Let me tell you a story.
It’s the Medieval Era, you’re in England, walking in a forest on a warm summer morning.
The sun is out, the wind is blowing, and the birds are chirping.
It’s a really beautiful day, and you want to make the most of it.
As you walk, a man suddenly appears in front of you.
He is wearing a green outfit, and a green hat.
Or is that a hood?
You don’t really know.
You can’t seem to be able to see his face.
You’re scared, but you really shouldn’t be.
He won’t harm you.
At least not yet anyway.
The man proceeds to bring you into the woods for a supposed big feast.
The meal catches your eye.
You think to yourself, “could that really be?
Well yeah, yeah it is”: freshly hunted venison, a forbidden animal, only allowed to be hunted
by the King himself.
This man was no ordinary man..
But he wasn’t a king either.
No this man, was an outlaw.
After the meal, which of course was delicious, another man appears and asks you a simple
question: how much money are you carrying with you?
Now, be careful here.
Take your time before answering.
Because your answer to this question could very well cost you everything you have.
If you are honest, he’ll let you keep your money.
If you’re poor, he might even give you some.
But if you lie, well, he’ll take everything that you have, tie you to a horse and send
you back out of the forest in shame for everybody to see.
This is Robin Hood.
The famous myth about the green-hooded outlaw who robs from the rich and gives back to the
poor.
If you’re new here, I’m Darius Cosden and this is Vlogs of Knowledge.
Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell as I do upload every
single Wednesday.
It’s been a while since I’ve covered a myth.
And to be honest, I kinda missed it.
So get ready because
you’re in for a treat.
Oh and of course, happy new year!
Let’s make 2018 the best year yet.
Robin Hood is a famous English legend that has been very popular in modern times due
to various books, plays, and movies written about the subject.
It is the story of a young man who lived in a forest and robbed people he deemed corrupt.
He was very popular amongst the English peasants and common folk, since he is often portrayed
giving them the money he took from the rich nobility.
Now, depending on where you heard the story, you might have a different version of who
Robin Hood is.
That’s because we don’t have any of the original documents that talk about Robin Hood.
And even though this is a fairly recent myth, when you don’t have the original documents,
things tend to get distorted over time.
Most probably this myth started out as a tale told orally, which was then spread through
word of mouth.
You can understand that most peasants would rejoice at the idea of a humble man who would
steal from the rich.
So naturally, one person tells it to someone else, who only hears half the story correctly,
then tells it to somebody else who tells it to somebody else, and so on.
Pretty soon, you have yourself a big game of telephone.
For example, in some versions Robin Hood is portrayed as a “yeoman”, which
is basically a commoner,
in other versions, he is portrayed as a noble who owned a considerable amount of land, and
in more modern renditions, he even became the Earl of Huntington.
Some other notable differences include some characters in his group of followers not being
mentioned while others are, some events in Robin’s life having taken place differently,
or simply the locations in the story changing from version to version.
The point is that there’s no one source that can give us a true identity of who Robin
Hood was, or who he was intended to be.
Keeping that in mind, I will now go through the rest of this video talking about Robin Hood
in a way that tries to include as many different versions as possible, where applicable.
But of course, as always, we need to put all of this in historical context, and get some
background.
In late Medieval England, the peasants were starting to get fed up with the Feudal system
and the corrupt nobility.
The way the system worked was that as a peasant, you would work on a piece of land that belongs
to the King or a member of the nobility, and in return the King would offer you your basic
needs and protection from foreign attacks.
If you were a King, or a noble, or even a Knight, you didn’t have such a bad time,
arguably.
The ones who really suffered were the peasants.
Not only did they live and work on land that didn’t belong to them, but they were also
forced to give a portion of their produce to whoever owned the land.
Simply put, this system was treating peasants like garbage and they had had enough.
I mean, when a system like this is in place for roughly 1,000 years, it’s bound to collapse
at some point.
But the peasants were powerless.
How could they defeat the corrupt nobility?
They needed someone.
They needed a hero.
Robin Hood came to the English common folk as a beacon of truth and justice.
He, with his bow and arrow, would target the corrupt rich, steal their money and give it
to the poor.
It was exactly what they needed.
You can now understand why he became so popular.
Robin Hood is said to have been the best archer in England, and the only man to be able to split
an arrow in half with a shot from his bow.
He always wears green, he lives in a forest called the Sherwood forest, and has a band of followers
called the Merry Men.
Now depending on the story that you look at, Robin Hood became this outlaw with a personal vendetta
against the rich due to different reasons.
Some say he was robbed by the nobility at an early age and wanted to seek revenge, others
say he was a noble himself and was tricked into losing his land, or he might have simply
been in dept, needed money, and also cared for the poor.
Regardless of the reason, one thing is clear.
Robin Hood was excellent at stealing people’s money.
Not only was he a good marksman, but the fact that he lived in a forest allowed him to lure
people in and steal from them in his own territory.
Him and his Merry Men are said to have lived high up in an oak tree, providing them with
just the right amount of protection.
According to some versions, the king of the time, King Richard, had a younger brother
who would take care of the kingdom while he was away.
Now this brother, Prince John, was corrupt, hated Robin Hood, and wanted to capture him.
