Robin Hood E-Book

Fran Doel

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

First mentioned by William Langland in the late fourteenth century, Robin Hood comes down to us through ballads and folksongs, old chronicles and plays, medieval allusions, folklore and place names. Today Robin Hood folk songs are found in the USA as well as in England and Scotland, and place names and traditions are widely located in England. The earliest stories are centred on Barnsdale in Yorkshire, but later the emphasis shifts to Nottingham and Sherwood Forest. Originally a yeoman, Robin was upgraded to aristocrat in the sixteenth century, but he remains essentially a champion of the poor and oppressed and a social nonconformer. How far Robin Hood was based on a historical character and how far he is an archetypal outlaw or a Greenwood myth (who must withdraw from society and commune with nature) is the subject of the Doels' wide-ranging study. This new edition is complete with an updated gazetteer of Robin Hood sites and an annotated filmography. It includes almost 50 illustrations (including performances by present-day mummers).

Leseprobe

For all Tonbridge Mummers and Hoodeners— past, present and future

First published 2000

This edition published 2019

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Geoff & Fran Doel, 2000, 2019

The right of Geoff & Fran Doel to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9271 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

List of illustrations

Introduction

1    The Robin Hood ballads and the outlaw tradition

2    The Pastourelles

3    Robin Hood and Maid Marian and the May Games

4    The Robin Hood folk plays

5    The search for the historical Robin Hood

6    Robin Hood’s status

7    The Greenwood myth and Arcady

8    Robin’s outlaw band

Gazetteer of sites connected with Robin Hood

Bibliography

Filmography

Acknowledgements and notes

List of Illustrations

  1     A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode – engraving after Bewick from Joseph Ritson, Robin Hood

  2     Frontispiece to Clark & Thackeray’s 1687 edition of Martin Parker’s A True Tale of Robin Hood

  3     Robin Hood, William Scadlock and Little John from the broadside Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon

  4     Robin Hood & the Princess from Robin Hood & the Prince of Aragon. Engraving after Bewick from Ritson’s Robin Hood

  5     Robin Hood and the Tanner – after an engraving from Bewick in Ritson’s Robin Hood

  6     Little John knocks Robin into the river. From Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown

  7     Illustration from the broadside Robin Hood and the Bishop (Roxburghe Ballads c. 1660)

  8     Robin Hood teaches Marian how to shoot. From Pierce Egan’s Robin Hood & Little John

  9     Friar Tuck and Maid Marian dance at the end of The Play of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck

10    The May Queen ceremonies at Robin Hood’s Bay 1901

11    The town crier introduces the ‘Hal-an-Tow’ at Helston

12    Robin Hood and Friar Tuck fight with quarterstaffs from the Play of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck

13    Friar Tuck’s dogs attack Robin Hood’s men in The Play of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck

14    Friar Tuck and Maid Marian at the conclusion of The Play of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck

15    The Potter fights Robin Hood in the play Robin Hood and the Potter

16    Robin Hood’s Well, Barnsdale

17    Frontispiece to Ritson’s Robin Hood

18    Kirklees Priory Gatehouse, after an etching from Ritson’s Robin Hood

19    Robin Hood’s Death. From Pierce Egan’s Robin Hood & Little John

20    Death of Robin Hood – carving on Castle Green, Nottingham by James Woodford

21    Robin Hood Slays the Foresters in Robin Hood’s Progress to Nottingham after an engraving by Bewick in Ritson’s Robin Hood

