The characters of Little John and Will Scarlet were also added to Robin’s merry crew or outlaw gang by now. Dressed in a Lincoln green doublet and hose with a jaunty feather in his cap and with his longbow strapped on his back, he was said to have robbed from the rich to give to the poor. The popular Hood (lum) was portrayed as a commoner who was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In fact, Marian’s association with May Day celebrations lasted long after Robin Hood’s did, as pointed out by Scottish born poet Alexander Barclay in 1500, “some merry fytte of Maid Marian or else of Robin Hood.”Īs time progressed, generations of wandering minstrels in the Middle Ages spread stories far and wide in England by singing ballads about the exploits of the violent but heroic yeoman Robin Hood who lived in Sherwood Forest with his merry band of men and clashed with the Sheriff of Nottingham. Keeping this in mind, “the world’s foremost authority on Robin Hood,” author Jim Lees in The Quest for Robin Hood set forth that the hypothesis that Maid Marian may originally have been the personification of the Virgin Mary and derived from the older French tradition of a shepherdess named Marion and her shepherd lover Robin in Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, 1283.
Originally Maid Marian (or the French Marion) was a shepherdess associated with the Queen or Lady of May or May Day. Robin Hood was actually shown at this time participating in Mariology, the cult of Mary, the mother of Jesus. As time went on, the characters of Maid Marian, Friar Tuck and Alan-a-Dale entered May Day rituals as well.
Agrarian discontent lay at the foundations of the feudal system that was built on the shoulders of toiling peasants. While the first literary reference to the “rhymes of Robin Hood” is in the alliterative allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman, composed circa 1370s by William Langland, considered to be one of the greatest works of English literature of the Middle Ages.Ī century later, in the 1400s Catholics, as all Christians were at the time, in England celebrated May Day on the religious holiday of Whitsun featuring a quasi-religious rebel who robbed and murdered government tax collectors and wealthy landowners in plays and games. An oral traditional of singing the outlaw Robin Hood’s praises started to flourish at this time. Hence, medieval criminal records show a vast number of men called Robert or Robin Hood. Robert was a common given name in Medieval England, and Robin (or Robyn) was a common short form of it, especially in the 13th century.
Were Robin Hood and his ladylove Maid Marian born of a folk of story or did the rebellious Medieval English couple actually exist in reality?Īccording to English legal records as early as the 13th century, Robehod or Rabunhod were common epithets for criminals.
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