248 Reviews.
Discussing the origin of Hoodening, Mr. Maylam first decides against the received derivation from wooden, albeit this is coun- tenanced by the English Dialect Dictionary ; and if, as he says, the ehsion of the initial w is foreign to the genius of the Kentish dialect, we think he is right, and even more so when he dismisses the other popular etymology from Woden or Odin. He is well aware of the absurdity of trying to prove a direct connection between Teutonic paganism and hoodening, and applies himself rather to the examination of mediaeval pastimes as the " proximate origin " of the custom. Here, of course, he meets with the familiar Shakspearian " hobby-horse," and the representation of the hobby- horse in the famous window at Betley Hall, Staffordshire, temp. Edw. IV. Perhaps the connecting link with Pagan times may be found in the well-known extract (which he quotes, p. 28) from the Penitential of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, or- daining the penances to be performed by "any who on the kalends of January clothe themselves with the skins of cattle, or carry about the heads of animals." Here we come as near as may be to evidence of similar Christmas customs in the Lathe of St. Augustine in the seventh century.
But we cannot agree with him when he derives the name of the hooden horse from Robin Hood. In the first place Robin Hood was an archer,^ a footman ; not a mounted highwayman with pistols like Dick Turpin. He never appears as riding but when he accompanies the King to Court or on some similar occasion. Marksmanship with the long bow, not horsemanship, is his charac- teristic. Then again, the Robin Hood pageant was/ar excellence a J/rtj/ game appropriate to the "greenwood" visited by the Mayers, and not a Christmas custom. Mr. E. K. Chambers {MedicBval Stage, vol. ii.) shows us that the festival games of the Middle Ages consisted of three, not two, elements : — the morris- dance, the masquerade (of Robin Hood or St. George), and the " grotesque " characters, as he calls them, who acted independently of the rest. These were usually three in number, the Fool, the
^ On the evidence of Mrs. F. A. Milne and other spectators of the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance in 1909, it is the crossbow-man who is called Robin Hood, not the Hobby-horse, as stated by Mr. Maylam (p. 62) on the authority of Sir Benjamin Stone's Picttires.
