Robin
AMERICAN, or MIGRAT- ING THRUSH, the Turdus migratorius; specific character dark-ash color; beneath, brownish-red; head and tail black; the two exterior feathers of the latter white at the inner tip. The robin is found in summer throughout North America from Alaska to Mexico. They retire from higher latitudes only as their food begins to fail, or till driven S. by inundating snows. During the winter months they are numerous in the Southern States.
Even as far N. as Boston robins are sometimes seen in the depth of winter. Toward the close of January the robin is still in South Carolina, and about the second week of March begins to appear in the Middle States. By the 10th of March they may also be heard in New England.
The eggs, about five, are of a bluish-green, and without spots. They raise several broods in a season.
ROBINS liberally to the poor and to all honest men in distress, of whatever degree. He is unrivalled with the bow and quarter staff; but in as many as eight of the extant ballads comes off the worse in the combat with some stout fellow, whom he thereupon induces to join his company.
His chief comrades are Little John, Scathlok (Scarlet), and Much; to these the "Gest" adds Gilbert of the White Hand and Reynold. A stalwart curtal friar, called Friar Tuck in the title though not in the ballad, fights with Robin Hood, and apparently accepts the invitation to join his company, as he appears later in two broadsides which also mention Maid Marion. Such is the romantic figure of the greatest of English popular heroes-a kind of yeoman counterpart to the knightly Arthur.
The earliest notice of Robin Hood yet found is that pointed out by Percy in "Piers Plowman," which, according to Skeat, cannot be older than about 1377.
In the next century we find him mentioned in Wyntoun's "Chronicle of Scotland" (1420). Bower, in his "Scotichronicon" (1441-1447), describes the lower orders of his time as entertaining themselves with ballads both merry and serious about Robin Hood, Little John, and their mates, and preferring them to all others; and Major or Mair (1470-1550) says in his "Historia Maioris Britanniæ" that Robin Hood ballads were sung all over Britain. The last passage gives apparently the earliest mention of those more romantic and redeeming features of Robin Hood which earned him a place in Fuller's "Worthies of England."
Fragments of two Robin Hood plays exist, one dating from 1475, the other printed by Copland with the "Gest" about 1550. The latter is described in the title as "very proper to be played in Maygames." Robin Hood was a popular figure in these during the 16th century, as we find from Stow, Hall, and other writers, and there is evidence that in this con-