22    Robin Hood’s Delight. After an engraving by Bewick from Ritson’s Robin Hood

23    Robin Hood in the Greenwood from Pierce Egan’s Robin Hood & Little John

24    Festivities in Sherwood Forest from Pierce Egan’s Robin Hood & Little John

25    Robin Goodfellow – from an early seventeenth-century woodcut

26    Robin Hood & the Curtall Fryer engraving after Bewick from Ritson’s Robin Hood

27    Robin Hood and Little John (Roxburghe Ballads c.1660)

28    Maid Marian and Robin Hood from Pierce Egan’s Robin Hood & Little John

29    Robin Wood’s Rock, near Beadnell, Northumberland

30    Robin Hood’s Bay from the North

31    One of Robin Hood’s Butts, North York Moors

32    Robin Hood’s Column and Robin Hood’s Field, near Whitby

33    Little John’s Column and Little John’s Field, near Whitby

34    Robin Hood’s Tower, City Walls of York

35    Whitby Abbey from Whitby: Its Abbey by F.K. Robinson

36    Edwinstowe Church – legendary site of Robin and Marian’s wedding

37    Little John’s Grave, Hathersage Church in the Peak District

38    Statue of Robin Hood on Castle Green, Nottingham by James Woodford

39    The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest

40    The May Queen and Maids of Honour

Introduction

The concept of an individual who can only find freedom or come to terms with his own true nature by rejecting or withdrawing from his society and entering into an Arcadian or contemplative existence in commune with nature, is an enduring and archetypal European myth extending back at least as far as Timon of Athens. The withdrawal can be a temporary one, as in the case of the Duke in Shakespeare’s As You Like It or of Prospero in The Tempest, who await the restoration of valid values in their societies before returning as rulers. Not only do their societies improve, however, but they themselves are the wiser from their experiences in adversity. Writers and film directors who have shown Robin Hood as an aristocrat unjustly deprived of his estates, depict him awaiting a return to play his proper role in society, but with the compassion and wisdom he has learned from his suffering.

Then there are the outlaws such as Hereward the Wake who were banished because of their bad behaviour. In Hereward’s case the society which banished him was ruthlessly swept aside by the Norman invasion, but he matured into an heroic freedom fighter (or at least took on that stance in legend), paradoxically trying to reinstate the social order which banished him. Similarly many nineteenth- and twentieth-century American outlaws and Australian bushrangers – figures such as Jessie James, Billy the Kid, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ned Kelly and Ben Hall, committed genuine crimes against their societies, but became folk heroes because they embodied a genuine challenge to some unfair aspect within the operations of society and its authority (often as in the Robin Hood legends embodied in the authority of local sheriffs). As Woody Guthrie sang in his ballad Pretty Boy Floyd: ‘some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen’ and:

As through this world you travel, as through this world you roam, you’ll never see an outlaw, drive a family from their home.

The context here is the dustbowl eviction of farmers from Midwest America in the 1930s, when banks ruthlessly foreclosed on the mortgages of bankrupt farmers and evicted them and their families. Pretty Boy Floyd shares with Robin Hood the tradition of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor and the dislike of sheriffs, whose power they regard as arbitrary and associated with vested interest.

What about the concept of the outlaw as freedom fighter? William Tell immediately springs to mind, and numerous nineteenth- and twentieth-century fighters against oppressive regimes. Ever since Joseph Ritson, himself a supporter of the French Revolution, wrote his biography of Robin Hood in 1795, which influenced Scott’s Ivanhoe, children’s writers and films have shown Robin championing the poor against the rich and specifically the Saxon peasantry against their Norman overlords with their feudal system and savage game laws. To what extent did the late twelfth-century and thirteenth-century peasants consider themselves as Anglo-Saxons unfairly treated by Norman oppressors? Or was it the simply the usual case of the rich exploiting the poor? These are interesting questions as the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy undoubtedly treated their peasantry better than the Normans did – they didn’t have to build castles to protect themselves against their own people. The Hereward revolt was definitely one of Anglo-Saxons (aided at times by Vikings) against the Normans.

How does Robin Hood fit into this outlaw tradition? In the late nineteenth century, the great ballad scholar Francis Child regarded Robin as ‘absolutely a creation of the ballad-muse’. How wonderful was the absolute certainty of those nineteenth-century scholars! Yet few would agree with Professor Child’s conclusion today, though his ballad scholarship remains unequalled and of enormous value to all researchers into Robin Hood. In the twentieth century there has been scholarly pursuit of Robin as an historical outlaw and as a figure from the May Games.

Ever since Ritson’s book there has been a strong interest in trying to prove and locate an historical Robin Hood with links with Barnsdale or Sherwood Forest or both. Professor Holt’s Robin Hood is the definitive work in the historical approach to the Robin Hood legend, examining candidates and exploring the concept of ‘yeoman’ and the social, economic, political, religious and geographical background with great thoroughness and clarity. David Wiles and more recently Ronald Hutton have examined the strong role of Robin in the May Games. And Professor R.B. Dobson and J. Taylor have made accessible ballads, literary extracts, play texts and legendary sites in their Rimes of Robin Hood, which also contains an excellent introductory essay.

Yet amid all this burgeoning scholarship, the legend was beginning to lose its grassroots appeal in the early 1980s. The problem was that the stories had become too ‘Boys’ Ownish’ through generations of children’s books, and films and television series largely made for children. Ever since the publication of Ivanhoe, the Robin Hood legends had been transmitted largely through children’s books, and latterly films. The exception to this were the orally transmitted folksongs being collected up until at least the Aberdeenshire farmer John Strachan’s Robin Hood and Little John in the 1950s. We have come across many of these ballads being sung in folk clubs since the folk revival of the 1960s, so once again they have an oral currency.

