“ Robin of Locksley ” redirects here. For the 1996 movie, see Robin of Locksley ( film )
Robin Hood is a fabled expansive lawless originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to caption, he was a highly skilled sagittarius and fencer. [ 1 ] In some versions of the caption, he is depicted as being of noble birth, and in modern retellings he is sometimes depicted as having fought in the Crusades before returning to England to find his lands taken by the Sheriff. In the oldest know versions he is alternatively a member of the yeoman course. traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to have robbed from the deep and given to the poor.
Reading: Robin Hood – Wikipedia
Through retellings, additions, and variations, a body of familiar characters associated with Robin Hood has been created. These include his lover, Maid Marian, his band of criminal, the Merry Men, and his foreman adversary, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The Sheriff is much depicted as assisting Prince John in usurping the true but lacking King Richard, to whom Robin Hood remains loyal. His partiality of the common people and his hostility to the Sheriff of Nottingham are early recorded features of the caption, but his interest in the right of the baron is not, and neither is his context in the reign of Richard I. He became a democratic folk music figure in the Late Middle Ages. The earliest know ballads featuring him are from the fifteenth hundred. There have been numerous variations and adaptations of the fib over the subsequent years, and the fib continues to be widely represented in literature, film, and television. Robin Hood is considered one of the best-known tales of English folklore. In democratic culture, the terminus “ Robin Hood ” is often used to describe a epic illegitimate or insurgent against absolutism. The historicity of Robin Hood has been debated for centuries. There are numerous references to historical figures with alike names that have been proposed as possible evidence of his universe, some dating back to the former thirteenth century. At least eight plausible origins to the story have been mooted by historians and folklorists, including suggestions that “ Robin Hood ” was a stock alias used by or in reference to bandits .
Ballads and tales
The first clear reference point to “ rhymes of Robin Hood ” is from the alliterative poem Piers Plowman, thought to have been composed in the 1370s, followed shortly afterwards by a quotation of a late park proverb, [ 2 ] “ many men speak of Robin Hood and never shot his bow ”, [ 3 ] in Friar Daw’s Reply ( c. 1402 ) [ 4 ] and a ailment in Dives and Pauper ( 1405–1410 ) that people would rather listen to “ tales and songs of Robin Hood ” than attend Mass. [ 5 ] Robin Hood is besides mentioned in a celebrated Lollard tract [ 6 ] dated to the inaugural half of the fifteenth hundred [ 7 ] ( therefore besides possibly predating his other early historic mentions ) [ 8 ] aboard several other family heroes such as Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, and Sir Lybeaus. [ 9 ] however, the earliest surviving copies of the narrative ballads that tell his narrative date to the second half of the fifteenth century, or the first base ten of the sixteenth hundred. In these early accounts, Robin Hood ‘s partiality of the lower classes, his devotion to the Virgin Mary and associated especial esteem for women, his outstanding skill as an sagittarius, his anti-clericalism, and his particular animosity towards the Sheriff of Nottingham are already clear. [ 10 ] Little John, much the Miller ‘s Son, and Will Scarlet ( as Will “ Scarlok ” or “ Scathelocke ” ) all appear, although not yet Maid Marian or Friar Tuck. The latter has been separate of the caption since at least the late fifteenth hundred, when he is mentioned in a Robin Hood play handwriting. [ 11 ] In modern popular polish, Robin Hood is typically seen as a contemporary and athletic supporter of the late-12th-century king Richard the Lionheart, Robin being driven to outlawry during the misgovernment of Richard ‘s brother John while Richard was away at the Third Crusade. This view first gained currentness in the sixteenth hundred. [ 12 ] It is not supported by the earliest ballad. The early compilation, A Gest of Robyn Hode, names the king as ‘Edward ‘ ; and while it does show Robin Hood accepting the King ‘s excuse, he later repudiates it and returns to the greenwood. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] The oldest surviving ballad, Robin Hood and the Monk, gives even less support to the painting of Robin Hood as a partisan of the true baron. The arrange of the early ballads is normally attributed by scholars to either the thirteenth hundred or the 14th, although it is recognised they are not necessarily historically consistent. [ 15 ] The early ballads are besides quite clear on Robin Hood ‘s social status : he is a yeoman. While the accurate mean of this condition changed over time, including absolve retainers of an aristocrat and little landholders, it constantly referred to commoners. The kernel of it in the salute context was “ neither a knight nor a peasant or ‘husbonde ‘ but something in between ”. [ 16 ] Artisans ( such as millers ) were among those regarded as ‘yeomen ‘ in the fourteenth century. [ 17 ] From the sixteenth hundred on, there were attempts to elevate Robin Hood to the nobility, such as in Richard Grafton ‘s Chronicle at Large ; [ 18 ] Anthony Munday presented him at the very end of the hundred as the Earl of Huntingdon in two highly influential plays, as he is hush normally presented in modern times. [ 19 ] deoxyadenosine monophosphate well as ballads, the legend was besides transmitted by ‘Robin Hood games ‘ or plays that were an authoritative part of the late medieval and early modern May Day festivities. The first record of a Robin Hood game was in 1426 in Exeter, but the character does not indicate how erstwhile or widespread this customs was at the time. The Robin Hood games are known to have flourished in the later 15th and 16th centuries. [ 20 ] It is normally stated as fact that Maid Marian and a gay friar ( at least partially identifiable with Friar Tuck ) entered the legend through the May Games. [ 21 ]
early ballads
Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, woodcut mark, Thomas Bewick, 1832 The earliest surviving text of a Robin Hood ballad is the 15th-century “ Robin Hood and the Monk “. [ 22 ] This is preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48. Written after 1450, [ 23 ] it contains many of the elements placid associated with the caption, from the Nottingham mise en scene to the bitter hostility between Robin and the local sheriff .
The first print interpretation is A Gest of Robyn Hode ( c. 1500 ), a collection of offprint stories that attempts to unite the episodes into a unmarried continuous narrative. [ 24 ] After this comes “ Robin Hood and the Potter “, [ 25 ] contained in a manuscript of c. 1503. “ The Potter ” is markedly different in tone from “ The Monk ” : whereas the earlier narrative is “ a thriller ” [ 26 ] the latter is more comic, its plot involving trickery and cunning preferably than straightforward force. other early texts are dramatic pieces, the earliest being the fragmental Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham [ 27 ] ( c. 1475 ). These are particularly noteworthy as they show Robin ‘s integration into May Day rituals towards the end of the Middle Ages ; Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham, among early points of interest, contains the earliest address to Friar Tuck. The plots of neither “ the Monk ” nor “ the Potter ” are included in the Gest ; and neither is the plot of “ Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne “, which is probably at least equally previous as those two ballads although preserved in a more late transcript. Each of these three ballads survived in a single transcript, so it is unclear how much of the medieval caption has survived, and what has survived may not be distinctive of the medieval caption. It has been argued that the fact that the surviving ballads were preserved in written form in itself makes it improbable they were typical ; in particular, stories with an interest for the gentry were by this watch more probable to be preserved. [ 28 ] The history of Robin ‘s help to the ‘poor knight ‘ that takes up much of the Gest may be an model. The character of Robin in these first base text is grating edged than in his late incarnations. In “ Robin Hood and the Monk ”, for case, he is shown as quick tempered and violent, assaulting fiddling John for defeating him in an archery contest ; in the lapp ballad Much the Miller ‘s Son casually kills a ‘little page ‘ in the course of rescuing Robin Hood from prison. [ 29 ] No extant early ballad actually shows Robin Hood ‘giving to the hapless ‘, although in “ A Gest of Robyn Hode ” robin does make a big loan to an inauspicious knight, which he does not in the goal command to be repaid ; [ 30 ] and late in the like ballad Robin Hood states his intention of giving money to the adjacent traveler to come down the road if he happens to be poor .
