Robin Hood - A Peasant Hero

Robin Hood, like King Arthur, is one of the most familiar figures whose memory has come down to us from pre-Reformation England. Like the historical Arthur, however, the real Robin Hood eludes the historian's grasp. The further back one traces his story, the less one succeeds in finding out. The lives of him that have come down to us were written, mostly, by industrious antiquaries of the seventeenth century, when his tale was no longer new and when time had elaborated it with every sort of spurious detail. The tomb in Yorkshire, under which he was long said to lie buried, was carved in an age when he was already famous; one must seek elsewhere for his remains; while the oldest versions of his legend reveal many of the familiar trappings of his story as the accretions of time – they have nothing to say of Friar Tuck or Maid Marian. Even his traditional haunt, Sherwood forest, proves to be a later addition; according to the early tales, it was in Barnesdale Forest in Yorkshire that Robin Hood lived as an outlaw.