Robin Hood: A Fictional Journey

By NB Dixon

Ever since his story first appeared, the folk hero, Robin Hood, has delighted and fascinated the minds of people all over the world. I remember as if it were yesterday when I first discovered it, tucked away in a corner of the school library. It captured my imagination and has stayed with me ever since. It’s a testament to his endurance that his story has survived for several centuries, and has undergone many different interpretations.

Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood with the sword
as depicted in older ballads 

The first written accounts of Robin Hood are in ballads. These ballads interestingly state his home in Barnsdale forest, not Sherwood, and set his story during the reign of King Edward II, rather than Richard the Lionheart, the King most closely associated with Robin. So, at what point did the story move from Barnsdale forest to Sherwood? When was Edward II replaced by Richard the Lionheart? Were these stories in fact based on real men? It seems we are destined not to know for sure, but these aren’t the only discrepancies in the Robin Hood legend. In the early ballads he is a peasant. In later versions of the story, he’s a nobleman who returns from the crusade to find his lands have been taken. This was actually a common practice. When knights were away on crusade, their lands were often seized by their enterprising neighbours. If the knight had not been heard from in seven years, he was considered to be dead. Often the poor men would return to find their homes were in the possession of another. They might appeal to the law for justice, but as the justice system moved slowly, they were often forced to turn to outlawry as a means of survival.

A knight named Fulk Fitzwarren lost his lands during a quarrel with King Richard’s brother, John, a king whom Robin Hood has a notoriously rocky relationship with. While Fulk Fitzwarren was indeed a real person who became an outlaw for a time and rebelled against King John before eventually having his lands returned to him and becoming a loyal servant to the King, a good deal of romance has sprung up around his story. There are parallels between it and the Robin Hood legend.

Robin becomes kinder once he is a nobleman. He steals only from the rich to give to the poor. Some sceptics have argued that this was nothing more than a piece of propaganda to make the peasant class think more kindly of the nobles who governed their lives.

The first book in which Robin Hood appears as the hero, though it is not in fact his first appearance in a novel, is Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. This book very much softens Robin Hood’s hard edges. He is a kind and cheerful man as opposed to a hardened thug. Many other novels have portrayed Robin with this “traditional image”, although modern interpretations have returned to the grittier, and some would argue, more realistic portrayal of a band of outlaws trying to survive the brutality that was life in medieval England.

There are what one might call traditions in the story. Most people know of Robin’s prowess with the bow. It’s even acknowledged in an inscription on the stone purportedly marking his grave. One of the most often told tales of Robin is how he entered an archery contest under the nose of the Sheriff of Nottingham and won a silver (or sometimes golden) arrow by splitting his opponent’s arrow in two. Two other adventures that crop up in most versions of the tail are Robin’s meeting with Little John, when they embark on a battle with quarterstaffs on a bridge halfway across a stream, which ends in Robin’s defeat and thereby seals the friendship between the two men. His meeting with the priest, Friar Tuck, where Robin forces the Friar to carry him across a stream and the Friar then orders Robin to do the same for him is also a recurring theme.

Robin and Little John with quarterstaffs

Some newer versions of the story of Robin Hood do stand out as brave interpretations, and can even be said to have influenced other authors. The TV series, Robin of Sherwood, first broadcast in the early 1980s, adds a fantasy element to the story. It combines the legend of the famous outlaw with actual historical events and characters and the pagan beliefs of the time. Robin Hood is in fact the servant of Hern the Hunter, a mythical spirit who dwells in the Forest. Since some theories have it that Robin is in fact a spirit or a green man rather than an actual human, perhaps it’s this that gave the creator of the series his idea. Robin of Sherwood remains one of the most loved of the recent interpretations of the legend.

More recently still, the radio series, simply entitled, Hood, turns the legend completely upside down. The Sheriff of Nottingham, usually Robin Hood’s arch enemy, is in fact the hero of the story. He is forced to take on the alias of Robin Hood, and it remains a millstone round his neck for the rest of the series.

As for Robin Hood’s sexuality, it was Professor Stephen Thomas Knight who first suggested that the legend of Robin Hood carried homosexual undertones. In Howard Pyle’s novel, the men embrace and sometimes kiss one another with no visible sign of awkwardness or embarrassment. Throughout every stage of Robin’s evolution as a character, the devotion to his men, and theirs to him, remains the focal point of the story.

In an ever-evolving culture such as ours, it was probably inevitable that someone would place a homosexual interpretation on the legend of Robin. The notion of a man who on the outside was the valiant hero and saviour of the poor, while struggling with inner demons, is intriguing.