- Of my good he shall haue some,
- Yf he be a por man.[31]
As it happens the adjacent traveler is not poor, but it seems in context that Robin Hood is stating a general policy. The beginning explicit statement to the effect that Robin Hood habitually robbed from the rich people to give the poor can be found in John Stow ‘s Annales of England ( 1592 ), about a century after the publication of the Gest. [ 32 ] [ 33 ] But from the beginning Robin Hood is on the side of the hapless ; the Gest quotes Robin Hood as instructing his men that when they rob :
- loke ye do no husbonde harme
- That tilleth with his ploughe.
- No more ye shall no gode yeman
- That walketh by gren-wode shawe;
- Ne no knyght ne no squyer
- That wol be a gode felawe.[13][14]
And in its final lines the Gest sums up :
- he was a good outlawe,
- And dyde pore men moch god.
Within Robin Hood ‘s band, chivalric forms of courtesy rather than advanced ideals of equality are broadly in evidence. In the early on ballad, Robin ‘s men normally kneel before him in stern obedience : in A Gest of Robyn Hode the king even observes that ‘ His men are more at his byddynge/Then my men be at myn. ‘ Their social status, as yeomen, is shown by their weapons : they use swords rather than quarterstaffs. The only character to use a quarterstaff in the early on ballad is the putter, and Robin Hood does not take to a staff until the 17th-century Robin Hood and Little John. [ 34 ] The political and social assumptions underlying the early Robin Hood ballads have hanker been controversial. J. C. Holt influentially argued that the Robin Hood legend was cultivated in the households of the gentry, and that it would be mistaken to see in him a digit of peasant rebellion. He is not a peasant but a yeoman, and his tales make no mention of the complaints of the peasants, such as oppressive taxes. [ 35 ] He appears not so much as a disgust against social standards as an shape of them, being generous, pious, and courteous, opposed to stingy, worldly, and churlish foes. [ 36 ] other scholars have by contrast stressed the revolutionist aspects of the legend, and see in the chivalric Robin Hood ballads a common literature hostile to the feudal order. [ 37 ]
early plays, May Day games, and fairs
By the early fifteenth hundred at the latest, Robin Hood had become associated with May Day celebrations, with revellers dressing as Robin or as members of his band for the festivities. This was not coarse throughout England, but in some regions the customs lasted until Elizabethan times, and during the reign of Henry VIII, was concisely popular at court. [ 38 ] Robin was often allocated the function of a May King, presiding over games and processions, but plays were besides performed with the characters in the roles, [ 39 ] sometimes performed at church ales, a means by which churches raised funds. [ 40 ] A charge of 1492, brought to the Star Chamber, accuses men of acting exuberantly by coming to a fair as Robin Hood and his men ; the accused defended themselves on the grounds that the practice was a long-standing custom to raise money for churches, and they had not acted exuberantly but peaceably. [ 41 ]
It is from the affiliation with the May Games that Robin ‘s amatory attachment to Maid Marian ( or Marion ) apparently stems. A “ Robin and Marion ” figured in 13th-century french ‘ pastourelles ‘ ( of which Jeu de Robin et Marion c. 1280 is a literary version ) and presided over the french May festivities, “ this Robin and Marion tended to preside, in the intervals of the attempted seduction of the latter by a series of knights, over a variety of agrestic pastimes ”. [ 42 ] In the Jeu de Robin and Marion, Robin and his companions have to rescue Marion from the clutches of a “ lascivious knight ”. [ 43 ] This play is distinct from the English legends. [ 38 ] although Dobson and Taylor regard it as ‘highly probable ‘ that this french Robin ‘s list and functions travelled to the English May Games where they fused with the Robin Hood legend. [ 44 ] Both Robin and Marian were surely associated with May Day festivities in England ( as was Friar Tuck ), but these may have been originally two discrete types of operation – Alexander Barclay in his Ship of Fools, writing in c. 1500, refers to ‘ some merry fytte of Maid Marian or else of Robin Hood ‘ – but the characters were brought together. [ 45 ] Marian did not immediately gain the undisputed function ; in Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valor, and Marriage, his sweetheart is “ Clorinda the Queen of the Shepherdesses ”. [ 46 ] Clorinda survives in some late stories as an alias of Marian. [ 47 ] The earliest preserved script of a Robin Hood bet is the fragmental Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham [ 27 ] This obviously dates to the 1470s and circumstantial evidence suggests it was credibly performed at the family of Sir John Paston. This fragment appears to tell the story of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. [ 48 ] There is besides an early playtext appended to a 1560 print edition of the Gest. This includes a dramatic translation of the history of Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar and a version of the inaugural function of the fib of Robin Hood and the Potter. ( Neither of these ballads are known to have existed in print at the clock time, and there is no earlier commemorate known of the “ curtal Friar ” floor ). The publisher describes the text as a ‘ playe of Robyn Hood, verye proper to be played in Maye games ‘, but does not seem to be aware that the text actually contains two disjoined plays. [ 49 ] An especial point of interest in the “ Friar ” gambling is the appearance of a bawdy woman who is nameless but obviously to be identified with the bawdy Maid Marian of the May Games. [ 50 ] She does not appear in extant versions of the ballad .
