The Abbot for a walk went out A wealthy cleric, very stout, And Robin has that Abbot stuck As the red hunter spears the buck. The djavel or the javelin Has, you observe, gone bravely in, And you may hear that weapon whack Bang through the middle of his back. Hence we may learn that abbots should Never go walking in a wood.
Where this text comes from
First published in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Appendix (1898). This date is uncertain. Taken from the 1898 Appendix volume of the Edinburgh Edition. For most of these verses that is not the first printing: the volume reproduces in facsimile the Davos Press cuts and rhymes that Stevenson wrote and engraved between the autumn of 1880 and the summer of 1882 and that his stepson Lloyd Osbourne printed at the time. The volume's own bibliographical note states that only the two Moral Tales, 'Robin and Ben' and 'The Builder's Doom', are printed here for the first time. Which Davos booklet printed a given rhyme, and in what year, is not established here. [1]
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Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (8)
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Cite this poem
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894).
“The Abbot for a Walk Went Out.” First published in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Appendix (1898).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/robert-louis-stevenson/the-abbot-for-a-walk-went-out/.
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