View source for Erlinton

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{{Infobox
 |title = 
 |header1=Ballad
 |label2=Child
 |data2=[[ChildNumber::8]]
 |label3=Title
 |data3=[[Title::{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |label4=Versions
 |data4=[[VersionCount::3]]
 |label5 = Variants
 |data5=[[VariantCount::4]]
 |label6 = Stanzas
 |data6=[[StanzaCount::31]]
 |label7=Date
 |data7=''c.'' [[Year::1847]]
 |label8=A.k.a.
 |data8=[[Aka::Robin Hood and the Tanner's Daughter]]
 }}<div class="no-img">
<p id="byline">By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2014-09-02. Revised by {{#realname:{{REVISIONUSER}}}}, {{REVISIONYEAR}}-{{REVISIONMONTH}}-{{REVISIONDAY2}}.</p>
The ballad to which Child gave the title ''Erlinton'' exists in three versions, one of which, the C version, features Robin Hood. It is almost certainly a literary forgery.
== Plot ==
<div class="plot">Robin Hood meets a fair damsel, a tanner's daughter; they become lovers (straightaway), but soon the girl's two brothers come riding to fetch her home. A sword fight ensues in which Robin kills the elder brother but spares the younger at the girl's entreaty. The two lovers then elope to the forest.</div>
== The forged C version ==
Child reprints the C version, known as ''Robin Hood and the Tanner's Daughter'', from the edition in 'Gutch's Robin Hood, [which was printed] from a manuscript of Mr Payne Collier, supposed to have been written about 1650'.<ref>{{:Child, Francis James 1882a}}, vol. I, p. 106.</ref> As John Payne Collier had been exposed as a literary forger already in the mid-19th century,<ref>Collier's sad career is sufficiently well known to require only a reference to: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Payne_Collier  Wikipedia: John Payne Collier.]</ref> Child's decision to include the ballad in his collection without noting in his introduction to it the strong possibility that it might be a forgery is hard to explain. It is difficult to imagine that he could have remained unaware of Collier's forgeries a generation after they were discovered. It had been a major scandal that was by no means forgotten by the 1880s. However, Child did eventually note in his additions and corrections to the ballad, published seven years after the ballad, in 1889, that the latter was 'found in a manuscript pretended to be of about 1650, but [...] written in a forged hand of this [i.e. the 19th] century. I do not feel certain that the ballads [in this MS] themselves, bad as they are, are forgeries'.<ref>{{:Child, Francis James 1882a}}, vol. III, p. 499, and see vol. I, pp. 106, 107, 109-10, 111. The ballad is found in pt. 1, published, 1882, the additions and corrections in pt. 6 (the second part of vol. III), published 1889.</ref> 

IRHB feels Child should have admitted, once he had accepted the fact that the MS was a forgery, that the ballads included in it were also the result of Collier's misguided creativity. The following facts and considerations strengthen this conclusion:
# The MS turned up before J. M. Gutch's collection of Robin Hood ballads was published in 1847, i.e. during the period when Collier is known to have been active as a forger.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Payne_Collier Wikipedia: John Payne Collier.]</ref>
# This Robin Hood-themed variant of ''Erlinton'' was &ndash; and to my knowledge still is &ndash; unknown from other sources prior to the appearance of this MS.
# Gutch evidently could offer no provenience for the MS except that it had been 'communicated' to him by J. P. Collier.
# The ballad is as flat and uninspired as Collier's other literary concoctions. There is of course an element of subjectivity in such a judgement, but we just saw that Child agreed, and I have never seen ''Robin Hood and the Tanner's Daughter'' praised.
# Least effort is a fundamental principle in many areas of human activity, and there is no reason to think forgers do not follow it. The ballad already existed in two non-Robin Hood versions, and adaptation requires less creativity than composing a new work. The chief novelty was the Robin Hood theme, which was of course required for Collier's production to insinuate itself into Gutch's collection of Robin Hood ballads.

== Bona fide versions of the ballad ==
Bibliographical data for primary editions of all three versions of the ballad is included below, but since only the ''C'' version has anything to do with Robin Hood, sources and analogues etc. specific to the ''A'' and/or ''B'' version are not discussed or listed.
=== A version ===
Child's source for the A version of ''Erlinton'', printed in the first volume of ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'' (1882), is the text found in the second edition of Walter Scott's ''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'' (1803; see 'Scholarly and literary editions of B' below). By 1892, Child, or more likely a collaborator, had located among Scott's papers the two variants in MSS 'from which (with some editorial garnish and filling out)' Scott's text was constructed. Child then printed the two texts among his Additions and Corrections, designating these variants ''a'' and ''b''. Together they supersede the text printed as ''B''.<ref>{{:Child, Francis James 1882a}}, vol. IV, p. 445.</ref>
{{Ballad tree|Ballad={{PAGENAME}}}}

== Sources and analogues ==
{| class="analoguetable"
|-
!Stanzas
!Matter
!Title
!Analogue
|-
|All
|General similarity of plot
|''Earl Brand'' (C7)<ref>{{:Child, Francis James 1882a}}, vol. I, pp. 88-105.</ref>
|Child notes that their plots are so similar that ''Erlinton'' (C8) and ''Earl Brand'' (C7) have 'only with much hesitation been separated'. In both, a man induces a young woman to go off with him and 'is set upon by a party of fifteen in '''A''', '''B''', as in 7 '''A'''; and he spares the life of one of his assailants [an old man, '''A''', '''B''', the younger brother, '''C''']'.<ref>{{:Child, Francis James 1882a}}, vol. I, p. 106. Brackets and bold type as in Child.</ref>
|-
|All
|General similarity of plot
|''Ribold og Guldborg'' (DgF 82);<ref>{{:Grundtvig, Svend Hersleb 1853a}}, vol. II, pp. 338-89, 674-80; vol. III, pp. 848-56; vol. IV, pp. 494-508.</ref> ''Hildebrand og Hilde'' (DgF 83);<ref>{{:Grundtvig, Svend Hersleb 1853a}}, vol. II, pp. 390-403, 680-82; vol. III, pp. 856-58. {{:Kristensen, Evald Tang 1871a}}, pp. 93-95. {{:Kristensen, Evald Tang 1876a}}, pp. 291-95.</ref> ''Den Farlige Jomfru'' (DgF 184 '''G''', sts. 15-30)<ref>{{:Grundtvig, Svend Hersleb 1853a}}, vol. IV, p. 64.</ref>
|Child notes 'agreement as to details with Scandinavian Ribold ballads'.<ref>{{:Child, Francis James 1882a}}, vol. I, p. 106; an see vol. I, pp. 88-105. Brackets and bold type as in Child. For the Ribold ballads, see Child, vol. I, pp. 88-93, and sources cited there.</ref>
|-
|}

== Background ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mathew_Gutch Wikipedia: John Mathew Gutch]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Payne_Collier Wikipedia: John Payne Collier.]

== Notes ==
<references/>
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