The Earliest Tales of Robin Hood (Out of Time Episode 2)

Here's another episode in our foundling series "Out of Time."  Today, I correct an oversight from our 15th century literature discussions and survey the very earliest surviving tales of the outlaw and all-around-swell-guy Robin Hood!  Let's jump in the Wayback Machine!

Here's a link to the Robin Hood Project at the University of Rochester, where you can find the texts we're discussing today and a wealth of other resources! https://d.lib.rochester.edu/project/robin-hood/about.html

Transcript

Hello and welcome, merry men and ladies, to another episode of the Classic English Literature Subcast, where a little more rhyme gets a little more reason.  This is the second in an occasional series I’m calling the Out of Time episodes, shows on topics I missed at their appropriate time in the main podcast’s chronology.  

I hope you like today’s little foray in the Wayback Machine.  We’re headed once again to late medieval England and the forests around Nottingham.  Yes, we’re going to drop in on that greatest of heroic outlaws, Robin Hood.     Let’s fire her up . . . Here we are . . . oops, give it a shove – the door sticks.  Ah, the greenwood forest.

I’m sure most of you listening have some knowledge or experience with Robin Hood.  I imagine that cinema is the biggest distributor of his legend nowadays.  There have been myriad film adaptations of his legend, the first full-length feature dating from 1922, though there were short films as early as 1908.  The 1938 Errol Flynn movie is the most iconic.  I have a nostalgic fondness for the 1973 Disney animated film, which I admit sheepishly, as I am generally anti-Walt.  Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe have all made memorable appearances as the merry outlaw, though with varying degrees of success.

What most people know about Robin Hood is this: he is a nobleman who went to fight in the Crusades.  When he returns, the Sheriff of Nottingham under the auspices of a usurping King John, dispossesses Robin Hood, who must flee into Sherwood Forest.  There he meets a group of outlaws, each hiding for his own particular reason, but all suffering the tyrannic depredations of an unjust ruler: Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Alan-a-Dale.  There’s even a love interest, the charming Maid Marian.  Together, Robin and his band thwart the machinations of the Sheriff and his minions, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, escaping back into the forest for a merry feast.

At least that’s the main version promulgated in modern popular culture.  And I’m not implying there’s anything wrong with it.  It’s a ripping yarn.  In fact, any alteration or embroidery of Robin Hood’s adventures by whomever is actually as valid as any other.  Because, you see, there is no canonical text for the Robin Hood legends.  Any new tale is just an expansion of the mythos, which I think is rather cool: like King Arthur, Robin Hood is still a thriving story, endlessly reimagined and repurposed for new times and contexts.

So what I want to do with this episode is not to give you “the real Robin Hood story,” because there isn’t one.  But I thought you might be interested in some of the earliest tales surrounding the dashing outlaw and how those early campfire stories and tavern songs grew into one of the greatest legendary figures in English literature.

Our earliest reference to the existence of such tales comes from our old friend William Langland, the fella who wrote the great medieval allegory The Vision of Piers Plowman, which we covered way back in episode 11.  In Passus V, the character Sloth admits that "I kan noght parfitly my Paternoster as the preest it syngeth, / But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf erle of Chestre."  He doesn’t know the Lord’s Prayer too well, but he can recite poems about Robin Hood!  Reminds me of my engineer Dad chiding my inability to memorize the steps for geometric proofs in high school: “You’ve managed to memorize all the Beatles’ lyrics, though.”

About 40 years after Langland, we also get a passing reference to our hero in Andrew of Wyntoun’s Original Chronicle of Scotland.  He mentions Robin Hood and Little John as outlaws in the Inglewood Forest area:

Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude

Waythmen ware commendit gude;

In Ingilwode and Barnysdale

Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.

These sparse references do little more than indicate that tales circulated orally, but we don’t yet have the sense of epic heroism, but we can assume a certain romantic popularity.  In fact, in 1440, Walter Bower gets a bit moralistic in his Scotichronicon: 

Then arose the famous murderer, Robert Hood, as well as Little John, alongside their accomplices, from whom the vulgar rabble extract so much pleasure in those ballads which are sung about them.

