Robin Hood is an archetypal figure in English folklore, whose story originates from medieval times but who remains significant in popular culture where he is known for robbing the rich to give to the poor and fighting against injustice and tyranny. His band includes “three score” group of fellow outlawed yeomen – called his “Merry Men”. He has been the subject of numerous films, television series, books, comics, and plays. In the earliest sources Robin Hood is a commoner, but he would often later be portrayed as the dispossessed Earl of Huntingdon.

The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest

In popular culture Robin Hood and his band are usually seen as living in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. Much of the action of the early ballads does take place in Nottinghamshire, and the very earliest known ballad does show the outlaws fighting in Sherwood Forest. So does the very first recorded Robin Hood rhyme, four lines from the beginning of the 15th century beginning “Robyn hode in scherewode stod”. However, the overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references shows Robin Hood based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire (which borders Nottinghamshire), and other traditions also point to Yorkshire. A tradition dating back at least to the end of the 16th century gives his birthplace as Loxley in

South Yorkshire, while the site of Robin Hood’s Well in Yorkshire has been associated with Robin Hood at least since 1422. His grave has been claimed to be at Kirklees Priory in West Yorkshire, as implied by the 18th-century version of Robin Hood’s Death, and there is a headstone there of dubious authenticity.

The first clear reference to “rhymes of Robin Hood” is from the late-14th-century poem Piers Plowman, but the earliest surviving copies of the narrative ballads that tell his story have been dated to the 15th century or the first decade of the 16th century. In these early accounts Robin Hood’s partisanship of the lower classes, his Marianism and associated special regard for women, his outstanding skill as an archer, his anti-clericalism and his particular animus towards the Sheriff of Nottingham are already clear. 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. It is not certain what should be made of these latter two absences, as it is known that Friar Tuck for one was part of the legend since at least the later 15th century.

In popular culture Robin Hood is typically seen as a contemporary and supporter of the late-12th century king Richard the Lionheart, Robin being driven to outlawry during the misrule of Richard’s evil brother John while Richard was away at the Third Crusade. This view first gained currency in the 16th century and has very little scholarly support. It is certainly not supported by the earliest ballads. The early compilation A Gest of Robyn Hode names the king as “Edward”, and while it does show Robin Hood as accepting the king’s pardon he later repudiates it and returns to the greenwood. The oldest surviving ballad, Robin Hood and the Monk, gives even less support to the picture of Robin Hood as a partisan of the true king. The setting of the early ballads is usually attributed by scholars to either the 13th century or the 14th, although it is recognized they are not necessarily historically consistent.

The early ballads are also quite clear on Robin Hood’s social status: he is a yeoman. While the precise meaning of this term changed over time, including free retainers of an aristocrat and small landholders, it always referred to commoners. The essence of it in the present context was “neither a knight nor a peasant or ‘husbonde’ but something in between”. We know that artisans (such as millers) were among

       Robin Hood memorial statue
     in Nottingham

those regarded as “yeomen” in the 14th century. From the 16th century on there were attempts to elevate Robin Hood to the nobility and in two extremely influential plays Anthony Munday presented him at the very end of the 16th century as the Earl of Huntingdon, as he is still commonly presented in modern times.

As well as ballads, the legend was also transmitted by “Robin Hood games” or plays that were an important 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 reference does not indicate how old or widespread this custom was at the time. The Robin Hood games are known to have flourished in the later 15th and the 16th centuries. It is commonly stated as fact that Maid Marian and a jolly friar (at least partly identifiable with Friar Tuck) entered the legend through the May Games.

     Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in
      “The adventures of Robin Hood”, 1938

The early ballads link Robin Hood to identifiable real places and many are convinced that he was a real person, more or less accurately portrayed. A number of theories as to the identity of “the real Robin Hood” have their supporters. Some of these theories posit that “Robin Hood” or “Robert Hood” or the like was his actual name; others suggest that this may have been merely a nick-name disguising a medieval bandit perhaps known to history under another name. At the same time it is possible that Robin Hood has always been a fictional character; the folklorist Francis James Child declared “Robin Hood is absolutely a creation of the ballad-muse” and this view has not been disproved.

Another view is that Robin Hood’s origins must be sought in folklore or mythology; and, despite the frequent Christian references in the early ballads, Robin Hood has been claimed for the pagan witch-religion supposed by Margaret Murray to have existed in medieval Europe.

