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Robin Hood and the bow in English folk tradition

Robin Hood is a legendary outlaw of English folklore who, according to the legend, was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. [1] Friar Daw's Reply, written around 1402, quotes a proverb that 'many men speak of Robin Hood and never shot his bow'. [2][3]

In brief
  • According to legend, Robin Hood was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. [1] Around 1402 a proverb said that many men speak of Robin Hood and never shot his bow. [2][3] The splitting of an opponent's arrow is first known from a mid-17th-century poem, 'Robin Hood and Queen Catherine'. [16]

The first clear reference to 'rhymes of Robin Hood' occurs in the poem Piers Plowman, thought to have been composed in the 1370s. [4] Dives and Pauper (1405–1410) complains that people would rather listen to 'tales and songs of Robin Hood' than attend Mass. [5] The earliest surviving copies of the narrative ballads themselves date to the second half of the 15th century or the first decade of the 16th. [6]

In these early accounts Robin's outstanding skill as an archer is already clear, as is his animosity towards the Sheriff of Nottingham. [6] The oldest surviving ballad, Robin Hood and the Monk, is preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48 and was written after 1450. [7][8] In it Robin is quick-tempered and violent, and he assaults Little John for defeating him in an archery contest. [9]

The first printed version is A Gest of Robyn Hode (c. 1500), a collection of separate stories that tries to unite the episodes into a single continuous narrative. [10] The early ballads are clear that Robin is a yeoman, a term that always referred to commoners. [11] Three of the early ballads, 'the Monk', 'the Potter' and 'Guy of Gisborne', each survive in a single copy, so it is unclear how much of the medieval legend has survived. [12]

Robin Hood games or plays were an important part of late medieval and early modern May Day festivities. [13] The first record of such a game is from Exeter in 1426. [13] By the early 15th century at the latest, revellers dressed as Robin or as members of his band. [14] In January 1510 Henry VIII disguised himself as Robin, with eleven courtiers and a Maid Marian, to surprise Catherine of Aragon in her chamber. [15]

The mid-17th-century poem 'Robin Hood and Queen Catherine' contains the first known mention of Robin Hood splitting an opponent's arrow during an archery contest. [16] Earlier works had mentioned splitting the 'wand', another item used in archery contests. [16] The feat became part of Robin Hood's legend in a number of subsequent works. [17]

During the 17th century the commercial broadside ballad became the main vehicle for the popular Robin Hood legend. [18] In 1795 Joseph Ritson published an enormously influential edition of the Robin Hood ballads, in which he printed 33 of them. [19][20] Walter Scott used Ritson's anthology as a source for his picture of Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, which did much to shape the modern legend. [21]

Sources

  1. Rouă, Victor (20 April 2017). "The Tale Of Robin Hood Of Sherwood Forest: Between Fact And Fiction" . The Dockyards . Retrieved 4 June 2021 . thedockyards.com. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  2. Dean (1991). "Friar Daw's Reply" . Archived from the original on 18 May 2019 . Retrieved 5 May 2020 – via lib.rochester.edu. d.lib.rochester.edu. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  3. Dean (1991). "Friar Daw's Reply: Introduction" . Archived from the original on 16 November 2019 . Retrieved 5 May 2020 – via lib.rochester.edu. d.lib.rochester.edu. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  4. Brockman 1983, p. 69. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  5. Blackwood 2018, p. 59. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  6. "117A". The Gest of Robyn Hode . stanzas 10–15. Archived from the original on 7 November 2011 . Retrieved 15 April 2008 – via sacred-texts.com. web.archive.org. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  7. "Robin Hood and the Monk" . Archived from the original on 24 December 2009 . Retrieved 12 March 2010 – via lib.rochester.edu. lib.rochester.edu. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  8. "Introduction" . accompanying Knight and Ohlgren. p. 1997. Archived from the original on 3 September 2006 – via lib.rochester.edu. web.archive.org. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  9. "119A: Robin Hood and the Monk" . Stanza 16. From Child's edition of the ballad. Archived from the original on 19 May 2012 – via sacred-texts.com. web.archive.org. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  10. 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.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  11. Dobson and Taylor, p. 34.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  12. Singman, Jeffrey L. Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend (1998), Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 51. ISBN 0-313-30101-8 .. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  13. Singmam, 1998, Robin Hood; The Shaping of the Legend p. 62.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  14. Hutton, 1997, pp. 270–271.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  15. Peter Happé, "Dramatic Genre and the Court of Henry VIII", Thomas Betteridge and Suzannah Lipscomb , Henry VIII and the Court: Arts, Politics and Performance (Ashgate, 2013), p. 274.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  16. Wickman, Forrest (22 June 2012). "When did archers start splitting arrows?" . Slate . ISSN 1091-2339 . Retrieved 21 August 2026 . slate.com. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  17. Wickman, Forrest (22 June 2012). "When did archers start splitting arrows?" . Slate . ISSN 1091-2339 . Retrieved 21 August 2026 . slate.com. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  18. Dobson and Taylor (1997), "Rhymes of Robin Hood", p. 47.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  19. Bewick, et al. Robin Hood : a Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to That Celebrated English Outlaw; to Which Are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life / by Joseph Ritson. 2nd ed., W. Pickering, 1832 via the State Library of New South Wales, DSM/821.04/R/v. 1 digital.sl.nsw.gov.au; Ritson, Joseph; Bewick, Thomas; Tourrier, A. H.; et al. (1887). Robin Hood : a Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to That Celebrated English Outlaw; to Which Are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life . Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). London: John C. Nimmo. Archived from the original on 26 March 2016 – via a digitized version on The Internet Archive of a book from th web.archive.org. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  20. In his table of contents, he separated the longer ballads from the shorter ballads into two parts; Part 1 containing the longer ballads were numbered I-V while the shorter ballads in Part 2 were numbered I-XXVIII. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood
  21. Dobson and Taylor (1997), p. 56.. via Wikipedia (en): Robin Hood

Every claim was checked against its source before publication. 29 October 2026