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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Joseph Ritson's antiquarian interest was of early inception. From his school days in Stockton, he had been interested in history, old songs, and ballads. This interest continued throughout his life. It resulted in a series of publications ranging from the history of certain legal offices, through British topography and royal geneology, to old English and Scottish songs and ballads. In all this work he was careful to use the oldest manuscripts and sources he could find: he showed amazing diligence in searching out original documents. His editing was in accord with modern practice: it did not suffer from the misleading procedure of such editors as Percy. He was extremely critical of the treatment of texts by his contemporaries, and justly deserves to be called the watchdog of English scholarship.
1 Henry Alfred Burd, Joseph Ritson, A Critical Biography. University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature (Urbana, 1916), ii, No. 3, p. 15.
2 See Burd for a general critical study of Ritson's work as a whole, and Annette B. Hopkins, “Ritson's Life of King Arthur,” PMLA, xliii (March, 1928), 251–287.
3 Robin Hood: a collection of all the ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English Outlaw: to which are prefixed Historical Anecdotes of his Life, London, 1795, 2 vols
4 Ritson, op. cit., i, iv.
5 Ritson op. cit., i, xvi.
6 Ritson, op. cit., i, xvi–xvii.
7 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxix.
8 Ritson, op. cit., i, xv-xvi.
9 Thomas Wright, Essays on subjects connected with the literature, popular superstitions, and history of England in the Middle Ages (London, 1846), ii, 202.
10 Ritson, op. cit., i, xviii.
11 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxii.
12 Ritson, op. cit., i, li.
13 Ritson, op. cit., i, lxiv-lxv.
14 Ritson, op. cit., i, xvii.
15 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxii.
16 Ritson, op. cit., i, iv.
17 Ritson, op. cit., i, xix.—Wright follows Ritson partly, when, in dealing with the shifting of the elements in the story of his Saxon mythical figure, he suggests that a simple title, intelligible to all, might be assumed, i.e., Robin with the Hood, pointing to a similar name having been derived from apparently similar circumstances in the case of the German spirit Hudekin. But he goes on to say that he is “not opposed to the conjecture which has been made, that the name Robin Hood is but a corruption of Robin of the Wood, because we find analogies in other languages.” Wright, op. cit., ii, 207.
18 Francis James Child, English and Scottish Ballads (Boston, 1859), v, xxiv-xxv.—See also article by H. K., “Robin Hood,” Notes and Queries, vi (December 25, 1852), 597 f. and Wright, op. cit., ii, 207–208.
19 Ritson found a manuscript among Peck's collection for the history of Premonstratensian monasteries which he thought was dated July 22, 1304, and from which he concluded that Robin Hood was both mentioned and compared with William Wallace in that year. Child has pointed out that the manuscript is of the eighteenth century and that the date refers to the matter in the poem: the title mentioning Robin Hood is Peck's own contribution. F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston and New York, 1888), iii, 40.
20 Child, op. cit. (1859), v, x.
21 Ritson, op. cit., i, xv.
22 Ritson, op. cit., i, xliv.
23 Wright, op. cit., ii, 202.
24 Child, op. cit. (1859), v, xix–xx.
25 Compare Ritson with the more sensible view that the historians were only interested in the activities of the nobility: B. H. Coates, “Note on Robin Hood,” Godey's Lady's Book, xxiv (April, 1842), 203 ff.
26 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxxiii.
27 See supra, p. 523.
28 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxxiv.
29 Ritson, op. cit., i, xlvii.
30 Ritson, op. cit., i, xlviii.
31 Wright, op. cit., ii, 201.
32 F. J. Child, “Robin Hood,” Atlantic Monthly, i (December, 1857), 166: reprinted in his English and Scottish Ballads (1859), v, vii ff. See also his comment on Robin Hood and history, supra, p. 527.
33 J. M. Gutch, “The Ballad Hero, Robin Hood. His Identity Discovered,” The Reliquary, i (January, 1861), 143.
34 Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt, Ballad Criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain during the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1916), p. 266.
35 Burd, op. cit., p. 118.
36 A reviewer in the Spectator, lix (July 24, 1886), 994, holds a similar view: “Whether the ”Life“ is to be taken as a serious production or not is, considering its style and the peculiar character of the author, more than doubtful. Probably it was intended as a summary of the current beliefs as to Robin Hood, rather than as sober history … as Ritson was of a notedly cynical and unbelieving turn of mind, and he distinctly recognizes Robin Hood as the ”patron saint of archery,“ and comments on the universality of his presence, it is extremely improbable that he regarded him as a historical personage.”
37 Supra, p. 526.
38 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxix.
39 Ritson, op. cit., i, xxxii.
40 Ritson, op. cit., i, xl.
41 Ritson, op. cit., i, xcii.
42 Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London, 1775), i, 82.
43 Gentleman's Magazine, lxiii (March, 1793), 225–226.
44 D. H., Gentleman's Magazine, lxiii (March, 1793), 226.
45 Thèse de Littérature sur les Vicissitudes et les Transformations du Cycle populaire de Robin Hood (Paris, 1832).
46 Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands (Paris, 1825).
47 Thierry's History of the Conquest of England by the Normans: with its causes from the earliest period, and its consequences to the present time. Trans. by Charles Claude Hamilton (London, 1825), iii, 234–287.
48 Wright, op. cit., ii, 203 ff.
49 Ibid., ii, 207–208.
50 Wright, op. cit., ii, 211.
51 London and Westminster Review, xxxiii (1840), 424–491.
52 G. F., op. cit., 483.
53 See also W. Mountford, “Robin Hood,” North American Review, lxxxiv (January, 1857), 26 ff., for a similar attitude toward the Normans.
54 Joseph Hunter, The Great Hero of the Ancient Minstrelsy of England, “Robin Hood” (London, 1852), p. 3.
55 Hunter, op. cit., p. 21.
56 Hunter, op. cit., p. 27.
57 Hunter, op. cit., p. 36.—Child, op. cit. (1888), iii, 55, referring to this passage, says Hunter “could have identified Pigrogromitus and Quinapalus, if he had given his mind to it.”
58 Hunter, op. cit., p. 41.
59 Hunter, op. cit., p. 45.
60 Hunter, op. cit., p. 46.
61 See the enthusiastic review of Hunter's Robin Hood in “A Search for Robin Hood,” Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, xviii (August 28, 1852), 136 ff.
62 Child is right, but ballads are used to celebrate contemporary events. (Thierry, op. cit., ii, 109; Mountford, op. cit., p. 3; Hunter, op. cit., p. 9.) In our own time we have had The Death of Floyd Collins and The Wreck of the Shenandoah.
63 Child, op. cit. (1859), v, xviii–xx.
64 Child, op. cit. (1859), v, xxiv.
65 A. Kuhn, “Wodan,” Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alterthum, v (1845), 472–494.
66 Child, op. cit. (1859), v, xxxi.
67 Child, op. cit. (1888), iii, 42.
68 Ibid., iii, 43.
69 J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript (London, 1867), i, 11.
70 Francis B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad (Boston, 1907), p. 272.
71 Rudolf Kiessmann, Untersuchungen über die Motive der Robin-Hood-Balladen, English Monographs, vol. 40 (Halle, 1895), pp. 41–42.