Matter of the Greenwood Worldview
The Ballad Outlaw
A yeoman, a bow, and a great deal of blood
- In one line
- The earliest Robin Hood is a violent, funny, devout yeoman who lives in Barnsdale, hates the Sheriff and the Abbot of St Mary's, and never once says anything about the poor as a class.
- Core claim
- The medieval Robin is a yeoman, not a nobleman; his base is as often Barnsdale in Yorkshire as Sherwood; he is fiercely devoted to the Virgin Mary; and his violence is graphic. In Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne he beheads Guy, disfigures the face with an Irish knife so it cannot be recognised, and carries the head on the end of his bow while wearing Guy's horse-hide. The redistributive slogan is not in these texts.
- Canon
- Piers Plowman B-text (c. 1377) attests 'rymes of Robyn hood' before any survives. Robin Hood and the Monk (c. 1450, Cambridge University Library MS Ff.5.48); Robin Hood and the Potter (c. 1500, CUL MS Ee.4.35); A Gest of Robyn Hode (printed c. 1495-1510); Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne and Robin Hood's Death (Percy Folio, c. 1650, archaic in content).
- Tone
- Fast, brutal, comic. Disguise, archery contests, ambush, extreme violence played partly for laughs, and genuine piety.
- Robin is
- A yeoman outlaw: free, landholding or household-retained, expert with the longbow, courteous to women and to the poor knight, murderous to the Sheriff and the corrupt religious.
- The politics
- Anticlerical and anti-official rather than anti-feudal. The Gest's Robin instructs his men to do no harm to husbandmen, good yeomen, knights or squires - but bishops and archbishops may be beaten and bound. He is loyal to the king in the abstract and lethal to the king's local officers.
- What it suppresses
- The earl, Maid Marian, King Richard's crusade, the Saxon-Norman conflict, and 'rob from the rich to give to the poor' - all of which are later.
- Period
- c. 1377 - c. 1500
- Where scholars disagree
- See the Hilton/Keen versus Holt debate: whether the yeoman audience was discontented peasantry (Hilton 1958, Keen 1961) or the retinues and household servants of the gentry and crown (Holt 1960). Holt's broader definition of 'yeoman' has largely prevailed, and Keen retracted.
Game hooks
Roguelike. Run modifier YEOMAN. No nobility mechanic, no Marian, no Richard. Resources are arrows, disguises and Marian devotion (a prayer meter that is spent for real mechanical protection). Killing is cheap and legally catastrophic: every corpse raises a hue and cry that persists across floors. Gisborne's head is an equippable item that functions as a disguise.
Visual novel. Ballad structure - each chapter is a fitt, announced by a minstrel who tells you what is about to happen and is sometimes wrong. Dialogue is stichomythic and the register is deliberately coarse.
Key documents
Piers Plowman, B-text (the Sloth passage), Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Potter, A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, Robin Hood's Death
Key figures
Robin Hood, Little John, Much the Miller's Son, Will Scarlet / Scathelocke, The Sheriff of Nottingham, The Abbot of St Mary's, York, Sir Richard at the Lee, The Virgin Mary
Key scholars
J. C. Holt, R. H. Hilton, Maurice Keen, Thomas H. Ohlgren, Stephen Knight, R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor
Everything filed under this worldview (88)
| Type | Card | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Figure | Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough and William of Cloudesley | Northern outlaw archers of an independent tradition, printed alongside Robin Hood material from the sixteenth century. Cloudesley shoots an apple from his son's… |
| Figure | Allin a Dale | The minstrel whose bride is being married to a rich old knight until Robin's band interrupt the wedding. A late addition, and the sentimental strand of the trad… |
| Figure | Andrew of Wyntoun | Scottish canon whose Original Chronicle (completed c. 1420) contains the earliest surviving chronicle notice of Robin Hood, placing him and Little John as fores… |
| Figure | Eustace the Monk | A real Flemish monk turned pirate and mercenary (d. 1217), whose romance makes him a master of disguise and trickery in the forest. With Hereward and Fouke, one… |
