Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript, British Library Additional MS 71158 (review)

238 Reviews the L o w German version of the enormously popular legendary Der Heiligen Leben. Chapter Three is devoted to textual evidence and the issue of sources and, as Kalinke points out in her Preface, she attempts 'to lay the matter to rest' (p. viii). Far from being mere translations or versions of Dat Passionael, the analysis in this chapter proves that these Old Icelandic texts are the only surviving copies of older German legends which no longer exist. As Kalinke concludes: 'Reykjaholarbok thus permits us to infer the existence at one time of L o w German legends that for the most part transmitted the lives of saints, both historical and apocryphal, in versions m u c h longer than and at times quite different from the abbreviated redactions popularized by Der Heiligen Leben and Dat Passionael' (p. 77). . It is noted in the Preface that 'the significance of Reykjaholarbok extends beyond the borders of Iceland in that the work transmits in Icelandic translation a corpus of L o w German legends' (p. viii). This monograph should appeal to a broad audience beyond Icelandicists. Scholars working in the general areas of Christian hagiography, medieval religious literature, and medieval history, particularly relating to the Christian church, for instance, will find that it has much to offer. Kellinde Wrightson Faculty of Arts University of Wollongong Knight, Stephen, ed., Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript, Briti Library Additional MS 71158, with a manuscript description by Hilton Kelliher, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1998; cloth; pp. xxix, 173; R.R.P. £30.00. Recently when two of my students were giving papers on Ivanhoe with free range to write on whatever aspect they wished, one chose to write about the depiction of Isaac of York and the other to deal with Robin Hood. Both choices are revealing but the relevant one here is that of Robin Hood. As the student remarked, Robin plays only a small part in the novel: the choice was testimony to his continuing popular appeal rather than his centrality to the novel (although he does have an Reviews 239 important symbolic role). Alongside the continuing.popular interest in Robin there has been since the days ofJoseph Ritson a strong tradition of scholarly interest. Stephen Knight has already contributed powerfully to this tradition and here is a further volume. Knight's previous work on Robin Hood has exhibited his skills as a scholar but has shown itself aware of a broader popular audience beyond the academic one. The present volume inclines rather more to the academic than to the popular, although I would suggest that the popular audience is even here not entirely forgotten. It provides an edition of a manuscript, probably copied during the 1670s, discovered in 1973 at an auction house and n o w in the British Library. The manuscript provides a wide-ranging set of ballads beginning with the story of h o w Robin becomes an outlaw and including another with an appended account of his death which appears to have been worked up for the occasion. After this ballad follow four copied from the 1670 printed garland, possibly as an afterthought, since the ballads up to this point provide a nicely rounded off account of the outlaw's life. Knight speculates that the manuscript m a y have been prepared for a new printed collection, a project perhaps abandoned after the appearance of the 1670 garland. It is written in two different hands, one of them being that of a 'supervisor' w h o 'gathered texts, corrected and sometimes extended them, [ . . . ] and occasionally corrected the work of the other scribe'. O n e of the pervasive threads of Knight's commentary in the text is a strain of admiration for the 'scholarly and precise approach' of this supervisor and it is clear that he enjoyed his interaction with 'the dedicated, talented but anonymous outlawphiliac' who was his 'remarkable and intriguing predecessor in this kind of editorial work'. The discovery of the Forresters Manuscript has significantly expanded the material available for study of the Robin Hood ballad tradition which had up until n o w been fully covered by Child. Although there are no entirely n...