My heart rose high as I heard him, for it was concerning the
struggle against tyranny for the freedom of life, how that the
wildwood and the heath, despite of wind and weather, were better for a
free man than the court and the cheaping-town; of the taking from the
rich to give to the poor; of the life of a man doing his own will and
not the will of another man commanding him for the commandment's sake.
The men all listened eagerly, and at whiles took up as a refrain a
couplet at the end of a stanza with their strong and rough, but not
unmusical voices. As they sang, a picture of the wild-woods passed by
me, as they were indeed, no park-like dainty glades and lawns, but
rough and tangled thicket and bare waste and heath, solemn under the
morning sun, and dreary with the rising of the evening wind and the
drift of the night-long rain.
When he had done, another began in something of the same strain, but
singing more of a song than a story ballad; and thus much I remember
of it:
The Sheriff is made a mighty lord,
Of goodly gold he hath enow,
And many a sergeant girt with sword;
But forth will we and bend the bow.
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