassing and gathering strayed/lost/stolen livestock.
For background on the Robin Hood legend, see the notes on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117].
Fully half the Robin Hood ballads in the Child collection (numbers (121 -- the earliest and most basic example of the type), 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, (133), (134), (135), (136), (137), (150)) share all or part of the theme of a stranger meeting and defeating Robin, and being invited to join his band. Most of these are late, but it makes one wonder if Robin ever won a battle.
Bronson notes that his two tunes for this song are both associated with Rimbault, whose handling of other Robin Hood melodies was, at best, cavalier.
There are other mysteries associated with the piece, which survives only in very defective forms. There is a play, noted by Child, seemingly related to this. And Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #816, p. 304, notes a stanza which does not seem to appear in the canonical texts:
The hart he loves the high wood,
The hare she loves the hill;
The knight he loves his bright sword,
The lady loves her will. - RBW
Opie-Oxford2 206, "The hart he loves the high wood" (1 text) dates the song quoted above in Baring-Gould-Mother Goose to "a late-fifteenth century commonplace book from Broome Hall, Norfolk." - BS
Broadsides
- Bodleian, Wood 402(42), "The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield," F. Coles (London), 1658-1664; also Douce Ballads 3(118a), "Robin Hood and the jolly pinder of Wakefield"; Wood 401(61), "The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield: with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and Iohn"
References
- Child 124, "The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield" (2 texts)
- Bronson 124, "The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield" (2 versions)
- Leach, pp. 365-366, "The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield" (1 text)
- BBI, RZN16, "In Wakefield there lives a jolly pinder"
- Roud #3981
- BI, C124