Robin Hood is one of Britain’s most famous yet most elusive figures.Two forests – Yorkshire’s Barnsdale and Nottinghamshire’s Sherwood – claim him as their own; roads, rivers, crags, bays, wells and pubs all over the country bear his name; and yet debate still rages over whether he did or didn’t exist, and if he did, then at what period. He has become synonymous with medieval England, yet the ease with which successive generations of storytellers have been able to adapt him to their own age - be they the ballad mongers of the 14th and 15th centuries or the likes of Kevin Costner in cinematic epics – has made him timeless and kept the flame of his adventures burning for almost seven hundred years. Indeed, the legend of Robin Hood is still an intricate part of British folklore. But who was the real Robin Hood, and how did his legend grow from a handful of localised traditions into an international phenomeon?
Apart from a handful of vague, and often contradictory, references in medieval records, most of what we know about Robin Hood today has evolved from a series of ballads that were popular in the Middle Ages. The earliest known literary reference to him appears in William Langland’s The Vision of Piers Ploughman, published in 1377, in which Sloth - the personification of one of The Seven Deadly Sins - confesses that, although he doesn’t know his Pater Noster as perfectly as the “priest sings it”, he is well versed in the rhymes of Robin Hood. Since Langland obviously assumes that his audience will understand the allusion without requiring an explanation, we can deduce that tales of Robin Hood, in ballad form at least, were in wide circulation by the latter half of the 14th century.
In about 1495, Wynkyn de Worde published A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode (“Geste” being derived from “gestsa”, the Latin for story), one of the earliest collections of the then extant ballads about him. In it Robin is depicted as a 14th century outlaw who probably lived in the reign of Edward 11 (1307-1327). Although his abode is placed firmly in Yorkshire’s Barnsdale Forest, and not Sherwood, the Geste does at least introduce the infamous villain with whom Robin’s story will henceforth become intertwined, the Sheriff of Nottingham. It also features Little John, Will Scathlock (Scarlet) and Much, the miller’s son, establishing the tradition of Robin’s band of merry men.
The Robin Hood of these early ballads is far removed from the dispossessed and chivalrous nobleman of later tradition. He is a man of his age, fashioned to appeal to the skills, tastes, fears and aspirations of the common people. He is God fearing, and the only woman he has any time for is the Virgin Mary. He is emphatically a yeoman, and a violent one to boot. He is skilled at archery. Although he happily, though selectively, steals from the rich, he most certainly does not give the proceeds to the poor. His enemies are dishonest officials, high churchmen and the grasping, avaricious abbots of the great monasteries, such as St Mary’s in York. It must be remembered that in the Middle Ages the church was rich, powerful and often corrupt. The great monasteries owned vast amounts of land and would tax the common people mercilessly. Thus, by depicting churchmen as the villainous victims of Robin Hood’s crimes, the ballad mongers were able to justify his criminality, whilst at the same time appeal to a deep-rooted resentment within their audiences.