early mod stage
James VI of Scotland was entertained by a Robin Hood play at Dirleton Castle produced by his favorite the Earl of Arran in May 1585, while there was harass in Edinburgh. [ 51 ] In 1598, Anthony Munday wrote a pair of plays on the Robin Hood caption, The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington ( published 1601 ). These plays drew on a variety of sources, including obviously “ A Gest of Robin Hood ”, and were influential in fixing the report of Robin Hood to the time period of Richard I. Stephen Thomas Knight has suggested that Munday drew heavy on Fulk Fitz Warin, a historical twelfth century outlawed lord and enemy of King John, in creating his Robin Hood. [ 52 ] The maneuver identifies Robin Hood as Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, following in Richard Grafton ‘s association of Robin Hood with the gentry, [ 18 ] and identifies Maid Marian with “ one of the semi-mythical Matildas persecuted by King John “. [ 53 ] The plays are complex in plot and form, the narrative of Robin Hood appearing as a play-within-a-play presented at the court of Henry VIII and written by the poet, priest and courtier John Skelton. Skelton himself is presented in the play as acting the depart of Friar Tuck. Some scholars have conjectured that Skelton may have indeed written a miss Robin Hood play for Henry VIII ‘s court, and that this play may have been one of Munday ‘s sources. [ 54 ] Henry VIII himself with eleven of his nobles had impersonated “ Robyn Hodes men ” as depart of his “ Maying ” in 1510. Robin Hood is known to have appeared in a count of other lost and extant Elizabethan plays. In 1599, the play George a Green, the Pinner of Wakefield places Robin Hood in the reign of Edward IV. [ 55 ] Edward I, a play by George Peele first base performed in 1590–91, incorporates a Robin Hood game played by the characters. Llywelyn the Great, the last independent prince of Wales, is presented playing Robin Hood. [ 56 ]
Fixing the Robin Hood report to the 1190s had been first base proposed by John Major in his Historia Majoris Britanniæ ( 1521 ), ( and he besides may have been influenced in sol doing by the fib of Warin ) ; [ 52 ] this was the period in which King Richard was absent from the nation, fighting in the Third Crusade. [ 57 ] William Shakespeare makes mention to Robin Hood in his late-16th-century play The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In it, the character Valentine is banished from Milan and driven out through the afforest where he is approached by outlaws who, upon meeting him, desire him as their leader. They comment, “ By the unsheathed scalp of Robin Hood ‘s adipose tissue friar, This boyfriend were a king for our fantastic cabal ! ” [ 58 ] Robin Hood is besides mentioned in As You Like It. When asked about the expatriate Duke Senior, the character of Charles says that he is “ already in the forest of Arden, and a many alert men with him ; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England ”. Justice Silence sings a note from an nameless Robin Hood ballad, the occupation is “ Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John ” in Act 5 scene 3 of Henry IV, part 2. In Henry IV function 1 Act 3 scene 3, Falstaff refers to Maid Marian implying she is a by-word for unwomanly or unchaste behavior. Ben Jonson produced the incomplete masquerade The Sad Shepherd, or a Tale of Robin Hood [ 59 ] in contribution as a sarcasm on Puritanism. It is about one-half finished and his death in 1637 may have interrupted write. Jonson ‘s only arcadian play, it was written in twist poetry and included supernatural natural process and characters. [ 60 ] It has had little impact on the Robin Hood tradition but earns mention as the exercise of a major dramatist. The 1642 London field closing by the Puritans interrupted the portrayal of Robin Hood on the stage. The theatres would reopen with the Restoration in 1660. Robin Hood did not appear on the Restoration phase, except for “ Robin Hood and his Crew of Souldiers ” acted in Nottingham on the day of the coronation of Charles II in 1661. This short looseness adapts the narrative of the king ‘s forgiveness of Robin Hood to refer to the Restoration. [ 61 ] however, Robin Hood appeared on the 18th-century stage in assorted farces and comic opera. [ 62 ] Alfred, Lord Tennyson would write a four-act Robin Hood looseness at the end of the nineteenth century, “ The Forrestors ”. It is basically based on the Gest but follows the traditions of placing Robin Hood as the Earl of Huntingdon in the time of Richard I and making the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John rivals with Robin Hood for Maid Marian ‘s hand. [ 63 ] The return of King Richard brings a happy ending .
Broadside ballads and garlands
With the advent of print came the Robin Hood broadside ballads. precisely when they displaced the oral tradition of Robin Hood ballads is stranger but the process seems to have been completed by the goal of the sixteenth century. Near the end of the sixteenth hundred an unpublished prose life of Robin Hood was written, and included in the Sloane Manuscript. largely a paraphrase of the Gest, it besides contains material uncover that the writer was familiar with early versions of a number of the Robin Hood broadside ballads. [ 64 ] not all of the medieval legend was preserved in the broadside ballad, there is no broadside version of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne or of Robin Hood and the Monk, which did not appear in print until the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. however, the Gest was reprinted from fourth dimension to time throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. No surviving broadside ballad can be dated with certainty before the seventeenth hundred, but during that hundred, the commercial broadside ballad became the independent fomite for the popular Robin Hood caption. [ 65 ] These broadside ballads were in some cases newly fabricated but were by and large adaptations of the older verse narratives. The broadside ballads were fitted to a small repertory of preexistent tunes resulting in an increase of “ stock formulaic phrases ” making them “ insistent and long-winded ”, [ 66 ] they normally feature Robin Hood ‘s contests with artisans : tinkers, tanners, and butchers. Among these ballads is Robin Hood and Little John telling the celebrated history of the quarter-staff fight between the two outlaws. Dobson and Taylor wrote, ‘More broadly the Robin of the broadsides is a much less tragic, less expansive and in the final fall back less mature figure than his medieval harbinger ‘. [ 67 ] In most of the broadside ballads Robin Hood remains a common figure, a luminary exception being Martin Parker ‘s attempt at an overall life of Robin Hood, A True Tale of Robin Hood, which besides emphasises the composition of Robin Hood ‘s generosity to the poor more than the circular ballads do in general. The seventeenth hundred introduced the minstrel Alan-a-Dale. He first appeared in a 17th-century broadside ballad, and unlike many of the characters therefore associated, managed to adhere to the legend. [ 46 ] The prose life of Robin Hood in Sloane Manuscript contains the means of the Alan-a-Dale ballad but tells the narrative about Will Scarlet .
