Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

In Wakefield there lives a jolly Pinder,
in Wakefield all on a Green,
in Wakefield all on a Green;
There is neither Knight nor Squire, said the Pinder;
nor Baron that is so bold,
nor Baron that is so bold;
Dare make a tresspass to the town of Wakefield,
but his Pledge goes to the Pinfold, etc.
All this beheard three witty young Men,
‘Twas Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, etc.

With that they espy’d the jolly Pinder,
as he sat under a thorn, etc.
Now turn again, turn again, said the Pinder,
for a wrong way you have gone, etc.
For you have forsaken the King’s High-way
and made a path over the Corn, etc.
O that were great shame, said jolly Robin,
we being three, and thou but one, etc.
The Pinder leapt back then thirty good foot,
’twas thirty good foot and one, etc.
He leaned his back fast unto a thorn,
and his foot against a stone, etc.
And there they fought a long Summers day,
a summers day so long, etc.
‘Till that their swords on their broad bucklers,
were broke fast unto their hands, etc.

Hold thy hand, hold thy hand, said Robin Hood,
and my merry men every one, etc.
For this is one of the best Pinders
that ever I tryed with sword, etc.
And wilt thou forsake thy Pinders Craft,
and live in the Green-wood with me, etc.
At Michelmas next my Cov’nant comes out,
when every man gathers his fee, etc.
I’ll take my blew blade all in my hand,
and plod to the green wood with thee, etc.
Hast thou either meat or drink? said Robin Hood,
for my merry men and me, etc.
I have both bread and beef, said the Pinder,
and good Ale of the best, etc.
And that is Meat good enough, said Robin Hood,
for such unbidden Guest, etc.
O wilt thou forsake the Pinder his Craft,
and go to the Green-Wood with me? etc.
Thou shalt have a Livery twice in the year,
the one green, the other brown, etc.
If Michaelmas day was come and gone,
and my Master had paid me my fee,
and my Master had paid me my fee,
Then would I set as little by him,
as my Master doth by me,
as my Master doth by me.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Here from the same source is the music. Prince John’s rebellion was in the 12th century, the first known version of the ballad dates from the 1550s (Knight 1997), and we’ll never know when people first imagined this happening.

Something to say? Get in touch

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Animal pound (3) W/G ·
• Ballad (18) W/G ·
• Broadside ballad (2) W/G ·
• Child Ballads (1) W/G ·
• Little John (1) W/G ·
• Michaelmas (6), feast principally of St. Michael on 29 September, one of the four quarter days of the financial, judicial, and academic year, in medieval England the beginning and end of the husbandman's year, hence hiring fairs at this time W/G ·
• Pepys Library (1) W/G ·
• Robin Hood (4) W/G ·
• Song (20) W/G ·
• The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield (1) W/G ·
• 📌Wakefield (37), cathedral city on the River Calder in the West Riding/West Yorkshire W/G ·
• Will Scarlet (1) W/G ·

All tags.

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Here from the same source is the music. Prince John’s rebellion was in the 12th century, the first known version of the ballad dates from the 1550s (Knight 1997), and we’ll never know when people first imagined this happening.

Something to say? Get in touch

Similar

31 December 1848: A fragment of the Richmond Hagmena song, performed this New Year’s Eve by the town pinder

1 December 1851: John (65) and Betty (73) of Wibsey are at long last united in a “funny wedding” at Bradford

15 March 1715: Frustrated lovers Martha Railton and Roger Wrightson of Bowes (North Riding) are buried together

3 July 1816: Emilia Monteiro (15) of Lisbon dies in the French refugee convent at Heath Old Hall, Wakefield, and is commemorated by a local Liberal doggerelist

27 June 1743: Tom Brown of Kirkleatham’s heroics against the French today at Dettingen (Bavaria) lead his general, George II, to grant him a silver prosthetic nose, immortalised in ballad and portrait

25 July 1603: Sir Richard Wortley, persecutor of his neighbours, dies, and is later zoomorphised as the Dragon of Wantley

18 April 1812: Dressed as a country lass, George Butler recites the West Riding dialect tragicomedy of Richard and Betty at his benefit night at the Theatre Royal, Ripon

5 September 1860: Friends of Elizabeth Mitchell (14), murdered by a fellow-servant at Upton (Pontefract), bear her to her grave at South Kirkby

4 September 1947: Conflicting hopes for the future of the nationalised coal industry, as a wildcat strike against increased hours at Grimethorpe spreads through the South Yorkshire coalfield

4 December 1990: Paul Sykes – heavyweight boxer, literary prize-winner, habitual criminal – advises the nation from the back garden of his Wakefield council house on shark attack prevention

Order the book:

Subscribe to the free daily email:

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

The excerpt quoted begins around 24:30:

The quote in my title is from the programme intro. A perhaps better one, from Charles Cox: “Notorious memoir of a violent criminal and, briefly, professional boxer. Sykes was a drunken thug who spent much of his life in prison, but his book is nevertheless the work of a sensitive and intelligent man.”

As I understand it, the major threat in the Johore Strait, after the Singapore authorities, is from pollution, not sharks. Does anyone know more about his foreign travel claims, unmentioned in his autobio (Sykes 1991)? Is Wood Street nick the now retired police station in London EC2?

First broadcast dated from the Times TV listings for 4 December 1990:

10.40 First Tuesday.
● CHOICE: Paul Sykes from Wakefield was good enough to fight for the British heavyweight boxing championship, and to take an Open University degree, and his autobiography won an Arthur Koestler literary award. But his life has been a shambles. He has spent nearly half of his 46 years in prison and he has a wild and violent temperament which has often made his high intelligence count for nothing. Nick Lord’s profile follows Sykes through his latest prison sentence and his attempts yet again to build a stable life outside. The signs are not promising. Within three months he is back in trouble. A specialist in roaring invective, a Yorkshire Alf Garnett in manner if not necessarily in substance, Sykes is a rich subject and Lord does him justice. Those looking for the roots of Sykes’s behaviour may find them in his tough upbringing at the hands of a martinet father who, of all things, worked as a prison officer.

Something to say? Get in touch