Discussion Paper for Videoconference with Pace University, 16th April 2008; Dr C.
Griffin
The Outlaw: Hero or Anti-Hero? English Myth-Making
Robin Hood and the Monk (c. 1450)
Text: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/monkint.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch119.htm
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/h/hood.htm
http://www.boldoutlaw.com/robages/robages2.html
OUTLAW
 does not appear in court for his crimes, places himself instead beyond the
grasp of the forces of law and authority, such as the sheriff. Therefore he is
deprived of social identity, and status and, to an extent, power. The outlaw
abandons society and society disavows him. Yet social values, issues and
events are of great concern to the figure of Robin Hood.
 He is no longer a MEMBER of society, but in several adventures Robin
is drawn into society where he wants to impact on events or participate in
some way. For example, he stops a marriage, intervenes in disputes, rescues
individuals, or, in Robin Hood and the Monk, he attends church services.
 Robin in particular commutes between the world of culture and the
world of outlawry; he exists between the normal social order and the associal
void that the concept of outlawry suggests
SOCIAL STATUS OF OUTLAW
 The medieval Robin Hood is frequently imagined as a projection of some late
medieval class (important in estates satire, cf the ‘General Prologue’ to Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales)
 He displays some affinity with the peasantry, but the ballads of the late Middle
Ages seem to be addressed to a gentrified audience – this implicitly confirms the
anomalous nature of this figure, and outlaw with a link to one or more sectors of
established society
 Frequently referred to as a yeoman – thus he is a defender of, and paradoxically
even a member, of the yeomantry – which was a class of free peasantry emerging
in the late Middle Ages
 He’s NOT a disinherited knight until much later in the tradition: in several of the
medieval ballads, though, he is a defender of the knightly class who have fought
the Crusades. He supports a social superior, and in doing so he reveals an
awareness of a hierarchical distinction between a knight and a yeoman by asking
for payment in one ballad (A Gest of Robin Hood)
 There is also the overwhelming sense from the literature that Robin can both
grant and tale away status – he is “master” (not king, notably) of his greenwood –
and has ultimate power in his dominion. SO in this sense does he uphold social
order or create a new version?
FOREST / GREENWOOD
HUNTING: Means of survival in the forest / passtime or sport /
assertion of power in the natural world; the outlaws are professional hunters
living in the woods with no taste for ‘civilised’ life of the court or town
Discussion Paper for Videoconference with Pace University, 16th April 2008; Dr C.
Griffin
Greenwood is a locus amoenus; it functions as a place of nature that is
juxtaposed with the town (a place of culture) where the sheriff has domination
the forest, however, is the king’s sphere of influence – it is therefore an
anomaly existing between culture and nature. BUT nature is owned, protected
and theoretically controlled by the most powerful and representative member of
society. Therefore the world of Robin Hood is a distinctly liminal one in which
he effectively usurps of takes over the role of the king: symbolic association with
the king’s deer and the killing of that royal animal
Outlaws dress in GREEN – the colour of their natural environment.
They live amongst the deer on which they depend, to the point that there is
almost an identificaiton of between the hunter and the hunted.
ORIGINS
In that sense, the literary and cultural history of the outlaw and,
specifically, Robin Hood, has been associated with something that is liminal, and
in itself outlawed or banned
To begin with, he is associated in a very deep way with folk ritual and folk
tale (hence the forest and the association with deer)
But Robin also has close associations with the Christian churches, and in
particular the cult of Mary. So the Robin we receive today is a weird blend
between pagan and Christian
The Cult of Mary was brought into England by early pilgrims returning
from the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostela. She became associated in
England with May and May Day, and was paired off, by the Saxons, with Robin
Hood or Robin Goodfellow, the name means, in early French, either ram or
devil. So originally he is a sort of a devil-god, with horns and ram’s legs – very
sexual and black – sometimes surrounded by a coven of witches.
Here the story becomes complex because Robin Hood became associated
with May Day celebrations. According to Walker, an early 20th century historian,
the origin of the ballads we are looking at is further complicated by an actual
Robin Hood: born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, sometime between 1285 and 1295,
and in the service of Edward II between 1323-1324. He married Matilda – who
became the Marian figure – and, also, the thirteenth member of the outlaw
fraternity to which Robert Hood belonged. These figures became associated with
defiance of the church and upheld the May Day orgies and celebrations in the
English countryside, where Robin would preside as Lord of Misrule and Matilda
would have worn her proper clothes ass his bride.
May Day was even merrier than Yuletide; Maypoles, cakes and ale,
wreaths of flowers, lover’s gifts, archery contests, and wrestlings. It was also a
time when marriages took place under the greenwood trees, endorsed first by a
Friar Tuck figure and then officially in the Church porch. Whole villages took
part in these anti-establishment fertility rituals, commonly known as “mayings”
or “Robin Hood games”, which were outlawed by Puritans much later on.
BUT you also have a literary tradition emerging from this, with the focus
on the rebellious exploits of the infamous outlaw.
There is, however, an outlaw tale that was committed to paper much earlier than any of
the Robin Hood ballads:
Discussion Paper for Videoconference with Pace University, 16th April 2008; Dr C.
