Wilfried, thanks for the link - that's one of the best on-line dictionaries I've seen yet, and certainly the most complete explanation of the word "bower".

It's tempting to draw connections between "bower" meaning --

(1) pergola or arbor (a shelter built in the trees)
(2) boor, or peasant/farmer
(3) a "knave", or common "jack" who becomes elevated in power/stature      
    over even kings and queens
(4) one who uses a longbow or strongbow (as in bows and arrows)
(5) a joker or trickster (as in Euchre's 'best bower')

--- and Robin Hood, who fits the bill quite well in all 5 cases! But as SRS points out, there are plenty of similiar stories, "like the 1854 The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit by John Rollin Ridge, which is a Western take on an old theme of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, all mixed up with Chinese laborors and Mexicans and Indians." So it's probably going out on quite a limb to assume such correspondences ...

Back to the "Mighty Oaks" for a moment, I did a web search yesterday to find out if there were any famous oaks in Canada, and came up with these:

The Treaty Oak at Niagara-on-the-Lake Ontario, where the first treaty money was paid to the native peoples by the first Indian agent in Canada. Only remnants of this great red oak remain at 407 King Street in that town.

The Parliament Oak, also in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where on May 1 1793, " there was passed on this spot the Seventh Act of Parliament, freeing the slaves in Upper Canada. Thus Canada became the first British possession to provide by legislation for the abolition of slavery, 79 years before slavery was abolished in the United States."

It's fascinating that even centuries after Europeans were "cured" of their Druidic oak-worshipping ways by people like St. Boniface, the "mythic" oak tree was chosen to "witness" -- even "protect", as in the case of the American Charter Oak -- the most important of historical treaties/events on a new continent!

Yet it's very unfortunate that here in Ontario, the mightiest and oldest of the oaks and maples and pines were felled long ago, victims of the material ambitions of the newcomers to this continent. I found a bit of the story of the demise of Ontarios great primeval forests at this site :

"The Loyalists who moved here had to chop through one of the thickest walls of forest in North America to reach the soil. The settlers developed a hatred for trees and they "killed" these natural enemies by setting fire to them or by cutting a deep gash through the bark right around the tree to stop the tree from being nourished; the tree gradually died. For fifty years the pioneers of Essex County competed in a race to destroy the dense forest that kept them from the fertile soil. Fire became a symbol of material progress. Citizens of Chicago, 300 miles away, admired the glow in the sky on several occasions when millions of cords of Essex County hardwood (oak and walnut) went up in smoke as the settlers struggled to clear at least five acres as stipulated for their first year improvement, and then to enlarge their farms as each year went by."

The little village of Midhurst Ontario, where I live, is named after Midhurst England, where some of the oldest oaks and chestnuts in England still grow. There are pics of them at this link I posted above. Scroll down to the third picture, the awesome chestnut of Cowdray Park in Midhurst England.

Unfortunately, all of the forest around Midhurst Ontario was clear-cut about 100 years ago. The topsoil blew away, and the land was devastated, becoming a sandy desert. The first reforestation nurseries/experimental forest areas in Canada were opened in Midhurst about 60 years ago. Today the area is treed once more --- with tall, thin, almost branchless spindly red pines that are planted in rows way too close together. They are quite ugly-looking .... I call them "pencil-trees".

But I guess they're better than nothing ...

Sometimes I dream about what the primeval forests around here must have looked like over a century ago, before the white men came with their axes. Call me a tree-hugger, but it's hard not to mourn for them. Midhurst England looks nothing like her name-sake on this continent ...and I live about 2 blocks from a street called "Cowdray Park Lane"...

daylia