Is in the mickle wood!
Little John, Little John,
He to the town is gone.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Is telling his beads,
All in the green wood,
Among the green weeds.

Little John, Little John,
If he comes no more,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
He will fret full sore!

IV.

[The following lines were obtained in Oxfordshire. The story
to which it alludes is related by Matthew Paris.]

One moonshiny night
As I sat high,
Waiting for one
To come by;
The boughs did bend,
My heart did ache
To see what hole the fox did make.

V.

[The following perhaps refers to Joanna of Castile, who
visited the court of Henry the Seventh, in the year 1506.]

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;
The king of Spain's daughter came to visit me,
And all was because of my little nut tree.
I skipp'd over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.

VI.

[From a MS. in the old Royal Library, in the British Museum,
the exact reference to which is mislaid. It is written, if I
recollect rightly, in a hand of the time of Henry VIII, in an
older manuscript.]

We make no spare
Of John Hunkes' mare;
And now I
Think she will die;
He thought it good
To put her in the wood,
To seek where she might ly dry;
If the mare should chance to fale,
Then the crownes would for her sale.

VII.

[From MS. Sloane, 1489, fol. 19, written in the time of
Charles I.]

The king of France, and four thousand men,
They drew their swords, and put them up again.

VIII.

[In a tract, called 'Pigges Corantoe, or Newes from the
North,' 4to Lond. 1642, p. 3, this is called "Old Tarlton's
Song." It is perhaps a parody on the popular epigram of "Jack
and Jill." I do not know the period of the battle to which it
appears to allude, but Tarlton died in the year 1588, so that
the rhyme must be earlier.]

The king of France went up the hill,
With twenty thousand men;
The king of France came down the hill,
And ne'er went up again.

IX.

The king of France, with twenty thousand men,
Went up the hill, and then came down again;
The king of Spain, with twenty thousand more,
Climb'd the same hill the French had climb'd before.

X.

[Another version. The nurse sings the first line, and repeats
it, ti