| Figure | Fouke le Fitz Waryn | A real Marcher lord (d. 1258) whose Anglo-Norman prose romance has him dispossessed by King John and living as a forest outlaw. Three episodes are close analogu… |
| Figure | Francis James Child | The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-98) numbers thirty-eight Robin Hood ballads (Child 117-154), giving the tradition its standard citation system. C… |
| Figure | Friar Tuck | Also a latecomer, entering through the play tradition (Robin Hood and the Friar). A real chaplain, Robert Stafford of Lindfield, used 'Frere Tuk' as an outlaw a… |
| Figure | Hereward the Wake | Leader of English resistance in the Fens against the Normans c. 1070, whose Gesta Herewardi turns him into a trickster-outlaw. Later fused with the Saxon-versus… |
| Figure | John Major (Mair) | Scottish historian whose Historia Majoris Britanniae (1521) relocates Robin to the 1190s, the reign of Richard I - the first time the legend is attached to Rich… |
| Figure | Little John | Robin's chief companion from the earliest texts and, in the Monk, effectively the hero - he rescues Robin, kills the monk and the page, and openly tells Robin h… |
| Figure | Much the Miller's Son | One of the original three companions (with Little John and Will Scarlet). In Robin Hood and the Monk he murders the monk's young page to prevent him talking - a… |
| Figure | Robert Hod of York | A fugitive recorded in the Yorkshire assize rolls for 1225-26, called Hobbehod in later accounts, in debt to the Liberty of St Peter's, York - which would make … |
| Figure | Robin Hood | The outlaw of the greenwood. A yeoman in the earliest surviving texts, a summer-game role in the parish revels, an earl from 1598, a redistributor from 1795, a … |
| Figure | Sir Guy of Gisborne | The bounty hunter in a horse-hide who hunts Robin and is beheaded for it. Robin mutilates the face with an Irish knife so it cannot be identified, sets the head… |
| Figure | Sir Richard at the Lee | The impoverished knight of the Gest whose debt to the abbey Robin pays, and who shelters Robin later. The plot's economic engine: Robin functions as an alternat… |
| Figure | The Abbot of St Mary's, York | The Gest's real villain: a monastic creditor foreclosing on Sir Richard at the Lee. The early legend's antagonism is against ecclesiastical finance far more tha… |
| Figure | The Prioress of Kirklees | Robin's kinswoman, who bleeds him to death under pretence of medical treatment, in some versions in collusion with her lover Red Roger. The legend ends with a w… |
| Figure | The Sheriff of Nottingham | The constant antagonist, and a structural oddity: Robin is based in Barnsdale in Yorkshire in the Gest, which is not in the Sheriff of Nottingham's jurisdiction… |
| Figure | The Virgin Mary | Robin's patron. He hears three masses daily, will not dine until he has done so, refuses to harm any company that includes a woman for her sake, and in the Gest… |
| Figure | Walter Bower | Abbot of Inchcolm, continuator of Fordun's Scotichronicon (c. 1440). He places Robin in 1266, among the disinherited followers of Simon de Montfort after the ba… |
| Figure | Will Scarlet / Scathelocke | Present from the earliest ballads under variable names (Scarlok, Scathelocke, Scarlett). Munday splits the name into two separate characters, which is a nice in… |
| Figure | William Robehod | A Berkshire fugitive recorded in 1261 as William son of Robert le Fevre, and in the 1262 memoranda roll as 'William Robehod'. Someone deliberately changed the n… |
| Document | A Gest of Robyn Hode | The long compilation in eight fitts that is the nearest thing to a medieval Robin Hood epic: the loan to Sir Richard at the Lee, the Abbot of St Mary's, the arc… |
| Document | Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough and William of Cloudesley | An outlaw tale of the Robin Hood type set in Inglewood Forest, Cumberland. Cloudesley shoots an apple from his own son's head. Printed alongside Robin Hood mate… |
| Document | Fouke le Fitz Waryn | The romance of a real dispossessed Marcher lord living as a forest outlaw under King John, with three episodes closely paralleling the Gest. |
| Document | Historia Majoris Britanniae | Moves Robin to the reign of Richard I - the origin of the Richard-and-John framing - and states that he took from the rich and gave to the poor, and that he was… |
