Editing Robin Hood (section)

=== Early ballads ===

[[File:Robin Hood and guy of Gisborne Bewick 1832.jpg|thumb|Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. [[Woodcut]] print by [[Thomas Bewick]], 1832]]

The earliest surviving text of a Robin Hood ballad is the 15th-century "[[Robin Hood and the Monk]]".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/monk.htm |title=Robin Hood and the Monk |publisher=Lib.rochester.edu |access-date=12 March 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091224124209/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/TEAMS/monk.htm |archive-date=24 December 2009 |url-status=live }}</ref> This is preserved in [[Cambridge University]] manuscript Ff.5.48. Written after 1450,<ref>[http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/monkint.htm Introduction] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060903063447/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/monkint.htm |date=3 September 2006 }} accompanying Knight and Ohlgren's 1997 ed.</ref> it contains many of the elements still associated with the legend, from the Nottingham setting to the bitter enmity between Robin and the local sheriff.

[[File:Fairbanks Robin Hood standing by wall w sword.jpg|thumb|[[Douglas Fairbanks]] as Robin Hood; the sword he is depicted with was common in the oldest [[ballad]]s]]

The first printed version is ''[[A Gest of Robyn Hode]]'' ({{circa}} 1500), a collection of separate stories that attempts to unite the episodes into a single continuous narrative.<ref>Ohlgren, Thomas, ''Robin Hood: The Early Poems'', 1465–1560, (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), ''From Script to Print: Robin Hood and the Early Printers'', pp. 97–134.</ref> After this comes "[[Robin Hood and the Potter]]",<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/potter.htm |title=Robin Hood and the Potter |publisher=Lib.rochester.edu |access-date=12 March 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100214060051/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/potter.htm |archive-date=14 February 2010 |url-status=live }}</ref> contained in a manuscript of {{circa}} 1503. "The Potter" is markedly different in tone from "The Monk": whereas the earlier tale is "a thriller"<ref name=Holt/> the latter is more comic, its plot involving trickery and cunning rather than straightforward force.

Other early texts are dramatic pieces, the earliest being the fragmentary ''[[Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham]]''<ref name="Lib.rochester.edu">{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/sheri.htm |title=Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham |publisher=Lib.rochester.edu |access-date=12 March 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100818023049/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/sheri.htm |archive-date=18 August 2010 |url-status=live }}</ref> ({{circa}} 1475). These are particularly noteworthy as they show Robin's integration into May Day rituals towards the end of the Middle Ages; ''Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham'', among other points of interest, contains the earliest reference to Friar Tuck.

The plots of neither "the Monk" nor "the Potter" are included in the [[A Gest of Robyn Hode|''Gest'']]; and neither is the plot of "[[Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne]]", which is probably at least as old as those two ballads although preserved in a more recent copy. Each of these three ballads survived in a single copy, so it is unclear how much of the medieval legend has survived, and what has survived may not be typical of the medieval legend. It has been argued that the fact that the surviving ballads were preserved in written form in itself makes it unlikely they were typical; in particular, stories with an interest for the gentry were by this view more likely to be preserved.<ref>Singman, Jeffrey L. ''Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend'' (1998), Greenwood Publishing Group, p.&nbsp;51. {{ISBN|0-313-30101-8}}.</ref> The story of Robin's aid to the 'poor knight' that takes up much of the [[A Gest of Robyn Hode|Gest]] may be an example.

