Robin Who?
Earl Hautala
McDougal Littell's statement that "During the time of King Richard and King John,
Robin Hood was said to live in Sherwood Forest" has no basis in fact. McDougal
Littell's writers have simply made it up. There is no reason to believe that
anything was ever "said" about Robin Hood during the days of King Richard and
King John, because there is no mention of any Robin Hood in any contemporary
document.
King Richard died in 1199, King John in 1216. But as far as we know, the
earliest English reference to Robin Hood appeared in 1377, in William Langland's
The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman. "I can [i.e., know]
rimes of Robin Hood," said Langland's lazy priest, Sloth.
Three years later the Scottish chronicler John Fordun wrote that, in ballads,
"Robin Hood delights above all others."
But where had this Robin Hood come from? Strange to tell, he might have emerged
from May Day celebrations in France.
Well before Englishmen were enjoying rimes of Robin Hood, Frenchmen were
celebrating May Day -- perhaps as a vestige of the ancient Roman festival
Floralia, which honored the goddess of spring and flowers. By the 1200s, French
commemorations of May Day had become associated with a character named Robin des
Bois (Robin of the Wood). This has led some historians to speculate that Robin
Hood originated when the practice of celebrating May Day spread to England, and
the name Robin des Bois was translated to Middle English. The Middle English
word for wood was whode -- which perhaps, through some sort of mistaken
homophony, was transformed into "hood."
By the 15th century, May Day celebrations in England had become Robin Hood
Festivals, in which Robin Hood presided as king and was accompanied by a queen
called Marian. This Marian, too, might have been imported from France. A French
drama titled Le Jeu de Robin et Marion had appeared around 1280, and
French folklore told of a shepherd named Robin and a shepherdess named Marion.
The English Robin and Marian, however, had nothing in common with the French
shepherd and his Marion, other than a similarity of names. (See the article
"Robin Hood" in the 1995 version of Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia.)
In any case, it is clear that the English Marian was attached to Robin Hood
secondarily. The earliest stories of Robin Hood do not mention her.
Authentic Robin Hood tales, from the 15th and 16th centuries, are available at the "Robin
Hood Text Archive" site on the Web:
http://davinci.sla.purdue.edu/medieval-studies/robinhood/. The site is sponsored by Purdue
University's School of Liberal Arts. Its introductory statement says, in part:
The main purpose in releasing these texts now is to encourage the study and
teaching of the legends of Robin Hood and other medieval outlaw tales. Another
purpose is to dispel modern misconceptions about Robin Hood. In the early texts
reproduced here, Robin is a yeoman, not a nobleman; he is English by birth, not
Saxon; he is from Barnsdale, Yorkshire, not Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire;
he does not have a girlfriend named Marian; he does not live in the time of King
Richard; and he does not "rob the rich to give to the poor." At times Robin is,
in fact, impetuous, hot tempered, a poor loser, a highway robber, and a murderer.
. . . To paraphrase the old proverb Many men speak of Robin Hood who never
drew his bow: many people (film makers and novelists included) talk about
Robin Hood without having read the texts.
McDougal Littell's textbook-writers belong to that group too.
When the writers say that Robin Hood "attempted to remedy some of the injustices
committed under King John," they are just reciting a Hollywood fantasy and
pretending that it is history. Although there is no historical connection
between Robin Hood and King John or between Robin Hood and King Richard,
Hollywood has repeatedly linked those three figures in various ways. In the
Errol Flynn film, for example, King John is a major character and is depicted as
a swinish tyrant; King Richard makes a brief appearance near the end of the
story, elevates Robin Hood to the rank of baron, and commands him to marry
Marian. In the Kevin Costner film, King Richard shows up at Marian and Robin
Hood's wedding -- just in time to give the bride away before everyone lives
happily ever after.
Earl Hautala is a chemist, now retired. As a research scientist with the United
States Department of Agriculture, he specialized in the chemistry of plants and
in the development of analytical methods. He is interested in library
information systems, and he serves as The Textbook League's manager of research.
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