Companion of Robin Hood in some sources from 1475 onwards, Tuck may have originally been an independent comic figure based on the medieval stereotype of a disreputable friar—fond of fighting, hunting, and wenching. He is almost certainly the unnamed friar in a play in William Copland's edition of The Gest of Robin Hood (1560), who beats Robin in a fight and is invited into the outlaw band, where he is delighted to be given a woman (unnamed, but possibly Maid Marian):
She is a trull of trust,
To serve a frier at his lust,
A prycker, a prauncer, a tearer of sheets,
A wagger of ballockes when other men sleeps.
Friar Tuck is also often mentioned as a character in Elizabethan
morris dances, usually linked to Maid Marian.
Dobson and Taylor, 1976: 208-14; Knight, 1994: 61-2, 101-5.