The character of Robin in these first texts is rougher edged than in his later incarnations. In "Robin Hood and the Monk", for example, he is shown as quick tempered and violent, assaulting Little John for defeating him in an archery contest; in the same ballad, Much the Miller's Son casually kills a "little [[page (occupation)|page]]" in the course of rescuing Robin Hood from prison.<ref name=RHAM>[[Robin Hood and the Monk]]. From Child's edition of the ballad, online at Sacred Texts, [http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch119.htm 119A: Robin Hood and the Monk] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120519171814/http://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch119.htm |date=19 May 2012 }} Stanza&nbsp;16:

{{Poem quote|{{lang|enm|Then Robyn goes to Notyngham,}}
{{lang|enm|Hym selfe mornyng allone,}}
{{lang|enm|And Litull John to mery Scherwode,}}
{{lang|enm|The pathes he knew ilkone.}}
}}</ref> No extant early ballad actually shows Robin Hood "giving to the poor", although in "A Gest of Robyn Hode" Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate [[knight]], which he does not in the end require to be repaid;<ref>Holt, p. 11.</ref> and later in the same ballad Robin Hood states his intention of giving money to the next traveller to come down the road if he happens to be poor.

{{Poem quote|{{lang|enm|Of my good he shall haue some,}}
{{lang|enm|Yf he be a por man.}}<ref>[[Child Ballads]] 117A:210, i.e. "A Gest of Robyn Hode" stanza 210.</ref>}}

As it happens the next traveller is not poor, but it seems in context that Robin Hood is stating a general policy. The first explicit statement to the effect that Robin Hood habitually robbed from the rich to give the poor can be found in [[John Stow]]'s ''Annales of England'' (1592), about a century after the publication of the Gest.<ref name="Robin Hood p43">[[Stephen Thomas Knight]] 2003 ''Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography'' p. 43 quoting John Stow, 1592, ''Annales of England'': "{{lang|enm|poor men's goodes hee spared, aboundantly releeving them with that, which by thefte he gote from Abbeyes and the houses of riche Carles}}".</ref><ref>for it being the earliest clear statement see Dobson and Taylor (1997), ''Rhymes of Robyn Hood'' p.  290.</ref> But from the beginning Robin Hood is on the side of the poor; the Gest quotes Robin Hood as instructing his men that when they rob:

{{Poem quote|{{lang|enm|loke ye do no husbonde harme}}
{{lang|enm|That tilleth with his ploughe.}}
{{lang|enm|No more ye shall no gode yeman}}
{{lang|enm|That walketh by gren-wode shawe;}}
{{lang|enm|Ne no knyght ne no squyer}}
{{lang|enm|That wol be a gode felawe.}}<ref name="auto"/><ref name="auto1"/>}}

And in its final lines the ''Gest'' sums up:

{{Poem quote|{{lang|enm|he was a good outlawe,}}
{{lang|enm|And dyde pore men moch god.}}}}

Within Robin Hood's band, medieval forms of courtesy rather than modern ideals of equality are generally in evidence. In the early ballad, Robin's men usually kneel before him in strict obedience: in ''A Gest of Robyn Hode'' the king even observes that "{{lang|enm|His men are more at his byddynge/Then my men be at myn.}}" Their social status, as yeomen, is shown by their weapons: they use [[sword]]s rather than [[quarterstaff]]s.{{Explain|date=June 2023|reason=In what way does this indicate their social status?}} The only character to use a quarterstaff in the early ballads is the potter, and Robin Hood does not take to a staff until the 17th-century ''[[Robin Hood and Little John]]''.<ref>Holt, p. 36.</ref>

The political and social assumptions underlying the early Robin Hood ballads have long been controversial. [[J. C. Holt]]  influentially argued that the Robin Hood legend was cultivated in the households of the gentry, and that it would be mistaken to see in him a figure of [[peasant]] revolt. He is not a peasant but a yeoman, and his tales make no mention of the complaints of the peasants, such as oppressive taxes.<ref>Holt, pp. 37–38.</ref> He appears not so much as a revolt against societal standards as an embodiment of them, being generous, pious, and courteous, opposed to stingy, worldly, and churlish foes.<ref>Holt, p. 10.</ref> Other scholars have by contrast stressed the subversive aspects of the legend, and see in the medieval Robin Hood ballads a plebeian literature hostile to the [[feudal]] order.<ref>Singman, Jeffrey L. ''Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend'', 1998, Greenwood Publishing Group, p.&nbsp;46, and first chapter as a whole. {{ISBN|0-313-30101-8}}.</ref>