In the eighteenth hundred, the stories began to develop a slightly more farcical vein. From this period there are a number of ballads in which Robin is hard ‘drubbed ‘ by a succession of tradesmen including a tanner, a tinker, and a fire warden. [ 57 ] In fact, the lone character who does not get the better of Hood is the unlucky Sheriff. Yet even in these ballads Robin is more than a mere simpleton : on the contrary, he often acts with great shrewdness. The putter, setting out to capture Robin, only manages to fight with him after he has been cheated out of his money and the catch warrant he is carrying. In Robin Hood’s Golden Prize, Robin disguises himself as a friar and cheats two priests out of their cash. tied when Robin is defeated, he normally tricks his foe into letting him sound his horn, summoning the Merry Men to his help. When his enemies do not fall for this ruse, he persuades them to drink with him rather ( see Robin Hood ‘s Delight ). In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Robin Hood ballads were largely sold in “ Garlands ” of 16 to 24 Robin Hood ballads ; these were crudely printed chap books aimed at the poor. The garlands added nothing to the substance of the legend but ensured that it continued after the decline of the single broadside ballad. [ 68 ] In the eighteenth hundred besides, Robin Hood frequently appeared in condemnable biographies and histories of highwaymen compendia. [ 69 ]
rediscovery : Percy and Ritson
In 1765, Thomas Percy ( bishop of Dromore ) published Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, including ballads from the 17th-century Percy Folio manuscript which had not previously been printed, most notably Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne which is generally regarded as in substance a actual late chivalric ballad. In 1795, Joseph Ritson published an enormously influential edition of the Robin Hood ballads Robin Hood: A collection of all the Ancient Poems Songs and Ballads now extant, relative to that celebrated Outlaw. [ 70 ] [ 71 ] ‘By providing english poets and novelists with a convenient reference book, Ritson gave them the opportunity to recreate Robin Hood in their own imagination, ‘ [ 72 ] Ritson ‘s collection included the Gest and put the Robin Hood and the Potter ballad in mark for the first time. The merely meaning omission was Robin Hood and the Monk which would finally be printed in 1806. In all, Ritson printed 33 Robin Hood ballads [ 73 ] ( and a 34th, now normally known as Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon that he included as the second part of Robin Hood Newly Revived which he had retitled “ Robin Hood and the Stranger ” ). [ 74 ] Ritson ‘s interpretation of Robin Hood was besides influential, having influenced the modern concept of stealing from the ample and giving to the poor people as it exists nowadays. [ 75 ] [ 76 ] [ 77 ] [ 78 ] Himself a patron of the principles of the french Revolution and supporter of Thomas Paine, Ritson held that Robin Hood was a truly historical, and truly desperate, character who had stood up against dictatorship in the interests of the common people. [ 72 ] In his foreword to the collection, Ritson assembled an report of Robin Hood ‘s life from the diverse sources available to him, and concluded that Robin Hood was born in around 1160, and therefore had been active in the reign of Richard I. He thought that Robin was of aristocratic extraction, with at least ‘some pretension ‘ to the style of Earl of Huntingdon, that he was born in an unlocated Nottinghamshire greenwich village of Locksley and that his master name was Robert Fitzooth. Ritson gave the date of Robin Hood ‘s death as 18 November 1247, when he would have been around 87 years old. In copious and instructive notes Ritson defends every point of his adaptation of Robin Hood ‘s life. [ 79 ] In reaching his stopping point Ritson relied or gave weight to a count of unreliable sources, such as the Robin Hood plays of Anthony Munday and the Sloane Manuscript. Nevertheless, Dobson and Taylor credit Ritson with having ‘an incalculable impression in promoting the still continuing quest for the serviceman behind the myth ‘, and note that his work remains an ‘indispensable handbook to the lawless legend even now ‘. [ 80 ] Ritson ‘s ally Walter Scott used Ritson ‘s anthology collection as a source for his picture of Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, written in 1818, which did much to shape the mod legend. [ 81 ]
Child ballads
In the decades following the publication of Ritson ‘s script, other ballad collections would occasionally publish digress Robin Hood ballads Ritson had missed. In 1806, Robert Jamieson published the earliest know Robin Hood ballad, Robin Hood and the Monk in volume II of his Popular Ballads and Songs From Tradition. In 1846, the Percy Society included The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood in its collection, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England. In 1850, John Mathew Gutch published his own collection of Robin Hood ballads, Robin Hood Garlands and Ballads, with the tale of the lytell Geste, that in addition to all of Ritson ‘s collection, besides included Robin Hood and the Pedlars and Robin Hood and the Scotchman. In 1858, Francis James Child published his English and Scottish Ballads which included a bulk grouping all the Robin Hood ballads in one book, including all the ballads published by Ritson, the four stray ballads published since then, a well as some ballads that either mentioned Robin Hood by diagnose or sport characters named Robin Hood but were n’t traditional Robin Hood stories. For his more scholarly study, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in his book dedicated to the Robin Hood ballads, published in 1888, Child removed the ballads from his earlier employment that were n’t traditional Robin Hood stories, gave the ballad Ritson titled Robin Hood and the Stranger back its original published title Robin Hood Newly Revived, and separated what Ritson had printed as the second share of Robin Hood and the Stranger as its own separate ballad, Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon. He besides included alternate versions of ballads that had distinct, understudy versions. He numbered these 38 Robin Hood ballads among the 305 ballads in his solicitation as Child Ballads Nos 117–154, which is how they ‘re frequently referenced in scholarly works .
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood The title page of Howard Pyle ‘s 1883 fresh, In the nineteenth hundred, the Robin Hood caption was beginning specifically adapted for children. Children ‘s editions of the garlands were produced and in 1820, a children ‘s edition of Ritson ‘s Robin Hood collection was published. Children ‘s novels began to appear concisely thereafter. It is not that children did not read Robin Hood stories before, but this is the first appearance of a Robin Hood literature specifically aimed at them. [ 82 ] A very influential exercise of these children ‘s novels was Pierce Egan the Younger ‘s Robin Hood and Little John ( 1840 ). [ 83 ] [ 84 ] This was adapted into french by Alexandre Dumas in Le Prince des Voleurs ( 1872 ) and Robin Hood Le Proscrit ( 1873 ). Egan made Robin Hood of lord parturition but raised by the forestor Gilbert Hood. Another very popular translation for children was Howard Pyle ‘s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which influenced accounts of Robin Hood through the twentieth hundred. [ 85 ] Pyle ‘s interpretation firm stamp Robin as a steadfast philanthropist, a man who takes from the rich people to give to the poor people. Nevertheless, the adventures are still more local than national in telescope : while King Richard ‘s engagement in the Crusades is mentioned in happen, Robin takes no rack against Prince John, and plays no separate in raising the ransom to release Richard. These developments are partially of the 20th-century Robin Hood myth. Pyle ‘s Robin Hood is a yeoman and not an aristocrat. The idea of Robin Hood as a exalted Saxon fighting Norman lords besides originates in the nineteenth hundred. The most noteworthy contributions to this idea of Robin are Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry ‘s Histoire de la Conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands ( 1825 ) and Sir Walter Scott ‘s Ivanhoe ( 1819 ). In this end work in finical, the modern Robin Hood—’King of Outlaws and prince of good fellows ! ‘ as Richard the Lionheart calls him—makes his debut. [ 86 ]
Forresters Manuscript
In 1993, a previously unknown manuscript of 21 Robin Hood ballads ( including 2 versions of The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield ) turned up in an auction house and finally wound up in the british Library. Called The Forresters Manuscript, after the first and last ballads, which are both entitle Robin Hood and the Forresters, it was published in 1998 as Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript. It appears to have been written in the 1670s. [ 87 ] While all the ballads in the Manuscript had already been known and published during the 17th and 18th centuries ( although most of the ballads in the Manuscript have different titles then ones they have listed under the Child Ballads ), 13 of the ballads in Forresters are perceptibly different from how they appeared in the broadsides and garlands. 9 of these ballads are significantly longer and more elaborate than the versions of the same ballad found in the broadsides and garlands. For 4 of these ballads, the Forresters Manuscript versions are the earliest know versions .
twentieth hundred onwards
The twentieth century grafted still further details on to the original legends. The 1938 movie The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, portrayed Robin as a hero on a home scale, leading the persecute Saxons in rebellion against their Norman overlords while Richard the Lionheart crusade in the Crusades ; this movie established itself so definitively that many studios resorted to movies about his son ( invented for that aim ) rather than compete with the double of this matchless. [ 88 ] In 1953, during the McCarthy earned run average, a republican member of the Indiana Textbook Commission called for a ban of Robin Hood from all Indiana school books for promoting communism because he stole from the full-bodied to give to the poor. [ 89 ]
Films, animations, new concepts, and other adaptations
Walt Disney ‘s Robin Hood
In the 1973 animated Disney film Robin Hood, the title character is portrayed as an anthropomorphic confuse voiced by Brian Bedford. Years before Robin Hood had even entered production, Disney had considered doing a project on Reynard the Fox ; however, ascribable to concerns that Reynard was unsuitable as a hero, animator Ken Anderson adapted some elements from Reynard into Robin Hood, making the deed character a dodger. [ 90 ]
Robin and Marian
The 1976 British-American film Robin and Marian, starring Sean Connery as Robin Hood and Audrey Hepburn as Maid Marian, portrays the figures in late years after Robin has returned from service with Richard the Lionheart in a alien crusade and Marian has gone into privacy in a nunnery. This is the beginning in popular acculturation to portray King Richard as less than arrant .
