Lincoln green

:"For the area of Leeds, see Lincoln Green".Lincoln green was the dyed woollen cloth associated with Robin Hood and his merry men in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. The dyers of Lincoln, a great cloth town in the early Middle Ages, produced the cloth by dyeing it with woad ("Isatis tinctoria") to give it a strong blue, then overdyeing it yellow with weld ("Reseda luteola") [ [http://www.alchemy-works.com/reseda_luteola.html "Reseda luteola"] .] or dyers' broom, "Genista tinctoria". [ [http://www.florilegium.org/files/TEXTILES/green-art.html Stefan's Florilegium] .] "Coventry blue" and "Kendall green" were also famous. By the late sixteenth century, Lincoln green was a thing of the past, for John Drayton provided a sidenote in his "Poly-Olbion" (published 1612): "Lincoln anciently dyed the best "green" in England." [Noted in Robert Nares, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps and Thomas Wright, "A Glossary, Or, Collection of Words, Phrases, Names and Allusions..." (1901), "s.v." "Lincoln green".] Cloth of Lincoln green was more pleasing than undyed shepherd's gray cloth: "When they were clothed in Lyncolne grene they kest away theirgray", according to "A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode", ca 1510, [Noted in "The Journal for Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers," 158 (April 1991).] and Lincoln green betokened an old-fashioned forester even in the fancy dress of Edmund Spenser's "The Faery Queene":

"All in a woodman's jacket he was clad
of Lincolne Greene, belay'd with silver lace."

The popular ballad printed in the eighteenth-century compilations "Robin Hood's Garland" offers an unexpected picture of Robin as he presented himself at court:

He cloathed his men in "Lincoln green"
And himself in scarlet red" [Nares 1901.]

The distinction was in the cost of scarlet, which was dyed with kermes, produced by the cochineal insect, native to the Mediterranean. Lincoln scarlet, from its imported dyestuff, was more expensive than Lincoln green. In 1198 the Sheriff of Lincoln boughtninety ells (about 112 yards) of scarlet cloth for £30; although thecloth was a finely finished fabric, its high price was almost certainly due mainly to the extremely costly dye-stuff, "greyne" (graine) [Graine is the dye-stuff, linguistically unrelated to "green".] from Kermes or scarlet grain. In 1182 the Sheriff of Lincoln bought Scarlet at 6s 8d/ell,Green and Blanchet both at 3s/ell and Gray at approximately 1s 8d/ell(an ell is about equal to a yard. By 1216 three guilds controlling the cloth trade were established in Lincoln, the Weavers', Dyers', and Fullers' guilds. [Sir Francis Hill, "Medieval Lincoln", 1948, from a publication of the Pipe Roll Society; noted at [http://www.florilegium.org/files/TEXTILES/green-art.html Stefan's Florilegium] .]

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