Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar earlier version, Robin Hood good-humoredly refuses further combat; in both earlier and later versions Robin invites him to join the band. Howard Pyle used this tale in his "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" as part of the tale of Alan-a-Dale: Robin needed a priest who would perform the wedding ceremony in defiance of authority, and Will Scarlet proposed Friar Tuck. The Percy Folio version of the ballad begins with the stanza: Robert Graves in his "English and Scottish Ballads" used this stanza to support his argument for pagan survivals in the Robin Hood legend, and for the popular survival
Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires or Robin Hood and the Widow's Three Sons is Child ballad 140, about Robin Hood. Robin meets an old woman lamenting that her sons will hang for poaching the king's deer. He persuades an old man to trade his ragged clothing for Robin's fine clothes, and in this disguise, offers to be the sheriff's hangman. He blows on his horn, and his men arrive. In some variants, they hang the sheriff instead of the three young men; in all, they all escape back to the greenwood. Howard Pyle retold this