| Document | Piers Plowman, B-text (the Sloth passage) | Sloth confesses that he cannot say his paternoster properly but knows 'rymes of Robyn hood and Randolf erle of Chestre'. The earliest datable reference to Robin… |
| Document | Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne | Robin kills the bounty hunter Guy, mutilates his face with an Irish knife so it cannot be recognised, mounts the head on his bow, and wears Guy's horse-hide to … |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Bishop | Robin escapes the Bishop by swapping clothes with an old woman. One of the four ballads for which the Forresters Manuscript gives the earliest known text, and o… |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar | Robin makes the friar carry him across a stream, the friar dumps him in it, and they fight to a standstill before the friar joins the band. Child 123. The comic… |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Monk | The finest of the early ballads. Robin quarrels with Little John over a wager, goes alone to Nottingham to hear mass, is betrayed by a monk and captured; John a… |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Potter | Robin loses a fight to a potter, takes his clothes and cart, sells pots cheaply in Nottingham to get near the Sheriff, and lures him into the forest. Comic, non… |
| Document | Robin Hood's Death | Robin is bled to death by the Prioress of Kirklees, his kinswoman, in collusion with Red Roger. In some versions he shoots a last arrow to mark his grave; in th… |
| Document | Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham | The fifteen-year-old Robin meets fifteen foresters on his way to a shooting match. They mock him, he wins a wager, they refuse to pay, and he shoots fourteen of… |
| Document | Scotichronicon (Bower's continuation of Fordun) | Places Robin in 1266 among Simon de Montfort's disinherited, calls him a famous murderer celebrated in song by a foolish populace, and tells the story of Robin … |
| Document | The English and Scottish Popular Ballads | Numbers 117-154 are the Robin Hood corpus, thirty-eight ballads with variants. Child numbers are the standard citation form and organise all subsequent scholars… |
| Document | The Forresters Manuscript (British Library Add MS 71158) | A quarto book of 21 Robin Hood ballads in 22 texts (The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield appears twice), written in the 1670s, unknown for over three centuries until i… |
| Document | The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield | George a Green, the pinder (pound-keeper) of Wakefield, fights Robin, Scarlet and Little John simultaneously and holds them off. Child 124. The Forresters Manus… |
| Document | The Original Chronicle | The earliest chronicle notice of Robin Hood, entering him and Little John under 1283-85 as 'gude' forest outlaws. Notably, the first people to write Robin Hood … |
| Document | The Sloane Life of Robin Hood | A short prose life in BL Sloane MS 780, drawing on ballads including a version of the Progress to Nottingham. Evidence that a connected biography was being asse… |
| Document | The Tale of Gamelyn | A younger son cheated of his inheritance by his elder brother takes to the forest, becomes king of the outlaws, and returns to hang the corrupt justice and jury… |
| Scholar | A. J. Pollard | Imagining Robin Hood: The Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context (2004). Reads the early stories as an imaginative construction of late-medieval English so… |
| Scholar | David Crook | Argued in the 1980s that the Robert Hod of the 1225 Yorkshire assize rolls is the same man as Robert of Wetherby, which would explain why a Barnsdale outlaw is … |
| Scholar | Isaac Taylor | 'Who was Robin Hood?', Notes and Queries s7-IV.88 (1887). Early sceptic, comparing Robin to William Tell and noting that the legend postdates the supposed man b… |
| Scholar | J. C. Holt | 'The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood', Past and Present 18 (1960), and Robin Hood (1982). Argued against Hilton that the ballads' 'yeoman' aud… |
| Scholar | John Bellamy | Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry (1985), attempting to identify historical originals. Reviewed sceptically by Holt in Albion 18.1 - the review is held locally,… |