Muslim Merry Men
Since the 1980s, it has become banal to include a Saracen ( Arab / Muslim ) among the Merry Men, a vogue that began with the character Nasir in the 1984 ITV Robin of Sherwood television series. Later versions of the history have followed lawsuit : a translation of Nasir appears in the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves ( Azeem ) and the 2006 BBC TV series Robin Hood ( Djaq ). [ 88 ] Spoofs have besides followed this swerve, with the 1990s BBC situation comedy Maid Marian and her Merry Men parodying the moorish character with Barrington, a rastafarian rapper played by Danny John-Jules, [ 91 ] and Mel Brooks drollery Robin Hood: Men in Tights featuring Isaac Hayes as Asneeze and Dave Chappelle as his son Ahchoo. The 2010 movie interpretation Robin Hood, did not include a Saracen quality. The 2018 adaptation Robin Hood portrays the fictional character of Little John as a Muslim named Yahya, played by Jamie Foxx .
France
between 1963 and 1966, french television broadcast a medievalist series entitled Thierry La Fronde ( Thierry the Sling ). This successful serial, which was besides shown in Canada, Poland ( Thierry Śmiałek ), Australia ( The King’s Outlaw ), and the Netherlands ( Thierry de Slingeraar ), transposes the English Robin Hood narrative into deep medieval France during the Hundred Years ‘ War. [ 92 ] The master ballads and plays, including the early chivalric poems and the latter tirade ballads and garlands have been edited and translated for the very first time in French in 2017 [ 93 ] by Jonathan Fruoco. Until then, the text had been unavailable in France .
Historicity
The historicity of Robin Hood has been debated for centuries. A difficulty with any such historical inquiry is that Robert was a very park given name in medieval England, and ‘Robin ‘ ( or Robyn ) was its very park diminutive, specially in the thirteenth hundred ; [ 94 ] it is a french pet name, [ 95 ] already mentioned in the Roman de Renart in the twelfth hundred. The surname Hood ( by any spell ) was besides fairly common because it referred either to a hooder, who was a manufacturer of hoods, or alternatively to person who wore a hood as a head-covering. It is therefore unsurprising that medieval records citation a act of people called “ Robert Hood ” or “ robin Hood ”, some of whom are known criminals. Another horizon on the beginning of the name is expressed in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica which remarks that “ hood ” was a common dialectic form of “ wood ” ( compare Dutch hout, pronounced /hʌut/, besides meaning “ wood ” ), and that the lawless ‘s name has been given as “ Robin Wood ”. [ 96 ] There are a count of references to Robin Hood as Robin Wood, or Whood, or Whod, from the 16th and 17th centuries. The earliest commemorate example, in connection with May games in Somerset, dates from 1518. [ 97 ]
early references
The oldest references to Robin Hood are not diachronic records, or evening ballads recounting his exploits, but hints and allusions found in assorted works. From 1261 forth, the names “ Robinhood ”, “ Robehod ”, or “ Robbehod ” happen in the rolls of several English Justices as nicknames or descriptions of malefactors. The majority of these references date from the recently thirteenth century. between 1261 and 1300, there are at least eight references to “ Rabunhod ” in versatile regions across England, from Berkshire in the south to York in the north. [ 26 ] Leaving aside the reference to the “ rhymes ” of Robin Hood in Piers Plowman in the 1370s, [ 98 ] [ 99 ] and the spread mentions of his “ tales and songs ” in versatile religious tracts dating to the early fifteenth century, [ 3 ] [ 5 ] [ 7 ] the first mention of a quasi-historical Robin Hood is given in Andrew of Wyntoun ‘s Orygynale Chronicle, written in about 1420. The keep up lines occur with little contextualisation under the class 1283 :
- Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude
- Wayth-men ware commendyd gude
- In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale
- Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.[100]
In a petition presented to Parliament in 1439, the name is used to describe an itinerant criminal. The petition cites one Piers Venables of Aston, Derbyshire, [ a ] “ who having no liflode, nebraska sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of rebellion, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hude and his meyne. ” [ 101 ] The adjacent diachronic description of Robin Hood is a statement in the Scotichronicon, composed by John of Fordun between 1377 and 1384, and revised by Walter Bower in about 1440. Among Bower ‘s many interpolations is a passage that immediately refers to Robin. It is inserted after Fordun ‘s history of the get the better of of Simon de Montfort and the punishment of his adherents, and is entered under the class 1266 in Bower ‘s report. Robin is represented as a fighter for de Montfort ‘s cause. [ 102 ] This was in fact on-key of the historic criminal of Sherwood Forest Roger Godberd, whose points of similarity to the Robin Hood of the ballads have often been noted. [ 103 ] [ 104 ]
- Then arose the famous murderer, Robert Hood, as well as Little John, together with their accomplices from among the disinherited, whom the foolish populace are so inordinately fond of celebrating both in tragedies and comedies, and about whom they are delighted to hear the jesters and minstrels sing above all other ballads.[105]
The news translated here as ‘murderer ‘ is the latin sicarius ( literally ‘dagger-man ‘ but actually mean, in classical Latin, ‘assassin ‘ or ‘murderer ‘ ), from the Latin sica for ‘dagger ‘, and descends from its use to describe the Sicarii, assassins operating in Roman Judea. Bower goes on to relate an anecdote about Robin Hood in which he refuses to flee from his enemies while hearing Mass in the greenwood, and then gains a surprise victory over them, obviously as a reward for his piety ; the mention of “ tragedies ” suggests that some shape of the narrative relating his end, as per A Gest of Robyn Hode, might have been in currentness already. [ 106 ] Another character, discovered by julian Luxford in 2009, appears in the margin of the “ Polychronicon “ in the Eton College library. Written around the year 1460 by a monk in Latin, it says :
- Around this time [i.e., reign of Edward I], according to popular opinion, a certain outlaw named Robin Hood, with his accomplices, infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies.[107]
