Robin Hood in the Crusades?

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: Nerd
Date: 25 May 10 - 04:04 PM

Geoff, "hose," whose plural was "hosen," varied in all those particulars. There were joined and unjoined, footed and footless, etc. Usually they did have feet, and sometimes the feet had leather soles so that shoes were unnecessary. (This makes the rhyme I quoted above charmingly symmetrical; "hooded and hatted" and "hosed and shod" both show Robin with a "belt-and-braces" approach to dressing!) Many times they were joined in the back but not in the front, which is where the codpiece came in, to cover the gap in front. It's hard to picture what Robin should look like, because we don't know what era to picture; the ballads are all late fifteenth century or later, but if there was a "real" man he was probably around two hundred years before that.

The ballad writers were presumably thiking of their own era's fashions when they wrote. This would likely be a pair of hose, either separate or joined in the back, worn over braies or linen drawers on the bottom, and tunic or a "gown" over a "shirt" (i.e. an undershirt) on top. Even if the hose were not joined in front, the middle-class tunic or gown would be long enough to cover the naughty bits, and there was an undergarment there as well!

To answer your other question, all ranks wore hose, but the cut and quality varied greatly, more or less like "trousers" in our day. Think of Brueghel the elder's paintings, for example, which show sixteenth-century peasants in hose (which look essentially like tights). Brueghel's upper garments are often long enough to "cover," and sometimes short enough to require a codpiece, but he was a hundred years later than the early ballads and hemlines went up in that time! So the fact that Robin is wearing hose says nothing about his social state, it's the quality of the hose that would be telling!

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 25 May 10 - 04:41 PM

I don't expect you folks on the other side of the puddle to be as impressed as I was when I stood on the very ground where King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, or Glastonbury, or Stonehenge, but being a history nut it was very special to me. I love the British Isles for your history; there is so much of it!

Then, of course, there was Linlithgow palace, John 'O Groats , Scapa Flow and the Eagles Nest where I held a 5000 year old human skull, and Skara brae.

Tintagel, Lands End,and Hampton Court where my dear friend, Morticia took me. AROUND that is.

I wouldn't swap those memories for a farm Downeast with a hog on it.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: Bert
Date: 25 May 10 - 07:33 PM

Look, if it's not in the Errol Flynn movie then it ain't true.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 25 May 10 - 07:48 PM

He was Tasmanian was he not?

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,Janet
Date: 25 May 10 - 11:33 PM

Yes, Kendall, Flynn was Tasmanian, and a quite a devil, too! As a US resident all my life, I like you, was thrilled to visit Runnymede and see where the Magna Carta was written and to see the JFK memorial there, too. However, I learned on my second visit to the UK that King John did not "sign" the Magna Carta. Instead, his seal was applied to it. I learned this at Lincolnshire Castle which has one of the original documents. As I recall, at least 4 of the original documents were made (by hand, of course) and John's seal applied to each. I think the reason it was sealed instead of signed was that everyone could recognize the seal but not everyone could read a signature, or the document itself for that matter. Also during this trip I went to Nottingham and walked in Sherwood Forest. I bought a golf shirt that says Robin Hood, Nottinghamshire, and has an embroidered silhouette of the archer drawing his bow. Because the weather here has just turned warm, I took it out. Now people are asking me where I got it because they think it is promoting Crowe's movie! I haven't seen that and probably won't until it's available for borrowing through my library. I think that I will prefer the Flynn and Greene portrayals of Robin.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 26 May 10 - 03:43 AM

Nerd - thanks for the details on hosen.
It is good to see that there are still some Mudcatters who can be polite, good humoured and intelligent.
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: r.padgett
Date: 27 May 10 - 02:46 AM

Well some body has to b***r it up to start with to get a decent argument going!

I agree with Geoff the Duck, grey cells on the blink for Richard read Robert (aka Robin!)

Ta

Ray

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 27 May 10 - 05:10 AM

Nerd: Rob Naylor has the color history a bit scrambled. It's not that the ballads "are pretty clear" that the color is "greyne" rather than "grene." For one thing, anyone looking for such consistency and fine distinction in Middle English spelling is sure to be disappointed! Rather, what Rob is referring to is the fact that, in the first fytte of the Geste of Robyn Hode, Little John refers to Robin having cloth of "scarlet and grene" to supply the threadbare knight with clothes. Scholars SPECULATE that this phrase might originally have been "Scarlet in Graine," a particularly rich form of scarlet.

Fair enough! Serves me right for reading "scholarly" works on the subject :-(

Nerd again: Geoff, "hose," whose plural was "hosen," varied in all those particulars.

My maternal grandma always called shoes "shooen" and eyes "ee-en"...and she was born as late as 1885!

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: IanC
Date: 27 May 10 - 05:23 AM

The Anglo-Saxon -n plural (apparently originally a weak feminine ending) is still common in parts of East Anglia. Shoon is particularly common. I've used it myself in the right company (i.e. very local people).

