Maid Marian

THE END.

Footnotes:

1 (return)
[ Roasting by a slow fire for the love of God.]

2 (return)
[ Of these lines all that is not in italics belongs to Mr. Wordsworth: Resolution and Independence.]

3 (return)
[ Harp-it-on: or, a corruption of (greek ‘Erpeton), a creeping thing.]

4 (return)
[

      And therefore is she called Maid Marian
      Because she leads a spotless maiden life
      And shall till Robin’s outlaw life have end.
                                   —Old Play.]

5 (return)
[

     “These byshoppes and these archbyshoppes
     Ye shall them bete and bynde,”
 

says Robin Hood, in an old ballad. Perhaps, however, thus is to be taken not in a literal, but in a figurative sense from the binding and beating of wheat: for as all rich men were Robin’s harvest, the bishops and archbishops must have been the finest and fattest ears among them, from which Robin merely proposes to thresh the grain when he directs them to be bound and beaten: and as Pharaoh’s fat kine were typical of fat ears of wheat, so may fat ears of wheat, mutatis mutandis, be typical of fat kine.]

6 (return)
[ Alcofribas Nasier: an anagram of Francois Rabelais, and his assumed appellation.]