[4] Sparrow Pit is a small hamlet about two miles from Chapel-en-le-Frith, situated at the "four lane ends," where the Buxton and Castleton and the Chapel-en-le-Frith and Tideswell roads intersect each other.
[5] Paislow Moss, about half way between Sparrow Pit and Sandy Way Head.
[6] Chapel-en-le-Frith is a considerable and important market town, about six miles from Buxton.
[7] Whaley Bridge, near Chapel-en-le-Frith.
[8] Chamber Knoll is about half a mile from Peak-Forest.
_Shewing his Birth, Breeding, Valour and Marriage, at Titbury Bull-running: Calculated for the Meridian of Staffordshire but may serve for Derbyshire or Kent._
There are no series of ballads in our language so extensive or so popular as those relating to the noble outlaw, Robin Hood, and his "merry doings" in Sherwood Forest and its neighbourhood. Some of these relate immediately to Derbyshire; and many others might, from their allusions and the persons named in them, be claimed by that county. Some of his exploits are related to have been performed in Derbyshire; numerous places in that county are named after him; some of the relatives of his family resided within its confines; and last, though not least, his faithful friend and follower, _Little John_, is said not only to have been one of the sons of its soil, but to have died and been buried in the place of his birth.
That Robin Hood was a real and veritable personage seems to have been satisfactorily settled by the late Rev. Joseph Hunter, who discovered among the state papers some records wherein, besides the name being correctly given as "Robyn Hood," showed that that personage was in the King's service, and that he left it to travel;--doubtless into his favourite haunts in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire. Among the entries relating to Robin Hood, Mr. Hunter gleaned several which tallied curiously and conclusively with the circumstances of his early life as given in the "Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode," printed about the year 1489, by Wynken de Worde.[9]
The ballad which I here give, showing "his birth, breeding, valour, and marriage at Titbury Bull-running," I give from a curious old broad-sheet in my own collection. It is printed broad-way on the paper, and has a rude wood-cut of Robin Hood with his buckler and quarter staff, and Clorinda,--another name for Maid Marian,--with a tall hat, or like the Welsh fashion, and a bow in her hand, the entrance to the church in the back-ground. It bears the imprint, "Northampton: Printed by R. Raikes and W. Dicey." A black-letter copy is in the Roxburgh Collection in the British Museum, and it has also been reprinted by Evans and by Gutch. The ballad is "supposed to be related by the fiddler who played at their wedding."