l study them later,
when we try to understand the rise of the drama in England.

Besides these greater works, an enormous number of fables and satires
appeared in this age, copied or translated from the French, like the
metrical romances. The most famous of these are "The Owl and the
Nightingale,"--a long debate between the two birds, one representing the
gay side of life, the other the sterner side of law and morals,--and "Land
of Cockaygne," i.e. "Luxury Land," a keen satire on monks and monastic
religion.[57]

While most of the literature of the time was a copy of the French and was
intended only for the upper classes, here and there were singers who made
ballads for the common people; and these, next to the metrical romances,
are the most interesting and significant of all the works of the Norman
period. On account of its obscure origin and its oral transmission, the
ballad is always the most difficult of literary subjects.[58] We make here
only three suggestions, which may well be borne in mind: that ballads were
produced continually in England from Anglo-Saxon times until the
seventeenth century; that for centuries they were the only really popular
literature; and that in the ballads alone one is able to understand the
common people. Read, for instance, the ballads of the "merrie greenwood
men," which gradually collected into the _Geste of Robin Hood_, and you
will understand better, perhaps, than from reading many histories what the
common people of England felt and thought while their lords and masters
were busy with impossible metrical romances.

In these songs speaks the heart of the English folk. There is lawlessness
indeed; but this seems justified by the oppression of the times and by the
barbarous severity of the game laws. An intense hatred of shams and
injustice lurks in every song; but the hatred is saved from bitterness by
the humor with which captives, especially rich churchmen, are solemnly
lectured by the bandits, while they squirm at sight of devilish tortures
prepared before their eyes in order to make them give up their golden
purses; and the scene generally ends in a bit of wild horse-play. There is
fighting enough, and ambush and sudden death lurk at every turn of the
lonely roads; but there is also a rough, honest chivalry for women, and a
generous sharing of plunder with the poor and needy. All literature is but
a dream expressed, and "Robin Hood" is the dream of an ignorant and
oppressed b