If we learn world history via Hollywood, we are in trouble, as the movie version of historical
events is often a butchered slice of past life that bears little resemblance to what
actually happened.
The movie Braveheart, which depicted William Wallace as a near-faultless hero, has been
called one of the “most historically inaccurate movies” of our time.
For one thing, in real life, Wallace was born into Scottish gentry and he certainly didn’t
wear a kilt.
As for the movie Pearl Harbor, in real life, Japanese Kamikaze pilots weren’t used until
later in the war.
It’s also highly doubtful that Pocahontas actually fell in love with John Smith, and
historians tell us it’s very unlikely she saved his life.
With all that in mind, welcome to this episode of the Infographics Show, Why Robin Hood Was
Actually A Bad Guy.
A bit like the stories of King Arthur and the knights of the round table, the story
of Robin Hood has many iterations and falls into the category of folklore.
Arthur’s story goes back much further than Robin’s, and still today, historians have
different opinions regarding if Arthur ever existed.
The same goes for Robin Hood.
But let’s have a look at who he could have been.
The story we all know well is that Robin Hood was a kind of noble outlaw, a sword-wielding
social-anarchist of sorts who robbed from the rich and gave the proceeds back to the
poor.
He was a formidable archer, who with his band of merry men went up against the evil Sheriff
of Nottingham.
His love interest was Maid Marian, although she doesn’t come onto the scene until many
years after the first Robin Hood tales were told.
The BBC tells us that the legend of Robin Hood first appears in a poem written in 1377,
or thereabouts.
That poem is called “Piers Plowman”.
It’s incredibly long and written in Old English.
Here’s a snippet from the last page: “And lat hem ligge overlonge and looth is
to chaunge hem; Fro Lenten to Lenten he lat his plastres bite.
We guess that you didn’t get much of that.
Reading the entire thing is not easy, so we won’t talk anymore about this piece of writing.
More tales of Robin Hood would follow, such as “Robin Hood and the Monk” circa 1450
and “The Lyttle Geste of Robyn Hode” also written sometime in the 1400s.
Where do these stories come from?
That is the question, and it’s not easy to answer.
One historian tells us that in the King's Remembrancer's Memoranda Roll of Easter 1262
there is mention of an outlaw called William Robehod.
But the names Robehods and Robynhods were common back then.
What that historian says is that it was likely that some kind of outlaw existed in the north
of England who was the basis of the Robin Hood story.
He may have been active in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, but also in Yorkshire.
The legend tells us that he actually died in Kirklees, an area of West Yorkshire.
You can go visit his grave there today at a place called Kirklees Priory in Brighouse,
near Huddersfield.
According to the legend, when Robin was on his deathbed he asked Little John to hand
him his bow and arrow.
Robin said he would fire the arrow and wherever it landed that’s where he wanted to be buried.
But that’s just one story.
His fate is told differently in other stories.
As one historian says, “It is possible to construct a chronology: Robin active in the
1190s, an outlaw by 1225, dead by 1247 and a legend by 1261.”
He also adds that he wouldn’t put his reputation on it.
All in all, no one is quite sure regarding the true origins of Robin Hood.
There were many Robins in those days as the name was a diminutive of the name Robert.
Hood or Hod was also a common name as it is derived from ‘maker of Hoods’.
So, the fact the name pops up quite often isn’t a surprise at all.
It was very likely that there were quite a few Robin Hoods who were both law-abiding
citizens and also outlaws.
As we said, it wasn’t until later that the legend really got going.
In the story “Robin Hood and the Monk” he is placed in Nottingham and his acrimonious
relationship with the local sheriff is talked about, as is an assault on Little John after
the latter beats him in an archery contest.
According to legend this competition took place at Whitby in Yorkshire and they fired
their arrows from the roof of the Monastery there.
That same century in “Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham” Friar Tuck, the portly
monk, makes an appearance.
Interestingly, in some of these stories, or ballads, Robin doesn’t rob from the rich
and give to the poor.
But other experts do say the rebellious outlaw may have been fashioned from poor people revolting
against harsh conditions in medieval England.
That Robin Hood may have been part of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
There could have been a real-life outlaw before this time, and then during the days when the
poor were sick and tired of their hard lives, Robin Hood the myth could have been invented.
Then there’s the ballad, “A Gest of Robyn Hode”, which was printed between 1492 and
1534.
In this story Robin and his merry men help a knight who owes money due to his son killing
two men.
Robin gives him the cash and also some clothes.
The knight at one point sees a man in a wrestling match, Little John, and the two become acquainted.
Little John was then in the service of the knight.
Later in the tale the sheriff holds an archery competition and Robin wins it.
The Sheriff isn’t too happy about this and Robin ends up killing him.
To cut a long story short, Robin stays with the king for a while and kneels before him,
only to get bored of court life and run off to the forest.
He lives there for another 22 years.
In 1592’s “Annales of England” Robin Hood’s campaign of kindness is discussed.
Some of the last lines in that tale are, “He was a good outlaw.”
In some of these early ballads he’s not depicted as a man that embodies absolute equality,
making people in his band kneel when they speak to him.