Following this, John Major mentions Robin Hood within his Historia Majoris Britanniæ ( 1521 ), casting him in a positive fall by mentioning his and his followers ‘ antipathy to bloodshed and ethos of only robbing the affluent ; Major besides fixed his floruit not to the mid-13th century but the reigns of Richard I of England and his brother, King John. [ 52 ] Richard Grafton, in his Chronicle at Large ( 1569 ) went far when discussing Major ‘s description of “ Robert Hood ”, identifying him for the first clock time as a extremity of the gentry, albeit possibly “ being of a base stock and linaege, was for his humanness and chivalry advanced to the baronial dignity of an Earl ” and not the yeomanry, foreshadowing Anthony Munday ‘s roll of him as the dispossed Earl of Huntingdon. [ 18 ] The name however still had a reputation of sedition and treachery in 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his associates were branded “ Robin Hoods ” by Robert Cecil. In 1644, jurist Edward Coke described Robin Hood as a historical human body who had operated in the predominate of King Richard I around Yorkshire ; he interpreted the contemporaneous condition “ roberdsmen ” ( criminal ) as meaning followers of Robin Hood. [ 108 ]
Robert Hod of York
The earliest know legal records mentioning a person called Robin Hood ( Robert Hod ) are from 1226, found in the York Assizes, when that person ‘s goods, worth 32 shillings and 6 penny, were confiscated and he became an criminal. Robert Hod owed the money to St Peter ‘s in York. The pursuit year, he was called “ Hobbehod ”, and besides came to known as “ Robert Hood ”. Robert Hod of York is the lone early Robin Hood known to have been an criminal. In 1936, L.V.D. Owen floated the idea that Robin Hood might be identified with an outlawed Robert Hood, or Hod, or Hobbehod, all obviously the same homo, referred to in nine consecutive Yorkshire Pipe Rolls between 1226 and 1234. [ 109 ] [ 110 ] There is no evidence however that this Robert Hood, although an illegitimate, was besides a bandit. [ 111 ]
Robert and John Deyville
historian Oscar de Ville discusses the career of John Deyville and his brother Robert, along with their kinsmen Jocelin and Adam, during the second Barons ‘ War, specifically their activities after the Battle of Evesham. John Deyville was granted authority by the cabal led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester over York Castle and the Northern Forests during the war in which they sought recourse after Evesham. John, along with his relatives, led the remaining rebel faction on the Isle of Ely following the Dictum of Kenilworth. [ 112 ] De Ville connects their presence there with Bower ‘s mention of “ Robert Hood ” during the aftermath of Evesham in his annotations to the Scotichronicon. While John was finally pardoned and continued his career until 1290, his kinsmen are no longer mentioned by diachronic records after the events surrounding their resistance at Ely, and de Ville speculates that Robert remained an criminal. other points de Ville raises in support of John and his brothers ‘ exploits forming the inspiration for Robin Hood include their properties in Barnsdale, John ‘s settlement of a mortgage worth £400 paralleling Robin Hood ‘s jacob’s ladder of identical value to Sir Richard at the Lee, kinship with Sir Richard Foliot, a possible inhalation for the former figure, and ownership of a arm family at Hood Hill, near Kilburn, North Yorkshire. The last of these is suggested to be the inspiration for Robin Hood ‘s second name as opposed to the more coarse theory of a head covering. [ 113 ] possibly not coincidentally, a “ Robertus Hod ” is mentioned in records among the holdouts at Ely. [ 114 ] Although de Ville does not explicitly get in touch John and Robert Deyville to Robin Hood, he discusses these parallels in detail and suggests that they formed prototypes for this ideal of heroic lawlessness during the disruptive predominate of Henry III ‘s grandson and Edward I ‘s son, Edward II of England. [ 115 ]
Roger Godberd
David Baldwin identifies Robin Hood with the diachronic lawless Roger Godberd, who was a die-hard assistant of Simon de Montfort, which would place Robin Hood around the 1260s. [ 116 ] [ 117 ] There are surely parallels between Godberd ‘s career and that of Robin Hood as he appears in the Gest. John Maddicott has called Godberd “ that prototype Robin Hood ”. [ 118 ] Some problems with this hypothesis are that there is no evidence that Godberd was ever known as Robin Hood and no sign in the early Robin Hood ballads of the specific concerns of de Montfort ‘s revolt. [ 119 ]
Robin Hood of Wakefield
The antiquarian Joseph Hunter ( 1783–1861 ) believed that Robin Hood had inhabited the forests of Yorkshire during the early decades of the fourteenth century. Hunter pointed to two men whom, believing them to be the same person, he identified with the legendary outlaw :
- Robert Hood who is documented as having lived in the city of Wakefield at the start of the fourteenth century.
- “Robyn Hode” who is recorded as being employed by Edward II of England during 1323.
Hunter developed a fairly detailed hypothesis implying that Robert Hood had been an adherent of the rebel Earl of Lancaster, who was defeated by Edward II at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. According to this hypothesis, Robert Hood was thereafter pardoned and employed as a bodyguard by King Edward, and in consequence he appears in the 1323 court roll under the name of “ Robyn Hode ”. Hunter ‘s theory has hanker been recognised to have serious problems, one of the most serious being that recent research has shown that Hunter ‘s Robyn Hood had been employed by the king before he appeared in the 1323 woo peal, thus casting doubt on this Robyn Hood ‘s supposed early career as illegitimate and rebel. [ 120 ]
Alias
It has long been suggested, notably by John Maddicott, that “ Robin Hood ” was a stock alias used by thieves. [ 121 ] What appears to be the beginning sleep together model of “ Robin Hood ” as a stock name for an illegitimate dates to 1262 in Berkshire, where the surname “ Robehod ” was applied to a man apparently because he had been outlawed. [ 122 ] This could suggest two chief possibilities : either that an early on form of the Robin Hood legend was already well established in the mid-13th century ; or alternatively that the name “ Robin Hood ” preceded the lawless hero that we know ; so that the “ Robin Hood ” of legend was so called because that was seen as an allow list for an illegitimate .
mythology
There is at stage little or no scholarly back for the opinion that tales of Robin Hood have stemmed from mythology or folklore, from fairies or early fabulous origins, any such associations being regarded as former exploitation. [ 123 ] [ 124 ] It was once a popular see, however. [ 96 ] The “ fabulous hypothesis ” dates back at least to 1584, when Reginald Scot identified Robin Hood with the Germanic goblin “ Hudgin ” or Hodekin and associated him with Robin Goodfellow. [ 125 ] Maurice Keen [ 126 ] provides a abbreviated summary and utilitarian review of the evidence for the see Robin Hood had fabulous origins. While the criminal much shows great skill in archery, play and disguise, his feats are no more exaggerated than those of characters in other ballads, such as Kinmont Willie, which were based on historical events. [ 127 ] Robin Hood has besides been claimed for the heathen witch-cult supposed by Margaret Murray to have existed in medieval Europe, and his anti-clericalism and Marianism interpreted in this lightly. [ 128 ] The being of the witch cult as proposed by Murray is now broadly discredited .
