#robyn hode

Robin’s social status before he became an outlaw has always been a point of contention! Is he from Loxley or from Yorkshire, the Earl of Huntington or a commoner?

The amazing part of the Robin Hood ballads is that they all contradict each other, therefore any Robin you think of is a canon one!

Between his noble lineage and his commoner status, the latter is commonly considered the older one. That is because the trend of Robin Hood being noble is said to have originated after his initial popularity, to appease aristocrats. However, between the two ballads that both name him an origin and also coincidentally describe his two love interests, it is not actually established which one of them is older. In “Robin Hood’s birth, breeding, valour and marriage” he is described to hail from Loxley as an ordinary yeoman with his sister. As far as the Joseph Ritson ballads go this seems to be the only one where he is explicitly stated to hail from Loxley. In this he marries a shepherdess, Clorinda, a young woman whose deer shooting skills impressed Robin. The other one, “Robin Hood and Maid Marian” he is stated to be the Earl of Huntington with Maid Marian as his lover. In it, Maid Marian goes out looking for him and they end up fighting each other for hours by accident (as one does, and Robin obviously loses).

However, there is another ballad, commonly referred to as “Willie and Earl Richard’s daughter”, which is not considered part of the Robin Hood cycle, retells a version of his birth. Thor Ewing, one of the translators of the Robin Hood ballads however, puts serious stake into this being potentially the oldest among the ballads. In this one, Robin is the bastard child of the daughter of the Earl of Huntington and a common man. The common man is sentenced to death, but the child, Robin, is kept and named.

The Jospeh Ritson collection is commonly considered to be the most comprehensive collection of the Robin Hood cycle. It includes dozens of ballads, some of which contradict each other, some of which support each other, from different ages, about different topics. They are represented in the Child ballads, another ballad collection by Francis James Child, through number 117 to 154.

However, if you look up the total number of Robin Hood ballads on Wikipedia, the total number comes out to be 42, not 37.

One of them is the article directing to the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which in itself is a collection that doesn’t involve any additional tales so let’s look at the other four unaccounted ballads:

1. Erlinton, Child no. 8

If you look at the other variants of this poem that do not involve Robin Hood, you’ll find the lady’s lover to be called “Willie”. This is rather important for one of the later ballads I will introduce. Among the three variants only one involves Robin, and it tells of his love with a tanner’s daughter. He instantly falls for her and she for him (medieval stuff I guess), but she is found by her four brothers that all tell her to not leave her father and to get away from Robin Hood. She in classical damsel in distress fashion begs her brothers to spare Robin, but none of them listen and begin to fight. Robin wins the 3v1 against the three elder brothers but upon the maiden’s request spares the youngest. They then run together into the forest, vowing their lives to each other.

Curious right? Sounds a lot more like the romantic we know of today, but if you’ve seen the canon Robin Hood ballads you’ll find this behaviour to be extremely strange. Not only is the girl basically useless throughout this encounter, but the merry men, the ones Robin always relies on are nowhere to be found! This is also one of the only two ballads that doesn’t make a direct reference to her Lady, The Mother Mary. The other one? Well, remember the name of the lover? You’ll see when we get there! In the other two variants of the ballad, the lady, daughter of the Earl of Huntington has a lover by the name of Willie instead. She is imprisoned in a tower from which she escapes to be with her lover, but they are found by a bunch of men whom Willie all slays so he can be together with his lover. In those two variants she has six sisters! Talk about a big family…

2. Rose the Red and White Lily, Child no. 103

This ballad mentions both King Arthur and Robin Hood, and neither are the main characters! From women bravely picking up their armour to fight for each other to sibling’s love (in more than one way…) this ballad features everything!

Rose the Red is the daughter of a poor mother who’s passed away, sibling to her dear sister white Lily. As all legends dictate the father marries an evil step mother who brings to them two step brothers. They fell in love with their step sisters in true medieval fashion, but their mother wouldn’t have it, and sent them both away. Angered by the behaviour the two ran away and dressed up as knights, taking on the titles of Roge the Roun and Sweet Willy, or in the Robin Hood variant Roger and Nicholas. In one variant they split up, Roge going to find King Arthur while Willy goes to look for her lover Brown Robin, in the other they both find Robin Hood and Nicholas falls for Robin Hood, whereas Roger falls for Little John. Nicholas, or Willy soon bore a child, but when she asked for her midwife to be Roger, Robin grew jealous and refused to blow his horn (another guy midwifing his child? Seriously?). Nicholas would have none of it and snatched the horn for himself, blowing it and summoning Roger. They reveal themselves to be women, and in the King Arthur version they all return to the court. Either way, whether it is King Arthur or John, they have a double wedding and live content ever after.

This highly confusing ballad that effectively dropkicks most of both the Robin Hood lore and King Arthur lore we are familiar with features an exciting tale nonetheless, of two sisters fighting for their respective loves. It may perhaps be concerning to learn that the menace we know as our unhinged green man is capable of reproducing, so it can come as a comfort to all of us that this ballad has been excluded from the greater Robin Hood canon. Besides, Robin Hood growing jealous over another man? Seriously? That’s so out of character for him. If you ask me, he’d shake the guy’s hand and invite him to the merry men right away!

3. Robyn and Gandelyn, Child no. 115

This one’s the old spelling of our Robin’s name, which already indicates the age of this ballad and trust me, reading this one was no easy feat. However the plot is rather simple and among the four ballads probably the one worth least of contention, because Robin straight up dies 27 out of 76 lines in! He gets shot by a rando that introduces himself as Wrennok of Donne on one of his venison hunting trips. Gandeleyn, Robin’s servant avenges his master by killing Wrennok with an arrow to his heart, and thus the tale ends. Whether Gandeleyn may be someone like Little John or any other one of his 144 Merry Men that with no doubt would kill for their dear leader can be up for interpretation, but perhaps we should be glad that this ballad is considered not canon, because this swift ending, in comparison to Robin Hood’s death at Kirklee’s priory is just sad!

4. Willie and Earl Richard’s Daughter, Child no. 102

I told you, I told you the name would come up again! This ballad is rather special, not only because I think among the four the lore is the most beautiful, not only because I may or may not have already read the modern translation (of variant A, that is, though B isn’t too dissimilar, with the exception of the two lovers being called Clementina, who dies from childbirt, and Archibald), but also because one of the translators of the ballads, Thor Ewing, has made a rather convincing argument of including this particular ballad into the Robin Hood canon.

The daughter of the Earl of Huntington runs into the forest to give birth to her baby, a bastard child born of her and a commoner. While the commoner goes out hunting at her request, the Earl of Huntington is furious and searches for her far and wide. He only finds her when morning comes, in variant A alive still, in Variant B dead, with a child in her bosom. Either way, he expresses his discontent towards the baby’s father, going as far as to promise to kill him, but he does regard Robin as his dear grandchild and gives him his name. And thus he was born, “in the good green wood, among the lily flowers”.