Ooo-ooh!  I sense the beginnings of a moral panic here.  Kids today with their rap music and video games and Robin Hood ballads!  What is this world coming to?

But the lemon-sucking Mr. Bower may have a point – the earliest stories about Robin Hood do seem to glamorize outlawry for its own transgressive sake.  One of the first ballads that survives in manuscript is from about the same time as the Scotichronicon – mid 1400s – and is called “Robin Hood and the Monk.”  As a ballad, it generally makes use of an abcb stanza, sometimes lapsing into abab, and it was perhaps sung, or perhaps recited.  It survives in a single manuscript, lovingly tucked up in the archives of Cambridge University.  While it provides a complete narrative and does contribute somewhat to the shaping of later legends, it also shows some marked differences from the stories we may be familiar with from film and TV.

As the story begins, Robin Hood expresses a desire to attend mass in Nottingham. Little John warns that it is too dangerous, and Much the Miller’s Son says he should bring bodyguards.  Robin takes only Little John, whom he manages to anger by losing a bet on the way and disagreeing as to the payout.  John stalks off.  At church, a monk who knows Robin betrays him to the Sheriff of Nottingham, and our hero gets thrown in chokey.

Little John learns of this and, with Much the Miller’s Son, ambushes the monk and his page on their way to inform the king. Disguising themselves as royal messengers, they deliver false news to the king and trick the sheriff into releasing Robin. Robin apologizes to John and the men reconcile.  When the king later realizes he has been duped, he marvels at the outlaws’ loyalty to each other and lets it go as a merry jest.

While it’s a rollicking good tale, we see little evidence at this point of a beloved warrior for justice.  Robin does seem to have a great devotion to the Virgin Mary, which echoes the courtly love ethic we’ve discussed, and that’s the prompt for his trip to Nottingham.  But this religious obligation and devotion takes him out of the Edenic forest and into the dangerous world of civil society:

In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,

And leves be large and long,

Hit is full mery in feyre foreste

To here the foulys song,

To se the dere draw to the dale,

And leve the hilles hee,

And shadow hem in the leves grene,

Under the grene wode tre.

We start, like Chaucer’s General Prologue, in the blossom of summer, in a vital nature.  But this paradise is interrupted by chance, randomness.  Stanza 3 begins “It befell on Whitsuntide.”  Like, it just so happened.  Robin feels uncomfortable, regretful, that he has not been to Mass for two weeks, and so we see an interruption in the natural bliss by institutional obligation.  

There follows a further breach in the harmony of rustic living when John suggests a shooting contest: “And we will shoot a penny, said Little John, under the greenwood line.”  Note that line is a sort of semi-refrain of line 8, another subtle example of the poem’s concern with rupture and disruption.  After a bit of wrangling, the two men shoot, and the upshot sees Little John five shillings to the good.  But Robin refuses to pay, calls John a liar, and smacks him.  John draws his sword:

"Were thou not my maister," seid Litull John, 

"Thou shuldis by hit ful sore; 

Get the a man wher thou wille, 

For thou getis me no more." 

So, now here’s the great split.  Once out of the forest, there is a dispute over leadership.  The order that prevailed in the first quatrains dissolves as the characters move further into the civil world.  We also see, however, that Robin’s leadership is by consent: John can walk away if he feels that he has been unjustly dealt with.  This stands in contrast to the feudal and ecclesiastical obligations of medieval society. 

I’m intrigued, though, by the somewhat inconsistent duty of loyalty in the poem.  Certainly, when the monk betrays Robin Hood (as we are to see it), he seems disloyal to a local yeoman, but is, of course, entirely loyal to the local authorities (and to a certain vengeance for Robin’s theft of his 100 pounds).  In the fracas, Robin Hood kills twelve men and wounded “many a mother’s son.”  Little John’s vengeance on the monk, too, is extrajudicially violent:

John smote off the monk’s head,

No longer would he dwell;

So Much did the little page,

For fear lest he would tell.