Associated locations
Sherwood Forest
The early ballads link Robin Hood to identifiable real places. In democratic culture, Robin Hood and his band of “ gay men ” are portrayed as living in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire. [ 129 ] notably, the Lincoln Cathedral Manuscript, which is the first officially recorded Robin Hood song ( dating from approximately 1420 ), makes an denotative reference to the criminal that states that “ Robyn hode in scherewode stod ”. [ 130 ] In a similar fashion, a monk of Witham Priory ( 1460 ) suggested that the sagittarius had ‘infested shirwode ‘. His chronicle introduction reads :
- ‘Around this time, according to popular opinion, a certain outlaw named Robin Hood, with his accomplices, infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies’.[131]
Nottinghamshire
specific sites in the county of Nottinghamshire that are directly linked to the Robin Hood legend include Robin Hood ‘s Well, located near Newstead Abbey ( within the boundaries of Sherwood Forest ), the church service of St. Mary in the village of Edwinstowe and most famously of all, the Major Oak besides located at the village of Edwinstowe. [ 132 ] The Major Oak, which resides in the heart of Sherwood Forest, is popularly believed to have been used by the Merry Men as a hide-out. Dendrologists have contradicted this claim by estimating the tree ‘s true senesce at around eight hundred years ; it would have been relatively a sapling in Robin ‘s time, at best. [ 133 ]
yorkshire
Nottinghamshire ‘s claim to Robin Hood ‘s inheritance is disputed, with Yorkists staking a claim to the criminal. In demonstrating Yorkshire ‘s Robin Hood heritage, the historian J. C. Holt drew attention to the fact that although Sherwood Forest is mentioned in Robin Hood and the Monk, there is little information about the topography of the region, and therefore suggested that Robin Hood was drawn to Nottinghamshire through his interactions with the city ‘s sheriff. [ 134 ] furthermore, the linguist Lister Matheson has observed that the terminology of the Gest of Robyn Hode is written in a definite northern dialect, credibly that of Yorkshire. [ 135 ] In consequence, it seems probable that the Robin Hood legend actually originates from the county of Yorkshire. Robin Hood ‘s yorkshire origins are by and large accepted by professional historians. [ 136 ]
Barnsdale
A custom dating back at least to the end of the sixteenth hundred gives Robin Hood ‘s birthplace as Loxley, Sheffield, in South Yorkshire. The master Robin Hood ballads, which originate from the fifteenth century, set events in the chivalric forest of Barnsdale. Barnsdale was a wooded area covering an sweep of no more than thirty squarely miles, ranging six miles from union to south, with the River Went at Wentbridge near Pontefract forming its northern boundary and the villages of Skelbrooke and Hampole forming the southernmost region. From east to west the forest extended about five miles, from Askern on the east to Badsworth in the west. [ 137 ] At the northernmost border of the forest of Barnsdale, in the heart of the Went Valley, resides the village of Wentbridge. Wentbridge is a village in the City of Wakefield zone of West Yorkshire, England. It lies around 3 miles ( 5 kilometer ) southeasterly of its nearest township of size, Pontefract, airless to the A1 road. During the chivalric age Wentbridge was sometimes locally referred to by the appoint of Barnsdale because it was the prevailing settlement in the forest. [ 138 ] Wentbridge is mentioned in an early Robin Hood ballad, entitled, Robin Hood and the Potter, which reads, “ Y mete hem bot at Went breg, ‘ syde Lyttyl John ”. And, while Wentbridge is not directly named in A Gest of Robyn Hode, the poem does appear to make a cryptic reference to the vicinity by depicting a poor people knight explaining to Robin Hood that he ‘went at a bridge ‘ where there was wrestling ‘. [ 139 ] A commemorative Blue Plaque has been placed on the bridge that crosses the River Went by Wakefield City Council .
Saylis
The site of the Saylis at Wentbridge The Gest makes a specific reference to the Saylis at Wentbridge. Credit is due to the nineteenth-century antiquarian Joseph Hunter, who correctly identified the site of the Saylis. [ 140 ] From this placement it was once possible to look out over the Went Valley and observe the traffic that passed along the Great North Road. The Saylis is recorded as having contributed towards the help that was granted to Edward III in 1346–47 for the knight of the Black Prince. An acre of landholding is listed within a glebe terrier of 1688 relating to Kirk Smeaton, which late came to be called “ Sailes Close ”. [ 141 ] Professor Dobson and Mr. Taylor indicate that such tell of continuity makes it virtually certain that the Saylis that was so well known to Robin Hood is preserved today as “ Sayles Plantation ”. [ 142 ] It is this localization that provides a vital clue to Robin Hood ‘s Yorkshire inheritance. One concluding vicinity in the forest of Barnsdale that is associated with Robin Hood is the greenwich village of Campsall .
church of Saint Mary Magdalene at Campsall
The historian John Paul Davis wrote of Robin ‘s connection to the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene at Campsall in South Yorkshire. [ 143 ] A Gest of Robyn Hode states that the lawless built a chapel service in Barnsdale that he dedicated to Mary Magdalene :
- I made a chapel in Bernysdale,
- That seemly is to se,
- It is of Mary Magdaleyne,
- And thereto wolde I be.[144]
Davis indicates that there is entirely one church dedicated to Mary Magdalene within what one might sanely consider to have been the medieval forest of Barnsdale, and that is the church at Campsall. The church was built in the early one-twelfth hundred by Robert de Lacy, the 2nd Baron of Pontefract. [ 145 ] [ 146 ] Local legend suggests that Robin Hood and Maid Marion were married at the church .
Abbey of Saint Mary at York
The backdrop of St Mary ‘s Abbey, York plays a central function in the Gest as the poor knight whom Robin aids owes money to the abbot .
Grave at Kirklees
At Kirklees Priory in West Yorkshire stands an alleged dangerous with a specious inscription, which relates to Robin Hood. The fifteenth-century ballads relate that before he died, Robin told Little John where to bury him. He shot an arrow from the Priory window, and where the arrow landed was to be the web site of his sculpt. The Gest states that the Prioress was a relative of Robin ‘s. Robin was ill and staying at the Priory where the Prioress was purportedly caring for him. however, she betrayed him, his health worsened, and he finally died there. The inscription on the sculpt reads ,
- Hear underneath dis laitl stean
- Laz robert earl of Huntingtun
- Ne’er arcir ver as hie sa geud
- An pipl kauld im robin heud
- Sick [such] utlawz as he an iz men
- Vil england nivr si agen
- Obiit 24 kal: Dekembris, 1247
Despite the unconventional spell, the verse is in Modern English, not the Middle English of the thirteenth century. The date is besides incorrectly formatted – using the Roman calendar, “ 24 kal Decembris ” would be the twenty-third day before the begin of December, that is, 8 November. The grave credibly dates from the late eighteenth hundred. [ 147 ] The grave with the inscription is within sight of the ruins of the Kirklees Priory, behind the Three Nuns public house in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. Though local folklore suggests that Robin is buried in the grounds of Kirklees Priory, this theory has now largely been abandoned by professional historians .