He knew that Robin Hood was hiding in the Sherwood forest so he sent a group of knights
to try to bring him in.
Time after time, the knights failed and Robin Hood escaped.
I mean he was smart and this was his home territory.
The Prince, upset and out of options, goes to the Sheriff of Nottingham to ask for advice.
The Sheriff realizes that Robin Hood is too hard to catch in his own territory.
The only way they thought they could get him, was to lure him out of the forest.
The Sheriff then came up with a plan to host an archery tournament, under the pretext of
finding out who was England’s best archer.
Surely Robin Hood wouldn’t resist such an opportunity.
Now his followers warned him not to go, since all of England obviously knew he was the best,
but Robin’s ego was too strong.
He decided to go in disguise, so that nobody could recognize him.
Now here’s where we get some differences again.
In some cases, he wins the competition by splitting the other finalist’s arrow in
half, while in other cases he simply hits too many perfect shots and people realize
who he is because nobody is that good with a bow and arrow.
Either way, Robin Hood escapes before the Prince or the Sheriff can catch him.
His ego now satisfied, he returns to the forest, where he resumes his usual activities:
robbing people.
No pun intended.
Little is known about his life after these events, until his death in the 13th century.
He supposedly got ill and went to his cousin for help.
His cousin wanted to give him the standard treatment of the time for any illness: bloodletting.
But she betrayed him and made him lose too much blood on purpose, trying to kill him.
Then, moments before his death, Robin Hood is said to have shot one last arrow and told
his friend to bury him wherever that arrow landed.
And actually, that arrow is said to have been shot near Kirklees, England, where today we
have the grave of someone named Robin Hood.
Now this is interesting, but doesn’t actually confirm anything.
As we’re going to see shortly.
So now that we got the myth out of the way, I want to take a step back and look at the
historical narrative.
I want to look at the origins of Robin Hood.
Where he came from, why we have so many different versions of the myth, and most importantly,
why he became such a big part of our culture.
The first thing I want you to understand, is Robin Hood’s name.
It is split into two parts: Robin and Hood.
Robin is a shorter version of the name Robert, which was very common in England in the late
Medieval Era.
Hood on the other hand is often referred to a hooder, a maker of hoods, or someone who
wore hoods often.
And there were many Roberts who wore hoods in those times.
So hearing of a Robin Hood, was something that was very common.
Which makes the task of finding the true, historical Robin Hood, that much harder.
And that’s what I meant with the grave saying Robin Hood earlier.
With so many of these names, that grave could’ve been anybody’s.
We simply don’t know if this myth is based on a real person or not.
Not only is it really hard to pin point one specific Robin Hood, but like I said, we don’t
have the original documents.
The earliest documents that we have are only copies that came much later.
For example, one of such documents is a copy of a poem called “Piers Plowman” that
is said to have been written in 1370.
This poem mentions a specific Robin Hood, mentions his status as a commoner, his abilities
as an archer, and a few members of his band of Merry Men.
Although no mention is made of Maid Marian, his supposed love.
If we follow this chronologically, then the next significant piece of evidence comes from
the year 1500, through a ballad that clearly shows signs of having pieced together many
different stories.
In fact, that’s where we find the first mentions of the King and the archery tournament.
The story was then adapted throughout various plays in the 16th century and we saw Robin
Hood change little by little.
The early ballads and poems all portray him as a simple commoner.
But as the story progressed and different adaptations came to existence, Robin’s status
was elevated to that of nobility.
His personality was also changed, from being a fierce violent leader to whom his followers
kneeled to, all the way to being a nice, kind, and just human being fighting for the poor.
If we put the pieces together, this story could’ve been inspired by a real man, who
may or may not share the same qualities as the Robin Hood we see in the ballads and poems.
This mysterious figure, whether he existed or not, could have influenced some local tales
that began to be passed around by word of mouth.
But since most of the population was illiterate, nobody could write these things down.
So for a few decades, it remained a simple oral legend.
When somebody eventually wrote it down, it arguably was too late.
Most probably, by then, the myth had already been changed.
And even if they somehow got everything right.
We’ve seen how this myth changed from the earliest copies discovered.
I mean it’s human nature to want to change things, embellish them, and make them fit with the
current environment.
This is a myth that has less basis on real historical events, and more on giving people
a certain hope against the corrupt nobility of the Middle Ages.
And that concludes a brief history lesson on Robin Hood and his story.
If you’ve enjoyed this video please leave it a big thumbs
up, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell, join #TeamKnowledge, and be notified
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And now it’s time for questions.
Which version of Robin Hood did you learn?
Who do you think the real Robin Hood was?
Please do leave me a comment I would love to read and answer them all, and bonus points
for you if you do leave a comment you might get featured in next week’s video as a fan
of the week!
As you know and say at the end of every video, I haven’t talked about everything regarding
Robin Hood and his story.
That’s ok.
I actually do this on purpose because I want you guys to go out and research on your
own.
Because I believe in research and I believe in getting you guys educated on a subject.
For those that want to learn more, as always, you’ll find some links in the description where
you can start!
With that being said, my name has been Darius Cosden, you can follow me on social media
the links will be in the description, thank you for watching, thank you for giving your time to this video
and I'll see you all Wednesday! (Sorry for the video cutting off..)