In Medieval times, homosexuality was regarded not only as unnatural, but as a crime that could sometimes be punishable by death. It was considered an affront against nature and against God. Many men would have tried to conceal their nature, perhaps by getting married and locking away that part of themselves.

Marian has also evolved as a character. She isn’t in the earliest tales at all, and in many novels, is barely worthy of a mention. Recently, however, she has assumed a much more prominent part, even upstaging Robin on occasion. She has evolved from a weak damsel in distress to a feisty woman in her own right. There have even been some novels written from her perspective.

Robin and Marian

Robin continues to evolve as a character through the medium of novels, radio and TV. It is likely he will continue to fascinate us for many more years to come.

[all images are in the public domain via Wikipedia]

NB is giving away an e-book (worldwide) and a paperback (UK only) of Heir of Locksley. (Closes Sunday 9th April 2017)

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N.B. Dixon is an author of historical fiction. Her love for the Robin Hood legend began in a neglected corner of the school library and has continued ever since. She is a self-confessed bookworm and also a musician. She began work on the Outlaws Legacy Series in 2013, and was accepted by Beaten Track Publishing in 2016.

Outlaws Legacy is a historical series based around the Robin Hood legend, taking Robin through his life, rather than just concentrating on his time as an outlaw. What happened before and after? What made him the man he eventually became? This is the focus of Heir of Locksley, the first novel in the Outlaw’s Legacy series. It follows Robin through his childhood and teenage years, and, through a series of events, shapes the man he will become.

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Robin Hood and the "Shire Reeve" of Nottingham

By Rosanne E. Lortz

In the multitude of Robin Hood legends or retellings, the principal villain is usually the Sheriff of Nottingham. As Prince John’s taxman, he is the bane of the poor peasantry, the threat to Maid Marian, and the arch-nemesis whom Robin Hood must outwit time and time again.

Robin Hood statue in Nottingham

For Americans, the word “sheriff” can conjure up a whole set of Wild West connotations foreign to the twelfth century world. The sheriff of our imaginations wears a silver star and a ten-gallon hat and carries a six-shooter. While his job entails bringing in outlaws, those outlaws are far more likely to be rustling longhorn cattle out among the tumbleweeds than poaching deer in His Majesty’s forest. Although the title of the American sheriff is derivative from the medieval English sheriff, there are many important differences, and not just cosmetic ones.

The term sheriff in Medieval England originally came from the words “shire reeve.” Historian Elizabeth Hallam writes the shire reeve was “the person responsible for supervising the king’s estates in the shire and collecting the income from them to pay into the Exchequer.”

Besides being the taxman, the shire reeve was also the local judge. He presided over the county court, giving judgments and keeping the peace. He delivered writs to summon accusers or offenders to the royal court when a dispute was too high a matter to be resolved within the shire.

The position of shire reeve was a prestigious one and prone to corruption. Hallam writes that “many exploited the power their position gave them for their own financial gain…. [I]n 1170, Henry [II] held inquiries into their conduct and dismissed most of them.”

The shire reeves during the reign of Henry’s son John turned out to be no better a lot. A man named Philip Mark held the position of Sheriff of Nottingham during this time, and his actions awakened such indignation that he received his own especial mention in the Magna Carta…when the nobles demanded that he be removed and forever banned from office. Philip Mark is considered by some to be a candidate for the sheriff of the legends (although interestingly, the dates which he served as sheriff—1209, 1214, and 1217—would put him after the time when Robin Hood was supposedly active).

But whether or not Philip Mark was the inspiration for the sheriff of the legends, one common thread in the medieval ballads and stories is that the Sheriff of Nottingham is nameless. His importance in the story is not so much as a historical character but as a symbol.

In her essay on the Sheriff of Nottingham, Valerie B. Johnson writes:

The sheriff of Nottingham's role in the Robin Hood legends is not glamorous—nor is his rivalry with Robin Hood particularly personal. In sum, the sheriff exists because Robin Hood needs the sheriff to exist. Without a foe who embodies local and national governmental corruption, indicating both personal failings and systemic problems, Robin Hood cannot hope to stand as a resistance figure to unjust authority.

While the American sheriff of the Wild West is a symbol of law and order, the sheriff of the Robin Hood legend is a nameless symbol of corruption and tyranny.

In the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, American mythology informs us that the lawmen handed the outlaws their just deserts. But when the Sheriff of Nottingham proclaims, “Come thou forth, thou fals outlawe. Thou shall be hangyde and y-drawe,” our sympathies are entirely on the other side.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. The Plantagenet Chronicles. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986.

Johnson, Valerie B. “The Sheriff.” The Robin Hood Project. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/robin-hood/theme/sheriff-of-nottingham (accessed December 16, 2014).