| Scholar | Maurice Keen | The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (1961) and 'Robin Hood - Peasant or Gentleman?', Past and Present 19 (1961). Initially supported Hilton, later retracted in the f… |
| Scholar | R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor | Rymes of Robyn Hood (1976), the standard sourcebook, and two Northern History review-essays held locally: 'Merry Men at Work' (1997) on the heritage transformat… |
| Scholar | R. H. Hilton | 'The Origins of Robin Hood', Past and Present 14 (1958). Marxist historian; read the ballads as expressing the grievances of discontented manorial peasantry. Re… |
| Scholar | Stephen Knight | The central modern authority: Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (1994), Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (1999), editor of… |
| Scholar | Thomas H. Ohlgren | Co-editor of the TEAMS Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales; author of Robin Hood: The Early Poems 1465-1560 (2007), which reads the early texts through the commer… |
| Topic | Barnsdale or Sherwood? | The Gest places Robin in Barnsdale, South Yorkshire, and names real local landmarks (the Sayles, Watling Street), yet his enemy is the Sheriff of Nottingham, wh… |
| Topic | Every chronicler puts Robin in a different reign | Wyntoun (c. 1420) dates him to 1283-85 under Edward I. Bower (c. 1440) puts him in 1266 among Simon de Montfort's disinherited. Major (1521) moves him to the 11… |
| Topic | How violent are the early ballads? | Very. Much murders a child in Robin Hood and the Monk to silence him. Robin beheads Guy of Gisborne, mutilates the face so it cannot be identified, and carries … |
| Topic | Robin Hood and the 'social bandit' | Hobsbawm's category of the social bandit - the outlaw the peasantry protects because he embodies their sense of justice - has been applied to Robin Hood repeate… |
| Topic | Robin Hood is a genre, not an original | Hereward the Wake (c. 1070s, written up c. 1109-31), Eustace the Monk (d. 1217), Fouke le Fitz Waryn (d. 1258) and the Tale of Gamelyn (c. 1350-70) all predate … |
| Topic | Robin Hood's Marian devotion | Not Maid Marian - the Virgin Mary. The Gest's Robin hears three masses daily, refuses to eat before doing so, spares any company containing a woman for Our Lady… |
| Topic | The greenwood is a legal category | Forest in this period does not mean woodland; it means land under forest law, where the king's venison and vert are protected by a separate and notoriously rese… |
| Topic | The yeoman question: Hilton, Keen and Holt | Hilton (1958) read the ballads as peasant discontent; Keen (1961) agreed; Holt (1960, and Robin Hood 1982) argued the audience was the households of gentry and … |
| Topic | Was Robin Hood real? | The best candidates are Robert Hod of York, a fugitive in the 1225-26 assize rolls (possibly the Robert of Wetherby hunted as an outlaw), and the Robert Hood of… |
| Topic | When does 'rob from the rich, give to the poor' actually appear? | Not in the early ballads. The Gest's Robin lends money, extracts it from a lying monk, and returns a knight's estate - redistribution within the gentry, not to … |
| Topic | Who actually invented 'rob from the rich'? | Not Ritson alone. John Major states it in 1521 - Robin took only from the rich, and was the most humane of robbers. What Ritson did in 1795 was different and la… |
| Event | A Gest of Robyn Hode printed | The long compilation enters print, fixing a canonical shape for the story. |
| Event | Adam Bell printed | The parallel outlaw tradition of Inglewood Forest enters print alongside Robin Hood. |
| Event | Bellamy, Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry | A renewed attempt at historical identification; Holt's sceptical review is held locally. |
| Event | Bower's Scotichronicon | Robin as a famous murderer celebrated by a foolish populace - and as a man so devout he would not break off mass to fight. |
| Event | Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads | Robin Hood ballads numbered 117-154; the citation system all later scholarship uses. |
| Event | Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood | The standard sourcebook of texts and documents. |
| Event | Hereward's resistance in the Fens | The outlaw-tale genre begins well before Robin Hood. |
