"Saucy art thou thine own self, and if thou puttest foot upon these boards, I will make thy saucy tongue rattle within thy teeth!" "Now," quoth Little John, "is there never a man here that will lend me a good stout staff till I try the mettle of yon fellow ?" At this, half a score reached him their staves, and he took the stoutest and heaviest of them all.

Then, looking up and down the cudgel, he said, "Now, I have in my hand but a splint of wood--a barley straw, as it were--yet I trow it will have to serve me, so here goeth." Thereupon he cast the cudgel upon the stand and, leaping lightly after it, snatched it up in his hand again.
Then each man stood in his place and measured the other with fell looks until he that directed the sport cried, "Play!" At this they stepped forth, each grasping his staff tightly in the middle.

Then those that stood around saw the stoutest game of quarterstaff that e'er Nottingham Town beheld.

At first Eric o' Lincoln thought that he would gain an easy advantage, so he came forth as if he would say, "Watch, good people, how that I carve you this cockerel right speedily;" but he presently found it to be no such speedy matter.

Right deftly he struck, and with great skill of fence, but he had found his match in Little John.