In these early versions of the tale he is just a commoner, or yeoman, who is not exactly
anti-establishment, but a violent outlaw.
In later versions, and there are many, he might be a knight, or a nobleman fallen from
grace, or a simple peasant.
In many early stories he isn’t concerned about high taxes; he doesn’t run around
the forests of northern England wrestling coins from the rich.
He’s not a revolutionary by any means.
He’s a robber and killer, but in some ways he’s what you might call a likeable rogue.
We have another ballad called “The True Tale of Robin Hood” which was written around
1630.
In this version of events Robin is the Earl of Huntington.
This rich man, though, becomes poor after some frivolous spending and the loss of his
cash to the abbot of St. Mary's.
Robin then sets out to get his revenge.
He starts robbing from the rich, especially the rich clergy, and handing out the bounty
to the poor.
This is similar to the children’s tale we all know, except for the fact that in this
story Robin is fond of castrating those clergymen.
Hmm, that could have caused some tears in primary school.
In this story, Robin is not exactly anti-establishment as it seems he has a decent relationship with
King Richard.
In fact, Robin is usually good with the monarchy; it’s the sheriff that is the problem.
It ends when Robin gets sick and his friar attempts to bleed him, a backwards way of
making someone better back in the day.
He dies, and the king laments the fact that Robin trusted the friar.
So, is that the “true” tale?
You can bet your life that it isn’t.
In other tales Robin Hood is more of a trickster, and of course he doesn’t always dress in
that green outfit we always see him in.
As we said earlier, Maid Marian only comes into the story much later.
The earliest characters in his band of merry men consist of Friar Tuck, Little John, Much
the Miller’s son and Will Scarlet.
Some other sources tell us Robin Hood was also French.
Sacre bleu!
Yes, those sources say there was a French character called “Robin des Bois” or Robin
of the Woods.
This character was celebrated during the French May Day festival, but it’s more likely that
the French just took the English story.
We must also remember that French was still widely used in England in the days of the
Robin Hood early stories.
So, we know many of these early ballads were bloody and not exactly child-friendly.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that Robin Hood could be said to gain a PG-rating.
“The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire” of 1883 was an
illustrated novel that took bits from all the old stories, minus the forest massacres,
the castrations and the painful bindings of the clergy, and made the tale suitable for
kids.
This is the story that has influenced many other story-tellers and also filmmakers, but
it’s hardly close to earlier depictions.
The story is again monarchy-friendly, as Robin Hood and his merry men are all given pardons
by King Richard the Lionheart.
Robin is not portrayed as an outlaw, or a crook, as he was before, and he does not go
around slaying his enemies.
Then you have the 1938 movie, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, which shows Sir Robin of
Locksley as fighting against the oppression of the Norman Lord who are in cahoots with
Prince John.
The king is away fighting in the Holy Land and the Normans and Prince John are hard on
the poor in his absence.
Robin swears to put Richard the Lionheart back on the throne and gets his rebel guerrilla
army together.
Robin, Much, his buddy Will Scarlet, Little John and Friar Tuck all go hide out in Sherwood
forest.
They make an oath not only to free England, but also to rob from the rich and give to
the poor.
At one point they get hold of a group of Normans, who include Lady Marian and the Sheriff of
Nottingham.
The lady of course is first outraged at being held captive, but the smooth-talking Robin
soon gets her on his side.
In the end Richard gets back on the throne and pardons the outlaws.
He then says Robin should marry Marian and makes Robin the Baron of Locksley and Earl
of Sherwood and Nottingham.
Robin gets down on his knees and further pledges his allegiance to the king.
Everyone lives happily ever after.
Which of course is complete fiction, but we don’t think anyone would argue that point.
Still, the newer stories of the noble Robin are very different from the older, bloodier
tales, and are also an unabashed abuse of historical reality.
Outlaws didn’t usually end-up on the winning side, they still don’t.
In general, the more romanticized Robin Hood tales are a kind of an offering to the poor
who might watch or read them and begin a bout of wishful thinking.
In fact, the older stories of Robin Hood being a brute who isn’t exactly democratic nor
hands over his bounty to the poor, are no doubt much closer to reality than the more
recent tales.
But Robin Hood as bloody historical realism, and not a Hollywood happy ending account,
might be a hard sell to some movie goers.
In conclusion, there are so many different Robin Hood stories, many we haven’t mentioned
here, that there is no way to fathom what really happened, or indeed if anything happened
at all.
But if we read English history and we try to construct a tale from our knowledge, we
might believe that if there was a Robin Hood then his story would be one of excessive violence
that would likely end with him being executed in the most brutal way imaginable.
The tale of Robin Hood exists because most of us want to believe in the small man overcoming
establishment oppression.
The stories warm our hearts, but the reality is that life didn’t play out like that.
The outlaw Hods of the 13th century were likely nothing more than common thieves who viciously
killed, and certainly wouldn’t hand over a couple of coins to the other poor folks
eking out a living in the cruel climate of northern England.
So, do you disagree?
If so, let us know why in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show called YOU vs 100 People - How Could You Defeat
Them.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.