ROBIN HOOD AND SHERWOOD FOREST.
While at Newstead Abbey I took great delight in riding and rambling
about the neighborhood, studying out the traces of merry Sherwood
Forest, and visiting the haunts of Robin Hood. The relics of the old
forest are few and scattered, but as to the bold outlaw who once held a
kind of freebooting sway over it, there is scarce a hill or dale, a
cliff or cavern, a well or fountain, in this part of the country, that
is not connected with his memory. The very names of some of the tenants
on the Newstead estate, such as Beardall and Hardstaff, sound as if
they may have been borne in old times by some of the stalwart fellows
of the outlaw gang. One of the earliest books that captivated my fancy
when a child, was a collection of Robin Hood ballads, "adorned with
cuts," which I bought of an old Scotch pedler, at the cost of all my
holiday money. How I devoured its pages, and gazed upon its uncouth
woodcuts! For a time my mind was filled with picturings of "merry
Sherwood," and the exploits and revelling of the hold foresters; and
Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, and their doughty compeers, were
my heroes of romance.
These early feelings were in some degree revived when I found myself in
the very heart of the far-famed forest, and, as I said before, I took a
kind of schoolboy delight in hunting up all traces of old Sherwood and
its sylvan chivalry.
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