The Noble Fisherman

17th century ballad of Robin Hood

The Noble Fisherman, also known as Robin Hood's Preferment and Robin Hood's Fishing, is a 17th century ballad of Robin Hood. Unusually, it depicts Robin Hood as a hero of the sea, rather than his usual portrayal as someone who operated in the greenwood forest. It seems to have been quite popular for the first two centuries of its existence, although it eventually lost prominence and was less used in adaptations of Robin Hood from the 19th and 20th centuries. It was later published by Francis James Child in the 1880s as Child Ballad #148 in his influential collection of popular ballads. Robin Hood's Bay in the Borough of Scarborough may have been an inspiration for the writer of the ballad.

A ballad titled "The Noble Fisherman, or, Robin Hoods great Prize" is listed in the Stationers' Register as from June 1631, and was presumably this ballad. The oldest surviving copy is also probably from the 1630s, now kept in the Bodleian Library collection. Many late 17th century broadside copies exist and the ballad was commonly included in the garlands (collections) of Robin Hood ballads of the 17th and 18th centuries, suggesting the work's popularity. The ballad's writing style suggests it was written by a professional ballad writer inventing a tale that combined England's famous hero with the then popular genre of stories involving a victory over a hated foreign enemy in the French, making it unlikely the tale originated from an older medieval popular tradition, and certainly not an actual historical incident. Francis Child called the ballad somewhat "infantile" by his era's standards, but acknowledged that it clearly found an audience during its time.