| Event | Hilton, 'The Origins of Robin Hood' | Past and Present 14. The peasant-discontent reading opens the modern historical debate. |
| Event | Holt, 'The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood' | Past and Present 18. The gentry-household reading that eventually prevails. Held locally. |
| Event | Holt, Robin Hood (Thames and Hudson) | The synthesis that consolidates the field. Palliser's review is held locally. |
| Event | Isaac Taylor asks 'Who was Robin Hood?' in Notes and Queries | An early and clear statement of the sceptical case. |
| Event | John Major moves Robin to the reign of Richard I | And states that he robbed only the rich and was the most humane of robbers. Both the Richard framing and the redistribution are in print here, long before Ritso… |
| Event | Keen, 'Robin Hood - Peasant or Gentleman?' and The Outlaws of Medieval Legend | Keen sides with Hilton, then later retracts. |
| Event | Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (TEAMS) | The teaching edition, free online through the Robbins Library and METS. Held locally in full. |
| Event | Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw | The thesis of continuous reconstruction that organises the modern field - and this portal's worldview scheme. |
| Event | Langland's Sloth knows 'rymes of Robyn hood' | The earliest datable reference to Robin Hood stories, in a complaint about religious ignorance. |
| Event | Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems 1465-1560 | Relocates the early audience in commercial and mercantile milieux. |
| Event | Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood | The stories as an imaginative construction of late-medieval society. Held locally. |
| Event | Robert Hod, fugitive, in the York assize rolls | Called Hobbehod in later accounts; in debt to St Peter's, York. The best historical candidate, and still only a name. |
| Event | Robin Hood and the Monk copied | Cambridge University Library MS Ff.5.48. The earliest substantial surviving ballad, and arguably the best. |
| Event | Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham registered | The broadside of the fifteen foresters. The story was current by the late sixteenth century. |
| Event | The Forresters Manuscript compiled | Lost until 1993; its readings are now preferred for several ballads. |
| Event | The Forresters Manuscript surfaces at a book sale | The most important Robin Hood manuscript find since the Percy Folio; Knight edits it in 1998. |
| Event | The Tale of Gamelyn | The dispossessed younger son who becomes king of the outlaws - the plot Munday will hand to Robin in 1598. |
| Event | William son of Robert le Fevre is renamed 'William Robehod' | A clerk substitutes the name. Evidence that Robin Hood already meant 'outlaw' by 1262 - so the legend predates the record, and the record is not evidence of a m… |
| Event | Wyntoun's Original Chronicle names Robin Hood | The earliest chronicle notice, dating him to 1283-85. Scottish, not English. |
On this machine
| Holding | Kind | Path |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen Knight & Thomas Ohlgren (eds), Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (TEAMS Middle English Texts, 1997) | primary-text-edition | E:\pdf\Robin Hood\TEAMS Middle English Texts Series Stephen Knight_ Thomas Ohlgren Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales libgen li.pdf |
| J. C. Holt, 'The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood', Past and Present 18 (1960) | scholarship | E:\pdf\Robin Hood\Past Present 1960 nov iss 18 J C Holt The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood... libgen li.pdf |
| Dobson & Taylor, 'Robin Hood Ballads', Northern History 35.1 (1999) | scholarship | E:\pdf\Robin Hood\Northern History 1999 jan vol 35 iss 1 Dobson Barrie_ Taylor John Robin Hood Ballads... libgen li.pdf |
| Stephen Knight (ed.), Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (D. S. Brewer, 1999) | scholarship | E:\pdf\Robin Hood\Stephen Knight - Robin Hood_ An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (1999) - libgen.li.pdf |
Provenance
- Source method
- Web research (TEAMS/METS editions, International Robin Hood Bibliography) plus substantial local PDF holdings
- Review status
- DRAFT
- Confidence
- HIGH