Griffin
An Outlaw of Trailbaston (Anglo-Norman, c. 1305)
-The only reason that the medieval outlaws exist for us today is that they were written
down – might seem obvious, but it provides a reminder of the fragility of our knowledge
of the Middle Ages, of pre-print culture, and of outlaws from that time. That knowledge
is dependent on the INCIDENTAL survival of a scattered body of references and texts
that are now preserved in literary manuscripts from the 13 – 16th centuries.
IMPORTANTCE OF TEXT AND THE WRITTEN WORD
13th century onwards: the business of government began to be carried out
increasingly using documents, letters, epistles, rolls, charters etc – became a
‘document driven culture’
Hence all the great rebellions – carried out by those who couldn’t access
the written word, like the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 – attacked the repositories of
the written word – it symbolised power and control
There are lots of references to the written word in outlaw texts: the
public authority – wither the king or his institutions – usually communicate with
the outlaws not through direct intervention but the written word:
In Robin Hood and the Monk we see a letter that comprises written
instructions ordering the individual to come before the king and his courts – the
letter from the Monk complaining of the losses he has suffered at the hands of
Robin and his men is stolen by Little John and taken by him to the King.
The King then authorises an instrument ordering the sheriff to bring
Robin to him (ll. 231-4)
When the sheriff receives the letter, robin’s escape from prison causes
him considerable anxiety because he is now unable to respond effectively to the
letter: (ll,295-8)
Between these two passages we are told that the letter to the sheriff is
authenticated by the king’s privy seal – (253) – much more weighty and powerful
than the great seal – and has implications of penalties or forfeiture for anyone
unable or unwilling to carry out its orders.
We also have a form of petition by the outlaw in Trailbaston, which is a
high-status text in comparasion.
The ONE type of written petition that is ABSENT from outlaw literature
is the type that pardons the outlaw, allowing him return to the king’s peace. The
outlaw in Trailbaston complains that he “dare not come into peace among my
kinsmen”.
For the medieval outlaw, texts AND writing represented a fundamental
threat. His flight to the Greenwood represented an escape from the authority of
his own record as preserved in the plea rolls of the court.
Suggestions for Discussion:
-the endurance of a myth and the richness and scope of the literature associated with that
myth
Discussion Paper for Videoconference with Pace University, 16th April 2008; Dr C.
Griffin
-the process of myth-making, and the notion that the legend is frequently re-worked and
re-visited, yet it retains certain core concepts and features that make it instantly
recognisable, and that an audience – be it late-medieval or early 21st century – will come
to expect. Particularly germane since the BBC has recently reinvented the Robin Hood
legend in the first major TV series since the influential Robin of Sherwood of the early
1980’s.
-The idea that the outlaw falls short of being ‘heroic’ – are outlaw texts emerging from
the heroic tradition?
-Differences between Arthur and Robin; have they been treated differently by literary
scholarship?
Later Developments: Outlawing the Outlaw
Early Modern Period: Robin Hood went from being immensely popular amongst all
ranks or estates of society to being quite literally outlawed. He represented a threat both
national stability and puritan economy in the sense that he was associated at once with
fertility and sexuality and populist disenchantment. Because of his popular appeal,
Elizabethan dramatists made the outlaw a marginal figure (Shakespeare famously
eschewed Robin – too controversial, but pointed on more than one occasion to the
idyllic greenwood and the possibilities for transgressive behaviour that locus provided).
Elizabethan authorities were, according to David Wiles, “determined to prevent any
institutional expression of egalitarian sentiment”.
Romantic and Victorian: Firmly part of the literary landscape of England and of the postNapoleonic war, industrialised English society, struggle for universal suffrage. There was
an interest in archaism and the past, what Marilyn Butler calls “popular antiquarianism”,
and which led to various publications:
1765: Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry
1777: Thomas Evans, Old Ballads
1795: Thomas Ritson, A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs and Ballads Now Extant
Relative to the Celebrated English Outlaw
1806: Wordsworth, “Rob Roy’s Grave”
1810: Scott, “The Lady of the Lake”
1814: Byron, The Corsair
1819-20: Keats and Reynolds
The Novel
Scott, Robin Hood (1819), and Ivanhoe (1820). Relocated Robin in a historical and national
frame of reference, but also, influenced by Keats and Reynolds, gave Robin the context
of natural values and a quintessential Saxon register of Norman oppression. Racial issues,
matters of nationhood and identity, & violence characterise the novel.
Some Reading:
Child, F. J. (ed.). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, vol. III. New York: Dover, 1962.
Contains all Robin Hood and other outlaw verse
Dobson, R. B., & J. Taylor. Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw.
London: Heinemann, 1976. All of the RH verse texts, along with an excellent
introduction.
Knight, S. Robin Hood: A Complete Study the English Outlaw. Oxford: Blackwell: 1994.
Discussion Paper for Videoconference with Pace University, 16th April 2008; Dr C.
Griffin
Phillips, H. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval. Dublin: Four Courts, 2005.
Websites:
see Blackboard