Introduction to the hero
Ask any audience attending a lecture on Robin Hood the following questions: to each there will be an entirely predictable answer. \ Who has never read, heard or seen a tale of Robin Hood? Answer: no-one. \ Who has read the stories as an adult other than to children? Answer: no-one. \ Who has ever read the stories in the original versions? \ Answer: no-one. \ In one form or another, the tales have been told to children by adults who themselves learned them as children. That holds good for the last two hundred years, probably for much longer. It is thus that the legend has been transmitted and transmuted; and has endured. - Professor. J.C. Holt, Robin Hood
'Those who put themselves outside the law had become popular heroes'
The Robin Hood legends form part of a corpus of outlaw stories which date from around the reign of King John. Two other key outlaws, Fulk fitzWarin and Eustace the Monk, were historical figures whose lives can be clearly identified at this time, but Robin Hood himself is much more problematical.
What is striking about these stories is that they reveal that, in an age when the Rule of Law was respected as the foundation of good government, those who put themselves outside the law had become popular heroes. This is in complete contrast to public perceptions of the outlaw at the beginning of King Henry II's reign, and shows that the existing order had come to be regarded as tyrannical. Tyranny was the abuse of law.
If the existing order was founded on the arbitrary will of evil men who could twist the law to their own ends, then it was the role of the outlaw to seek redress and justice by other means. In a violent age, these means were invariably violent. Robin Hood and his contemporaries were cunning, merciless and often brutal (in one instance Much the Miller's Son murders a monk's page to prevent him giving them away); but by the codes of their time, they were also honourable.
Published: 2001-05-01
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