Matter of the Greenwood Figure
Maid Marian
- Summary
- Absent from every early ballad. Marion arrives from the French pastourelle tradition - Adam de la Halle's Jeu de Robin et de Marion (c. 1283) - by way of the May games, where Robin and Marian are paired as summer king and queen. Munday makes her the noblewoman Matilda Fitzwater. She is a festival import, not a ballad character.
- Kind
- legendary
- Note
- One of the clearest teachable cases of accretion in the whole tradition.
Worldviews
Robin of the May Games, Robert, Earl of Huntington, Ritson's Radical, The Technicolor Robin
Provenance
- Source method
- Web research
- Review status
- DRAFT
- Confidence
- HIGH