Right, so John is still loyal to his erstwhile master, but we’re now up to 14 deaths.  After Robin’s rescue, John turns away, but Robin stops him and offers him the leadership of the forest band: “I make thee master, said Robin Hood, of all my men and me.”  But Little John refuses this magnanimous admission of guilt, saying

"Nay, be my trouth," seid Litull John,

"So shalle hit never be;

But lat me be a felow," seid Litull John,

"No noder kepe I be."

John requests not to be the leader, but a “fellow.” And the king, when he realizes how Little John beguiled both himself and the Sheriff, dismisses the matter because "He is trew to his maister.”  “Robin Hood and the Monk,” then, presents a proto-democratic sense of loyalty, a faithfulness to the comrade and the local rather than the institutional and the distant.  Other tales will generally uphold this dynamic, though those tales in which Robin is a Crusader returned to an England usurped by wicked King John, loyalty to the imprisoned Richard the Lionheart conflates these obligations.

On the other hand, if we stand outside the normative perspective – that is, the assumption that we are intended to root for Robin and his men – and try to look at the tale dispassionately, there is not much to like about the putative hero.  He is proud and headstrong, cheats and lies, abuses his boon companion.  He’s a thief, if we’re to believe the monk, and is willing to kill to indulge his whims.  As I’ve said, Little John too will kill to protect Robin.  It’s worth noting, too, that Robin needs protection – he’s not the invincible hero to whom we’ve become accustomed.  We’ve no intimation that the monk, the sheriff, or the king should be righteously opposed – they don’t seem corrupt or tyrannical (maybe the king’s a bit foolish).  So, perhaps Barlow isn’t so offbase in his worry that Robin Hood could corrupt vulnerable youth.  In this tale, ripping yarn though it is, we get an early version of what we’d now call an anti-hero: a protagonist who lacks conventional heroic qualities: morally ambiguous, often selfish and self-destructive.  Yet still charismatic and compelling.  Think Michael Corleone or Lady Macbeth.  And Little John seems a classic trickster figure from folklore and mythology.

Later in the 15th century, we get a lengthy narrative poem called “A Gest of Robin Hood.”  Gest with a g, not a j.  Gest with a g is a heroic tale of notable deeds, a romance in verse. The word comes from the Latin “gesta” meaning “exploits.”  We’ve got a couple of versions of this one: a 1490 edition by printer Richard Pynson and a 1510 by William Caxton’s former assistant and bearer of history’s greatest name for a publisher: Wynkyn de Word.  The gest is about 1800 lines long and is divided into 8 parts called fitts (like Gawain and the Green Knight, if you recall).  Like another Arthurian landmark, Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, “A Gest of Robin Hood” also seems to compile a number of pre-existing tales and ballads into a more unified narrative structure.  Thus, it becomes the basis for many later retellings.  Oh, and standard ballad stanza: quatrain rhyming abcb.  Suitable for lutentist accompaniment.

The major events of the gest include Robin helping a poor knight, Sir Richard at the Lee, who is in debt to the Abbott of St. Mary’s in York.  Robin Hood generously lends him £400 to save his lands.  Fitte 1 opens with Little John urging his master to eat, but Robin will not do so until he can dine with some toffee-nose and fleece him: 

To dine have I no lust,

Till that I have some bold baron, 

Or some uncouth guest. 

. . . . . . . . . 

That may pay for the best, 

Or some knight or some squire, 

That dwelleth here by west.

But, lest we think Robin a mere scoundrel, the speaker is quick to point out that Robin attends three masses before he dines, one for the Father, one for the Ghost, and one for the Holy Lady.  It’s this last devotion that animates the opening tale.  Robin sends his men out to find a wealthy nobleman or ecclesiast to rob, but warns

But look ye do no husband harm,

That tilleth with his plow. 

`No more ye shall no good yeoman 

That walketh by green shaw;

Nor no knight nor no squire 

That will be a good fellow. 

`These bishops and these archbishops, 

Ye shall them beat and bind; 

The high sheriff of Nottingham, 

Him hold ye in your mind.

