Lyrics & Knowledge Personal Pages Record Shop Auction Links Radio & Media Kids Membership Help
The Mudcat Cafesj



User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
Robert B. Waltz Songs of land/housing strife/resistance? (34) RE: Songs of land/housing strife/resistance? 11 Mar 24


FreddyHeady wrote: Three Acres And A Cow has a resources page with links to
songs
(1100s) Robin Hood ballads as sung by Wallace House


If this is their level of scholarship, I strongly suggest avoiding it.

Robin Hood demonstrably did not live in the 1100s, because he uses a longbow. Longbows did not exist in that era.

"Rymes of Robin Hood" are mentioned in Piers Plowman. That's c. 1380.

The earliest actual texts of Robin Hood romances are "Robin Hood and the Monk" and "Robin Hood and the Potter," in manuscripts of the mid-1400s. There is no evidence that they were sung.

Two other Robin Hood pieces are known to have been in existence by c. 1500. They are the "Gest" and "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne." There is no evidence that either one was sung.

(To be clear: I suspect that some of them were sung. But we can't prove it. Certainly we have no tunes.)

To be sure, there are Robin Hood ballads that are known to have been sung -- a few of them. Less than half the Robin Hood Child ballads have tunes, according to Bronson, and they are almost all clearly late texts. (There are a few that might be from Robin's middle period: Robin Hood's Death, The Jolly Pindar of Wakefield, Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar, Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford. The rest are from the era of the garlands, and are secondary.)

Bottom line: There is no evidence that Robin Hood tales existed before the fourteenth century (though the name is mentioned once or twice), and strong reason to doubt that they could have existed before the thirteenth.

Neither "The Cutty Wren" nor "The Bitter Withy" shows any hint of being as old as the date cited, but I'm sure this is enough fury at lousy scholarship. :-)


Post to this Thread -

Back to the Main Forum Page

By clicking on the User Name, you will requery the forum for that user. You will see everything that he or she has posted with that Mudcat name.

By clicking on the Thread Name, you will be sent to the Forum on that thread as if you selected it from the main Mudcat Forum page.

By clicking on the Subject, you will also go to the thread as if you selected it from the original Forum page, but also go directly to that particular message.

By clicking on the Date (Posted), you will dig out every message posted that day.

Try it all, you will see.