This is one of the few Robin Hood ballads to have lasted in oral tradition, but this could well be due to the fact that it continued to be printed on broadsides well into the nineteenth century as ‘Bold Robin Hood’. Child gave for its main title ‘Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires’. It appears in the first volume of Percy’s Folio Manuscript so it can be traced back at least to c1650.

 Notes by Steve Gardham