This is class warfare, a populist revolt against the elites!  But Little John and the others come upon a wretched looking old knight: “All dreary was his semblance, / And little was his pride.”  He’s taken back to the forest and dines lavishly with Robin who, after the pudding, demands payment, because, he says, “It was never the manner, by dear worthy God, / A yeoman to pay for a knight.”  But the knight has no money – only 10 shillings – because he has fallen on hard times, paying debts for his son.  He needs 400 pounds to clear debts now held by a wealthy Abbot.  Robin, of course, stands him the money because he is a “good fellow” with a similarly ardent devotion to Our Lady.  The other men say, “Well, he needs some new clothes, too, Rob.”  “And a fresh horse!”  “And a palfrey!”  “And new boots!”

Well, hell, this is the knight’s lucky day.  He journeys to York to discharge his debt and comes upon the Abbot, a “fat-headed Monk,” who is the abbey’s cellarer (the fella in charge of provisions), the High Justice, and the Sheriff gorging themselves at table:

The first word the abbot spoke, 

`Hast thou brought my pay?' 

Rather rude.  But what should one expect from the medieval literary depiction of clergy: not a flattering time.  The knight says he hasn’t the readies and wishes more time.  He appeals to the High Justice, who spurns him.  He turns to the Sheriff, who does likewise.  All power, civil and religious, abandons this poor father in his hour of need.  He then dumps the cash on a table – I like to think he gives his creditor a one-fingered salute – and returns home a happy man, thanks to the generosity of the stout yeoman, Robin Hood.

The Gest, from its very first tale, establishes a different Robin Hood than we saw in the earlier ballad.  This Robin is more devout, seeming to act in Christian charity rather than simply affect it.  He is still a yeoman – not the nobleman of later tellings – and so his sympathies are indeed morally grounded in a sense of social justice and a hatred of the depredations of the elite.  It’s not as simple as poor is good, rich is bad; the knight is of the aristocracy, but is an upright man.  The Prior of St. Mary’s, too, questions the Abbot’s harsh dealings with the knight.  So, the emphasis is very like that found in the Wife of Bath’s tale, if you remember that Chaucer episode, where the Old Crone gives the pillow talk to her new and very reluctant husband, arguing that nobility is in what one does, not the rank to which one is born.  We may also sense the direction of God’s providence in the serendipitous coming together of the knight and the outlaw. 

Fitte 3 begins with an outrageous sketch.  Little John, pretending to be a geezer called Reynald Greenleaf, becomes the Sheriff’s man, intending to “be the worst servant to him / That ever yet had he.”  John manages to relieve the Sheriff of his cook and all his silver, which, of course, make their way into the greenwood to Robin Hood.  John cozens the Sheriff about a magical deer, which leads to the feckless officer enjoying Robin’s hospitality.  

Fitte 4 opens with similar language to Fitte 1 and with echoes of the exposition in “Robin Hood and the Monk.”  More talk about the Virgin Mary and sending his men to find some hapless mark to toy with over a sumptuous forest dinner.  This time it's a couple of “black monks” – Dominicans, I imagine – and they, of course, are quite rude to their host.  Turns out, they’re from St. Mary’s in York, and one of them is the “fat-headed” cellarer from the first tale.  Robin recalls his assistance to the poor knight and teasingly assumes that the monks are here to repay the knight’s debt.  We get a parallel conversation to that with the knight, in which Robin asks how much money they have, they say not much, John checks the bags, but unlike the knight, of course, they are lying.  Little John produces 800 pounds from their saddlebags.  One of the monks protests Robin’s audacious views of hospitality: 

By Our Lady,' then said the monk, 

`That were no courtesy, 

`To bid a man to dinner, 

And sith him beat and bind.' 

`It is our old manner,' said Robin, 

To leave but little behind.' 

I love that dry retort.  All these tales, despite the clear condemnation of clerical corruption and political tyranny, are delivered in a playful tone: understatement, verbal irony, even a sense of the whimsical and absurd.  Though the social issues addressed are grave, and would certainly strike most listeners as relevant to their lives, the balladeer here never gets heavy.  The villains are stock, flat cardboard villains.  Cartoon bad guys, and Robin’s gang really just tweak their noses, so to speak.  Well, maybe more than a nose-tweak.  But it’s all a merry jape, and wealth redistribution is just the right thing to do, hey?  So have a drink and a laugh!  The formerly poor knight returns, by the way, offers Robin the 400 pounds he borrowed plus a bit of a tip.  Robin turns it down, as the cellarer already repaid the debt.  Ho ho! In fact, I’ll give 400 pounds to you, because the cellarer overpaid me!  Ah, merry days.

