Robin Hood version of Robin Hood's life. In reaching his conclusion Ritson relied or gave weight to a number of unreliable sources, such as the Robin Hood plays of Anthony Munday, and the Sloane Manuscript. Nevertheless, Dobson and Taylor credit Ritson with having 'an incalculable effect in promoting the still continuing quest for the man behind the myth', and note that his work remains an 'indispensable handbook to the outlaw legend even now'. Ritson's friend Walter Scott used Ritson's anthology collection as a source for his picture of Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, written in 1818, which did much to shape the modern
Robin Hood ballads. The third (the "Curtal Friar") and the fourth (the "Butcher"), also probably have late medieval origins. Some ballads, such as "Erlinton", feature Robin Hood in some variants, where the folk hero appears to be added to a ballad pre-existing him and in which he does not fit very well. He was added to one variant of "Rose Red and the White Lily", apparently on no more connection than that one hero of the other variants is named "Brown Robin". Francis James Child indeed retitled Child ballad 102; though it was titled "The Birth of Robin Hood", its clear lack