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| Errol Flynn as Robin. Image courtesy of Warner Bros |
As Nottingham synonyms go, there are few better than
Robin Hood. The outlaw of Sherwood Forest: a brilliant shot with the longbow,
who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor and romanced the beautiful Maid
Marian, with his band of Merry Men. But who, what, where, when, why, how was
Robin Hood. Someone of whom very little actually exists to document beyond
hypothesis despite being, after King Arthur, the best-known legendary
hero ever produced by the British Isles.
Robin Hood is a part of our popular culture, and has been
for over 600 years. This outlaw of medieval England has seemingly appeared
everywhere, and his wide appeal led to brief mentions in various texts.
Scholars have long searched for the origin of Robin Hood, for an identifiable,
historical outlaw in the Sherwood or Barnsdale area.
The earliest balladeers sang tales of Robin Hood long
before they were written down, and audiences through history have all
had different ideas of what Robin Hood was like in word, action, and
appearance. Every writer, film maker, and poet ever since the first tales
were spoken, has adapted the outlaw figure to fit their
own imagination.
In 1225 a man fled from justice in Yorkshire. He was
recorded as Robert Hod, fugitive. He reappears in 1227 called “Hobbehod”. Could
he be our man - spending his days robbing travellers through Sherwood Forest
between Nottingham and Yorkshire? From the mid-1200s the nickname Robin
Hood was given to known outlaws. As an example, William, son of Robert the
Smith, was outlawed in 1261. He reappeared in the records in 1262. But by this
time the royal official had changed his name to William Robehod or “Robinhood”.
In 1323 King Edward II passed through Nottingham on his
tour around England. Amongst his servants was a man named Robin Hood, employed
as a porter. Some early historians thought this might be the original Robin
Hood, but now we know of earlier ‘Robins’.
The earliest mention found (to date),
of the name Robin Hood appears in the poem The Vision of Piers
Plowman, which was written by William Langland in c.1377. A long
ballad, Piers Plowman was a protest against the harsh conditions
endured by the poor in the Fourteen Century. It includes the line:
‘I do not know my paternoster as the priest sings it.
But I do know rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolf, earl of Chester.’
Then, in around 1450, we begin to see the earliest
written tales of RH: The Little Gest of Robyn Hood, Robin Hood and the Potter, Robin
Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar, Robin Hood and Guy of
Gisborne, and Robin Hood’s Death.
Later, after the Wars of the Roses, The Tudors revived
the stories of Robin Hood. He was more popular then than he is now. Tudor
documents are littered with mentions of Robin Hood’s all over Britain. For
example, in 1497, a man called Roger Marshall styled himself on Robin, and lead
a riot of 200 men in Staffordshire. In 1509, ten Robin Hood plays were banned
in Exeter by the city council, as they had become a public nuisance. Robin
Hood’s most famous Tudor fan was Henry VIII himself. In fact, apart from
hunting, eating, and getting married, Henry’s favourite hobby was acting.
Sometimes he dressed up as Robin Hood. The king would wear a mask, and his
audience suspended their disbelief to see the king cavorting in the greenwood
on the stage!
In 1521, Scottish historian John Major published his Historia Majoris Brittaniae, the first version of the legend to assign Robin Hood to the time of Richard The Lion Heart; Major also suggested that Robin not only avoided robbing the poor, "but rather enriched them from the plunder taken from the abbots.” During Elizabeth I reign, Robin was gentrified by Anthony Munday, in his two plays The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington and The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington (both 1601) – the first time he receives a title as an earl and again sets the action in the time of King John! Also, in William Shakespeare's As You Like It, written around 1600 it is said of the exiled Duke:
They say hee is already in the Forrest of Arden, and
a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England:
they say many yong Gentlemen flocke to him every day, and fleet the time
carelessly as they did in the golden world.
This is my first of two
blogs on RH so come back in a few weeks and we’ll go from Ivanhoe to Russell
Crowe in part 2!