Fitte 5 gives us the famous shooting contest (the one that features prominently in the Disney animation).  Robin wins the contest, but is betrayed by the Sheriff.  A battle ensues, Little John and others are wounded.  They retreat to the castle of . . . you guessed it, the poor knight, Richard at the Lee, whom Robin helped.  The Sheriff lays siege to the castle and then hies himself to the king for assistance, who promises to be in Nottingham in a fortnight.  The king here, though, is most likely Edward III, and not King John, as many later retellings have it.  Robin encounters the Sheriff in town, shoots him, then chops off his head, crying

`Lie thou there, thou proud sheriff, 

Evil mote thou cheve!

There might no man to thee trust 

The whiles thou were a-live.' 

The king offers Sir Richard’s lands to any man who captures Robin Hood, but an old knight says that no man is willing to take the risk.  So the king potters around Nottingham for six months, getting angrier and angrier at the Merry Men’s impunitive poaching.  Until a plot is hit upon by which the king will disguise himself as a monk and penetrate Robin’s defenses.  When they meet, Robin tells the disguised king:

We be yeomen of this forest, 

Under the green-wood tree; 

We live by our king's deer, 

Other shift have not we. 

`And ye have churches and rents both, 

And gold full great plenty; 

Give us some of your spending, 

For Saint Charity.' 

The monk-king gives Robin 40 pounds, half of which he gives to the men and the other half, he returns.  This act of justice and generosity prompts the king to offer Robin the royal seal!  He marvels at the loyalty of Robin’s men and at the liberality of Robin’s feasting.  The good king, reveals himself and pardons our hero, who is allowed to serve at court.  

But, again like Arthur, we have a somewhat tragic and treacherous ending.  Robin returns to the forest but is betrayed by the Prioress of Kirklees and Sir Roger of Doncaster, who “took together their counsel Robin Hood for to slay.”  He is bled to death in a monastery, giving us one of the earliest versions of Robin Hood’s death.  The Gest ends with a benediction that draws a clear distinction between morality and legality, between what is right and what the law permits:

Christ have mercy on his soul

That died on the rood!

For he was a good outlaw,

And did poor men much good!

Hmm . . . you know what?  It strikes me just now . . . really, this very second . . . that this closing quatrain is rather ambiguous.  I mean, grammatically, it could just as well be about Jesus Christ as it is about Robin Hood.  Look, the words “that died upon the rood” – the cross – are what’s called a restrictive clause, which means that they provide essential information about the preceding noun: “his soul” – that means the soul of the one who died upon the cross, so Jesus.  And of course, Jesus did that dying because he was an outlaw, executed for crimes against religion and state, crimes he believed were to the benefit of the poor and neglected in society.  

Hmm . . . quite tasty that.  I’m not usually much for Christ figures in literature – they usually seem heavy-handed symbolically.  Subtle as a neon sledgehammer to the danglies, especially id the writer gives the character the initials “JC”: Jim Conklin in Red Badge of Courage, Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath, John Coffey in The Green Mile.  Note that all these are American authors; shots fired!  But I’m rather pleased with the Gest’s final stanza – I mean, I know what the balladeer literally means, but the grammatical structure undercuts it and opens a wider way of seeing Robin’s heroism.

So that’s a little look at some of the earliest and most influential texts in the Robin Hood universe.  There are hundreds more.  The University of Rochester has a great site called the Robin Hood project – I’ll put a link in the show notes.  A veritable cornucopia of all things Hood.

If you enjoyed this Out of Time episode, please take a moment to leave a 5 star review on your podcatcher of choice – the algorithm really likes that.  Tell all your friends about the good times we have.  Hit the Support the Show button if you want to buy me a beer and the cat some cream.  We’ll be back in the 17th century next time: hope to see you there!