All Saints ‘ church at Pontefract
Another hypothesis is that Robin Hood died at Kirkby, Pontefract. Michael Drayton ‘s Poly-Olbion song 28 ( 67–70 ), published in 1622, speaks of Robin Hood ‘s death and intelligibly states that the illegitimate died at ‘Kirkby ‘. [ 148 ] This is consistent with the opinion that Robin Hood operated in the Went Valley, located three miles to the southeasterly of the town of Pontefract. The placement is approximately three miles from the site of Robin ‘s robberies at the now celebrated Saylis. In the Anglo-Saxon period, Kirkby was home to All Saints ‘ Church, Pontefract. All Saints ‘ Church had a priory hospital attached to it. The Tudor historian Richard Grafton stated that the abbess who murdered Robin Hood buried the criminal beside the road ,
Where he had used to rob and spoyle those that passed that room … and the cause why she buryed him there was, for that common strangers and travailers, knowing and seeing him there buryed, might more safely and without feare take their journeys that means, which they durst not do in the life of the sayd outlaes. [ 149 ]
All Saints ‘ church service at Kirkby, modern Pontefract, which was located approximately three miles from the site of Robin Hood ‘s robberies at the Saylis, is coherent with Richard Grafton ‘s description because a road ran directly from Wentbridge to the hospital at Kirkby. [ 150 ]
Place-name locations
Within cheeseparing proximity of Wentbridge reside several noteworthy landmarks relating to Robin Hood. One such place-name location occurred in a cartulary act of 1422 from Monkbretton Priory, which makes direct reference to a landmark named Robin Hood ‘s Stone, which resided upon the eastern side of the Great North Road, a mile south of Barnsdale Bar. [ 151 ] The historians Barry Dobson and John Taylor suggested that on the opposite side of the road once stood Robin Hood ‘s Well, which has since been relocated six miles northwest of Doncaster, on the south-bound side of the Great North Road. Over the future three centuries, the name popped-up all over the place, such as at Robin Hood ‘s Bay, near Whitby in Yorkshire, Robin Hood ‘s Butts in Cumbria, and Robin Hood ‘s walk at Richmond, Surrey. Robin Hood type place-names occurred peculiarly everywhere except Sherwood. The first gear place-name in Sherwood does not appear until the year 1700. [ 152 ] The fact that the earliest Robin Hood type place-names originated in West Yorkshire is deemed to be historically significant because, broadly, place-name attest originates from the vicinity where legends begin. [ 153 ] The overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references [ 154 ] bespeak that Robin Hood was based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire, which borders Nottinghamshire .
early place-names and references
The Sheriff of Nottingham besides had legal power in Derbyshire that was known as the “ Shire of the Deer ”, and this is where the Royal Forest of the Peak is found, which roughly corresponds to today ‘s Peak District National Park. The Royal Forest included Bakewell, Tideswell, Castleton, Ladybower and the Derwent Valley near Loxley. The Sheriff of Nottingham possessed place near Loxley, among other places both army for the liberation of rwanda and wide-eyed including Hazlebadge Hall, Peveril Castle and Haddon Hall. Mercia, to which Nottingham belonged, came to within three miles of Sheffield City Centre. But before the Law of the Normans was the Law of the Danes, The Danelaw had a like boundary to that of Mercia but had a population of Free Peasantry that were known to have resisted the Norman occupation. many outlaws could have been created by the refusal to recognise Norman Forest Law. [ 155 ] The supposed grave of Little John can be found in Hathersage, besides in the Peak District. further indications of the legend ‘s association with West Yorkshire ( and particularly Calderdale ) are noted in the fact that there are pubs called the Robin Hood in both nearby Brighouse and at Cragg Vale ; higher up in the Pennines beyond Halifax, where Robin Hood Rocks can besides be found. Robin Hood Hill is about Outwood, West Yorkshire, not far from Lofthouse. There is a greenwich village in West Yorkshire called Robin Hood, on the A61 between Leeds and Wakefield and close up to Rothwell and Lofthouse. Considering these references to Robin Hood, it is not storm that the people of both South and West Yorkshire lay some claim to Robin Hood, who, if he existed, could easily have roamed between Nottingham, Lincoln, Doncaster and correct into West Yorkshire. A british Army Territorial ( reserves ) battalion formed in Nottingham in 1859 was known as The Robin Hood Battalion through diverse reorganisations until the “ Robin Hood ” identify last disappeared in 1992. With the 1881 Childers Reforms that linked regular and reserve units into regimental families, the Robin Hood Battalion became part of The Sherwood Foresters ( Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment ). A Neolithic causewayed enclosure on Salisbury Plain has acquired the mention Robin Hood ‘s Ball, although had Robin Hood existed it is doubtful that he would have travelled thus far south .
tilt of traditional ballads
Elizabethan birdcall of Robin Hood Ballads dating back to the fifteenth hundred are the oldest existing mannequin of the Robin Hood legends, although none of them were recorded at the time of the first allusions to him, and many are from much later. They share many common features, frequently opening with praise of the greenwood and relying heavily on disguise as a plot device, but include a wide variation in tone and plot. [ 156 ] The ballads are sorted into four groups, very roughly according to date of first known free-standing copy. Ballads whose first recorded interpretation appears ( normally incomplete ) in the Percy Folio may appear in later versions [ 157 ] and may be much older than the mid-17th century when the Folio was compiled. Any ballad may be older than the oldest copy that happens to survive, or descended from a lost older ballad. For exemplar, the plot of Robin Hood ‘s Death, found in the Percy Folio, is summarised in the 15th-century A Gest of Robyn Hode, and it besides appears in an 18th-century version. [ 158 ]
In 15th- or early 16th-century copies
In 17th-century Percy Folio
NB. The first two ballads listed here ( the “ Death ” and “ Gisborne ” ), although preserved in 17th-century copies, are broadly agreed to preserve the substance of late medieval ballads. The one-third ( the “ curtal Friar ” ) and the fourth ( the “ Butcher ” ), besides credibly have late chivalric origins. [ 159 ] An * before a ballad ‘s title indicates there ‘s besides a version of this ballad in the Forresters Manuscript .
In 17th-century Forresters Manuscript
niobium : An * before a ballad ‘s championship indicates that the Forresters version of this ballad is the earliest know version .
early ballads
Some ballads, such as Erlinton, sport Robin Hood in some variants, where the folk music bomber appears to be added to a ballad preexistent him and in which he does not fit identical well. [ 160 ] He was added to one variant of Rose Red and the White Lily, obviously on no more joining than that one hero of the early variants is named “ Brown Robin ”. [ 161 ] Francis James Child indeed retitled Child ballad 102 ; though it was titled The Birth of Robin Hood, its well-defined miss of connection with the Robin Hood cycle ( and connection with other, unrelated ballads ) led him to title it Willie and Earl Richard’s Daughter in his collection. [ 162 ]
philosophic views
An work utilitarian could argue that many of Robin Hood ‘s actions were acceptable because compared to the gains by the poor “ the victim ‘s loss is insignificant ”. kantian ethics would regard stealing as inherently ill-timed. [ 163 ]
In popular culture
independent characters
See besides
References
bibliography