By the early 1980s, interest among the general public in the Robin Hood legends was distinctly on the wane. By comparison with Arthurian tradition, the Robin Hood legends lacked coherence, romance, the supernatural and the mystical, intricate stories and the subtlety of characterisation. Above all it lacked the interest of leading literary writers through the ages – there were no outstanding authors on Robin Hood to compare with Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien De Troyes, Malory or Tennyson.

A dramatic change was effected by Richard Carpenter’s Robin of Sherwood TV series, which awakened a whole new generation’s interest in Robin Hood by vigorous characterisation (a marvellously evil Sheriff and a sidekick for him – Guy of Gisborne), realistically earthy outlaws with vitality and humour, by a creative use of the traditional stories and most of all by the introduction – or should we say reintroduction? – of myth, that most powerful ingredient of Arthurian legends. Within months the dying Robin Hood legends were saved, theme parks began to open and shops were full of Robin Hood books once again and videos. Carpenter respected the tradition (he corresponded with a friend of ours about the Guy of Gisborne tradition) but he also provided a series that was somehow both more medieval and more modern than the preceding children’s books and films.

Richard Carpenter had, because so little of the original myth of Robin Hood had survived, ingeniously wedded another forest legend – that of Herne the Hunter – with the Robin Hood tradition. This gave both a structure and a whole new dimension to the stories, in the same way rather as the immortality of Arthur, the ‘once and future king’, with his associations with Avalon affected the Arthurian legends. Did the original Robin Hood legends have a supernatural aspect?

The complexity of recent finds of early surnames ‘Robynhode’ suggests to us that it is no longer realistic to expect to find a single historical personage who spawned the legends. We feel that it is time to review the whole corpus of the legends and their cultural significance in the light of the recent research, to investigate the possibility of a mythical and folklore origin for Robin, which could have interacted with actual historical people during the development of the legends. In this way the deep subconscious attractions the legends continue to exert might be better understood.

It is hoped that the extensively researched gazetteer of Robin Hood sites (many of which we have visited and photographed) will assist those of you who enjoy outdoor research. As films are now a major source of culture for the young, three members of the younger generation – Isobel Doel, Steven Morley and Thomas Doel – have compiled a filmography of Robin Hood films and television serials as an appendix to the book.

1   The Robin Hood ballads and the outlaw tradition

Herkens, god yemen,

Comley, corteys and god,

On of the best that yeuer bare bowe,

Hes name was Roben Hode

(Robin Hood & the Potter)

Most of what we know about the alleged exploits of Robin Hood comes from a lengthy medieval poem and an assortment of ballads of varying dates; plus three plays (two of them fragmentary) from the May Games overlapping with material in the ballads. It is therefore hardly surprising that Professor Francis Child, the famous nineteenth-century American ballad scholar from Harvard University, was of the opinion that ‘Robin Hood is absolutely a creation of the ballad-muse’. We do not necessarily agree with Professor Child’s conclusion, but an investigation of the ballads to see the nature of the legend we are dealing with is a sensible starting point, before embarking on the quest for historical and/or mythological origins of our Greenwood hero.

Professor Child’s own English and Scottish Popular Ballads remains the definitive collection. A lengthy poem (the Gest), Martin Parker’s A True Tale of Robin Hood (an antiquarian rewrite of 1632) and thirty-six ballads (some printed with alternative versions) are printed in Volume 3. A further ballad, found under the title of The Birth of Robin Hood in Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, is printed in Child’s second volume under the title Willie and Earl Richard’s Daughter. The Gest, extracts from Parker and a selection of fourteen Child ballads are reprinted in the excellent modern compendium of Robin Hood literature Rymes of Robin Hood by Professor Richard Dobson & John Taylor. There are also a number of Robin Hood ballads of uncertain date and pedigree which did not find their way into Professor Child’s collection, An example is the Derbyshire ballad The Lay of the Buckstone, which seems to have been arranged in the nineteenth century from two distinct earlier ballads involving a fight between Robin Hood and the keepers of Peak Forest, and an archery contest between Robin and the Peak Foresters. Another is Robin Whood (sic) Turned Hermit published by a Lincolnshire antiquarian in 1735.

1   A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode — engraving after Bewick from Joseph Ritson, Robin Hood