Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still."

Yet there is scarcely less doubt as to the actual existence of a
flesh-and-blood Robin Hood than there is as to the actual existence of
a flesh-and-blood King Arthur. But let History look to her own;
Literature need have no scruple in claiming both the archer-prince of
outlaws and the blameless king of the Table Bound. Kobber chieftain or
democratic agitator, romantic invention or Odin-myth, it is certain
that by the fourteenth century Robin Hood was a familiar figure in
English balladry. We have our first reference to this generous-hearted
rogue of the greenwood, who is supposed by Ritson to have lived from
1160 to 1247, in Langlande's _Piers Ploughman_ (1362). There are
brief notices of the popular bandit in Wyntoun's _Scottish Chronicle_
(1420), Fordun's _Scotichronicon_ (1450), and Mair's _Historia Majoris
Brittaniae_ (1521). Famous literary allusions occur in Latimer's
_Sixth Sermon before Edward VI_. (1548), in Drayton's _Polyolbion
(1613), and Fuller's _Worthies of England_ (1662). The Robin Hood
ballads illustrate to the full the rough and heavy qualities, both of
form and thought, that characterize all our English folk-songs as
opposed to the Scottish. We feel the difference instantly when a
minstrel from over the Border catches up the strain:

"There's mony ane sings o'grass, o'grass,
And mony ane sings o'corn;
And mony ane sings o'Robin Hood,
Kens little whar' he was born.

"It was na' in the ha', the ha',
Nor in the painted bower;