Hood not so good? Ancient Brits questioned outlaw

Source: AP
DAVID STRINGER

LONDON (AP) — A British academic says he's found proof that Britain's legendary outlaw Robin Hood wasn't as popular with the poor as folklore suggests.

Julian Luxford says a newly found note in the margins of an ancient history book contains rare criticism of the supposedly benevolent bandit.

According to legend, Hood roamed 13th-century Britain from a base in central England's Sherwood Forest, plundering from the rich to give to the poor.

But Luxford, an art history lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, in Fife, Scotland, says a 23-word inscription in a history book, written in Latin by a medieval monk around 1460, casts the outlaw as a persistent thief.

"Around this time, according to popular opinion, a certain outlaw named Robin Hood, with his accomplices, infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies," the note read when translated into English, Luxford said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzd1GFuf8z5fApLaSNrSbHcfJuvAD96TTPDO0

Gotta' take into account the perspective/bias of the margin scribbler in this case...

representing a broader historical phenomenon.

Proof that a man called Robin Hood even existed.

Or so he says.

I'm skeptical of this. It's been a RW theme lately that Robin Hood was actually a despised thief.

This researcher seems to have come up with the right "evidence" at precisely the right time.

after Bush's first election "win". It was largely being pushed by right-wing outfits, as I recall, as a way to bring up the wonders of authoritarianism.

"...Especially when there are sooo many more middle class people to steal from."

_ republicon homelanders

ISTR that she regarded Robin Hood as the embodiment of vice. Which I suppose makes a sick sort of sense when you're the author of a book entitled The Virtue of Selfishness.

if i rem correctly; there was more than one "Robin hood"...the legend is supposedly the result of many similar stories over a period of time coalescing into the figure what we now know as Robin hood.


But having said that; whats the guarantee that the priest was not in the pay of the Norman overlords?
its like reading Goebbels propaganda a few centuries from now :)

by a century or two writes a 23-word critique of Robin Hood, and suddenly ol' Robin's a bad guy?

So who was the monk? A descendant of the Sheriff of Nottingham?

...about taking the "margin scribbler's" bias/perspective into account... :)

"The Sheriff of Nottingham, verily I'd like to drink a tankard of mead with him."

Very well played!!!

:rofl:

purported activities. Robin Hood was supposedly a contemporary of Richard the Lionhearted who reigned in the 12th century, not the 13th. What a silly article.

especially one that was literate!

1. I'd be pretty skeptical of anything written so long after Hood's lifetime (and historians tend to agree that the legend isn't describing one person but a compilation of characters/people who operated over several centuries).

2. This notation was written by a person about which we know nothing of his motives, background, agenda or class. Based upon knowledge of the clergy of this time, it's pretty safe to say he wasn't some lowly peasant.

Totally OT, there's a fun read on Robin Hood by Stephen Lawhead called "Hood". The book places him as a Welsh resistance fighter during William the Conqueror's time. Lawhead posits that the English forests weren't wild and dense enough to shield a person like "Robin Hood" but that the Welsh forests were (at that time). Combining true history about the Welsh resistance stories of that era, Welsh legends, Welsh politics, and the Welsh longbow, Lawhead's written a great take on the classic legend.

I want him to produce the manuscript, since I'm fairly certain that this would be the first evidence that Robin Hood was a historical figure and not a composite.

At any rate, no one really seems to know who Robin Hood was, or even if he existed as a single individual.

Even if he did, the fact that a monk attacked him a few hundred years after his death doesn't prove very much. Maybe the monk had been talking to the descendants of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

I've been there -- just a little stand of trees. But the town of Nottingham has a beautiful castle (restored). And there's a statue of Robin Hood there, primarily for the tourists. Also, the "oldest tavern in England" (or so they claim) is carved into the hillside under the castle.

Worth a visit, if you're ever in the area.

Enchanting name- and kind of a cool place. A bit windy.

Went away thinking- maybe a more accurate name would be exforest moor.