:-)

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 27 May 10 - 03:11 PM

Rob Naylor - shoe'en and ee'en (not sure how many eeeees are acceptable before you add the apostrophe) are forms I would not question if heard spoken in dialect. I am sure there are some others I have actually heard, but can't bring to mind at present.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,Allan
Date: 27 May 10 - 05:37 PM

"My maternal grandma always called shoes "shooen" and eyes "ee-en"...and she was born as late as 1885! "

Shune for shoes and een for eyes are very common in Scots dialects to this day.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 10 - 09:08 PM

Nerd:

Good stuff! I will henceforth defer to you on historical questions.

Kendall:

I share your feelings about "standing on the spot." I had some similar experiences out West in Gloucestershire a few years ago. My facebook photo is a pic of me standing in front of a pub that's been open continuously since 946. I can testify to the saying that Americans think two hundred years is a long time and Brits think two hundred miles is a long way.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: LadyJean
Date: 27 May 10 - 11:06 PM

More than twenty years ago now, I directed three period plays about Robin Hood with the Society for Creative Anachronism, a sort of medieval reenactment group.

These plays were perhaps fifteenth or sixteenth century. In them, Robin Hood is a guy who hangs out in the woods with his men. He doesn't rob anybody. He just gets into fights. In "Robin Hood and the Knight" he fights a knight who tries to capture him for a reward, then the Sherriff of Nottingham. In "Robin Hood and the Monk" he fights Friar Tuck. In "Robin Hood and the Potter" he fights a potter.

Maid Marion appears at the end of "Robin Hood and the Monk", though no name is given. She is simply introduced as "A lady free, and I her chaplain do thee make, to serve me for my lady's sake." Friar Tuck responds with a ribald little rhyme about the lady's moral character, which we, happily didn't find until the last rehearsal. Because the play was being performed for Boy Scouts.

I encountered Robin first in Howard Pyle's "The Merrie Adventures of Robin Hood", written, I think sometime around the turn of the last century. Then there was the old Richard Greene series, which I still have a nostalgic fondness for, since it was on about the time school started, so if I was watching Robin Hood I wasn't going to school.

Rosemary Sutcliffe's book "Heroes and History" includes a chapter on Robin Hood. She seems to think he was a contemporary of Edward II. Though she suggests that the name might have been used by a succession of outlaws.

Which would explain why Bullfinch's Mythology has him as a champion of Katherine of Aragon.

Incidentally, speaking of the S.C.A., on the runestone field at Cooper's Lake, where the annual Pensic War is celebrated, there grows an oak tree that began as a seedling at Runnymede.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 28 May 10 - 06:23 AM

My maternal grandmother born 1886 would always say yourn, ourn and my-yern (mine) - came from Kilburn in north London, very strange!

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,Janet
Date: 28 May 10 - 09:06 AM

A TV station called Retro TV, which I've only been able to access since "TV's digital revolution" since I don't have cable or satellite, has been airing the old Richard Greene series. Last night they showed the first episode with Robin returning from the Crusades. I know another contributor to this thread wrote about that. Robin explained that he'd been wounded in the Crusades. As I've followed this thread, I've been interested in references to earlier literary works that say he was a Crusader and others that don't.

I think the whole Richard Greene series is available in a boxed set of DVDs. According to one source, it lasted only four years.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 28 May 10 - 09:30 AM

Hi, Lady Jean. Thanks for sharing your memories about the Robin Hood play. I enjoyed reading them.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 28 May 10 - 10:57 AM

And I had always heard that to be "hosed" was to suffer some outrageous indignity or irretrievable loss. Did anyone mention Mel Brooks' film, "Robin Hood - Men in Tights?" Truly outrageous.

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: GUEST,erbert
Date: 28 May 10 - 08:09 PM

No one seems to have mentioned the recent BBC1 Saturday Tea time Robin Hood
[ran for 3 series]
Much better production values than any previous TV version;
and probably the last attempt to translate and update the Robin Hood myth
for a young audience for many years to come ?

..astonishingly ludicrous in parts, satisfyingly dark and more adult as the series progressed..

Notable for the villains being hugely entertaining
and far more interesting than the spoilt sulky Robin and his band
of shambolic bickering diversely multi ethnic/gendered 'merry men'.

and yes, loads of scenes set in the crusades !!!

..in fact, once or twice during the duration of the series,
characters would hop on a boat, nip off to the Holy land for a quick bit of intrigue
and a dust up with the enemy.
Then catch a fast boat home in time for the next weekends episode !!!???

Subject: RE: Robin Hood in the Crusades?
From: LadyJean
Date: 29 May 10 - 12:10 AM

Incidentally, Friar Tuck in the plays describes Robin Hood's men as clothed all in Lincoln Green.