There is at present little scholarly support for the view that tales of Robin Hood have stemmed from mythology or folklore, from fairies (such as Puck under the alias Robin Goodfellow) or other mythological origins. When Robin Hood has been connected to such folklore, it is apparently a later development. Maurice Keen provides a brief summary and useful critique of the once popular view that Robin Hood had mythological origins, while (unlike some) refraining from utterly and finally dismissing it. While Robin Hood and his men often show improbable skill in archery, swordplay, and disguise, they are no more exaggerated than those characters in other ballads, such as Kinmont Willie, which were based on historical events. Robin Hood’s role in the traditional May Day games could suggest pagan connections but that role has not been traced earlier than the early 15th century. However it is uncontroversial that a Robin and Marion figured in 13th century French “pastourelles” (of which Jeu de Robin et Marion c1280 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 rustic pastimes” And in the Jeu de Robin and Marion Robin and his companions have to rescue Marion from the clutches of a “lustful knight”. Dobson and Taylor in their survey of the legend, in which they reject the mythological theory, nevertheless regard it as “highly probable” that this French Robin’s name and functions traveled to the English May Games where they fused with the Robin Hood legend.

The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from tales of outlaws, such as Hereward the Wake, Eustace the Monk, Fulk Fitzwarin, and William Wallace. Hereward appears in a ballad much like Robin Hood and the Potter, and as the Hereward ballad is older, it appears to be the source. The ballad Adam Bell, Clym of the Cloughe and Wyllyam of Cloudeslee runs parallel to Robin Hood and the Monk, but it is not clear whether either one is the source for the other, or whether they merely show that such tales were told of outlaws. Some early Robin Hood stories appear to be unique, such as the story where Robin gives a knight, generally called Richard at the Lee, money to

     Kevin Koster in “Robin Hood prince of thieves”, 1991

pay off his mortgage to an abbot, but this may merely indicate that no parallels have survived.

The earliest surviving text of Robin and Marion is a musical play entitled “Le jeu de Robin et de Marion” (ca.1284) written by Adam de la Halle (ca1240–?1288) and found in the book Norton Anthology of Western Music Volume:1 (pages 46–47).

The next surviving Robin Hood text is “Robin Hood and the Monk”. This is preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48, which was written shortly after 1450. It contains many of the elements still associated with the legend, from the Nottingham setting to the bitter enmity between Robin and the local sheriff.

The first printed version is A Gest of Robyn Hode (c.1475), a collection of separate stories that attempts to unite the episodes into a single continuous narrative. After this comes “Robin Hood and the Potter”, contained in a manuscript of c.1503. “The Potter” is markedly different in tone from “The Monk”: whereas the earlier tale is ‘a thriller’ the latter is more comic, its plot involving trickery and cunning rather than straightforward force. The difference between the two texts recalls Bower’s claim that Robin-tales may be both ‘comedies and tragedies’. Other early texts are dramatic pieces such as the fragmentary Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham (c.1472). These are particularly noteworthy as they show Robin’s integration into May Day rituals towards the end of the Middle Ages.

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 as early as those two ballads although preserved in a more recent copy. Each of these three ballads survived in a single copy; this should serve as a warning that we do not know how much of the medieval legend has survived, and what has survived is not necessarily typical of the medieval legend. It has been argued that the fact that the surviving ballads were preserved in written form in itself makes it unlikely they were typical; in particular stories with an interest for the gentry were by this view more likely to be preserved. The story of Robin’s aid to the “poor knight” that takes up much of the Gest may be an example.

The character of Robin in these first texts is rougher edged than in his later incarnations. In “Robin Hood and the Monk”, for example, he is shown as quick tempered and violent, assaulting Little John for defeating him in an archery contest; in the same ballad Much the Miller’s Son casually kills a “little page” in the course of rescuing Robin Hood from prison. No extant ballad actually shows Robin Hood ‘giving to the poor’, although in a “A Gest of Robyn Hode” Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate knight which he does not in the end require to be repaid.; and later in the same ballad Robin Hood states his intention of giving money to the next traveler to come down the road if he happens to be poor.

The 20th century has grafted still further details on to the original legends. The film The Adventures of Robin Hood portrayed Robin as a hero on a national scale, leading the oppressed Saxons in revolt against their Norman overlords while Richard the Lionheart fought in the Crusades; this movie established itself so definitively that many studios resorted to movies about his son (invented for that purpose) rather than compete with the image of this one.

Since the 1980s, it has become commonplace to include a Saracen among the Merry Men, a trend which began with the character Nasir in the Robin of Sherwood television series. Later versions of the story have followed suit: the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and 2006 BBC TV series Robin Hood each contain equivalents of Nasir, in the figures of Azeem and Djaq respectively.

The Robin Hood legend has thus been subject to numerous shifts and mutations throughout its history. Robin himself has evolved from a yeoman bandit to a national hero of epic proportions, who not only supports the poor by taking from the rich, but also heroically defends the throne of England itself from unworthy and venal claimants.