The Adventures of Robin Hood Read online

  Even as he said this, Robin was aware of armed men wearing the Sheriff’s livery who were closing in round the tree, and of the Bishop of Peterborough with his followers riding through the forest towards where he was.

  ‘A trap!’ thought Robin, and in a moment he had dropped out of the tree and was running his hardest down the hill while Worman shouted:

  ‘After him, men! It is Robin Hood! This time he cannot escape!’

  ROGER LANCELYN GREEN

  The Adventures of

  Robin Hood

  INTRODUCED BY

  JOHN BOYNE

  Illustrations by ARTHUR HALL

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  puffinbooks.com

  First published in Puffin Books 1956

  Reissued in this edition 2010

  Introduction copyright © John Byne, 2010

  Endnotes copyright © Penguin Books, 2010

  All rights reserved

  A percentage of the royalties from the sale of this book goes towards the endowment of six choral scholarships at the author’s college (Merton: Oxford)

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196358-7

  Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves

  Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves…

  The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away

  In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

  ALFRED NOYES

  To

  ‘Buss’

  (Miss A. L. Mansfield)

  in memory of Robin Hood

  and many other

  end-of-term plays

  at Knockaloe, Poulton

  and Lane End

  INTRODUCTION BY

  JOHN BOYNE

  Before I ever dreamt of writing a novel, before I even thought of writing a short story, I wrote a play. It was an adaptation of the story of Robin Hood and was heavily – very heavily – influenced by the book you’re holding in your hands right now: Roger Lancelyn Green’s classic re-telling of the adventures of Robin Hood.

  I was twelve years old at the time. Our drama class in school had been given the task of putting on a fifteen-minute production for an end-of-year performance and somehow I ended up as writer–director of the show (I think I wore a special hat during rehearsals). I chose the outlaw of Sherwood Forest because a year or two earlier I had been given a copy of Green’s book and, along with an abridged edition of Mutiny on the Bounty and R. L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island, it was rarely out of my hands.

  Every child loves a good adventure story and there aren’t many that are more exciting or thrilling than the story of how Robert of Locksley, the son of a nobleman, is forced into the forest by the evil noblemen who have taken control of England. It’s the stuff of legend, but also an example of one of the simplest themes in storytelling: the battle of good versus evil.

  The beauty of Green’s novel is the manner in which each adventure is presented as a story entirely unto itself, so after you’ve read it you can dip in and out and experience your favourite parts all over again. The capture of Will Scarlet is exhilarating, particularly when Robin’s clever plan to save him is put into effect. The prize of the silver arrow is a tale that combines the excitement of the archery contest with the thrill of knowing that capture is at hand at every moment. And the story of the Witch of Paplewick delves into some of the more mystical elements of the legends and leaves you feeling a little more unsettled than you might have expected.

  It’s hard to imagine a better gang to belong to than the Merry Men. The names of Little John, Friar Tuck and Maid Marian are legendary but my favourite was always Much, the Miller’s son. Much was a bit daft and was always getting himself into trouble – and getting others into trouble on account of his actions. But he hero-worshipped Robin Hood so much that he was the one I related to the best. Which was why, when I was casting the school play, I kept that part for myself.

  Just as all the heroes of Sherwood Forest are neatly defined, so the villains stand out as the most dastardly of fellows. Can there be a more vindictive character in fiction than the greedy, immoral Sheriff of Nottingham? Or a worse toady than the utterly malevolent Sir Guy of Gisborne? It was always a mystery to me how they ever managed to hold on to their positions when they were out-manoeuvred at every turn by the man they hated the most.

  The moral in most of these stories is that no matter who is placed in a position of authority, no matter whose decisions condemn their fellow men to lives of servitude or poverty, a good man who puts the well-being of others above his own will always triumph. So it is with Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, and becomes a hero to all in the process.

  But it’s important to remember that Robin is not simply fighting against the powers that be for the sake of it. Prince John and his followers may have turned the country to the bad in the king’s absence, but the story builds to the moment when Richard the Lionheart, to whom Robin and his band of Merry Men have sworn their lifelong allegiance, returns.

  Every time I read this book as a child, I lived in dread of the final chapter, ‘The Last Arrow’. I always wanted Robin to go on and have more adventures, simply in order that I could read more about them, but sadly it was not to be. However, it’s astonishing how his legend lives on in films and television and other books. It seems that there is always room for more stories about the hero of Sherwood Forest. Maybe I should go in search of that play I wrote all those years ago?

  Contents

  Prologue: The Birth of Robert Fitzooth

  1 The Good Spirit of Sherwood

  2 How Robert of Locksley Became an Outlaw

  3 The Outlaws of Sherwood Forest

  4 The Rescue of Will Scarlet

  5 How Little John Came to the Greenwood

  6 How Sir Richard of Legh Paid the Abbot

  7 Maid Marian of Sherwood Forest

  8 The Coming of Friar Tuck

  9 How Sir Richard Paid Robin Hood

  10 The Silver Arrow

  11 Robin Hood and the Butcher

  12 The Adventure of the Beggars

  13 Robin Hood and the Tanner

  14 The Wedding of Allin-a-Dale

  15 Robin Hood and the Bisho
p

  16 George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield

  17 A Night Alarm and a Golden Prize

  18 The Witch of Paplewick

  19 The Last of Guy of Gisborne

  20 The Silver Bugle and the Black Knight

  21 Robin Hood and the Tall Palmer

  22 King John’s Revenge

  23 Robin Hood’s Last Adventure

  24 The Last Arrow

  Epilogue: The Adventures of Robin Hood

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As to the sources from which his material is derived

  To retell the adventures of Robin Hood is a very different matter from writing of King Arthur and his Knights. The Arthurian poems and romances, even if we take Malory as the latest, would fill a bookcase – and in that bookcase we would find some of the great literature of the world, in several languages.

  Robin Hood had no Malory, and he has had few poets. A late medieval metrical romance, A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode: a collection of Ballads most of which are the merest doggerel and some of which may be as late as the eighteenth century; a prose rendering of several of the Ballads, and two plays by Anthony Munday, a contemporary of Shakespeare, called The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon constitute nearly all that we may call the original Robin Hood Literature. If we add to this several short scraps of medieval folk-plays which merely follow extant ballads, a brief appearance in Robert Greene’s play George-a-Greene the Pinner of Wakefield and its exactly parallel prose romance, and a rather fuller appearance in Ben Jonson’s unfinished pastoral play The Sad Shepherd, our sources are complete.

  It was only after the ballads, romances, and plays were collected and reprinted by Joseph Ritson at the end of the eighteenth century that Robin Hood found his way into real literature. Even so he found his best expression as a minor character, as all readers of Ivanhoe will agree. The majority of the ballads, with a glance at the dramatic background, gave Thomas Love Peacock the outline for the best prose story of Robin Hood yet written, his Maid Marian (1822), and the same sources (to which Peacock and Scott also lent something) produced Tennyson’s play of The Foresters (1881) – a pleasant re-arrangement of the old materials, but of no special merit either as poetry or as drama. It was left for the twentieth century to give us the finest poetic play yet written with Robin as hero, Alfred Noyes’s Robin Hood (1926 – acted the same year).

  There have, of course, been many other minor contributions made to the literature of Robin Hood in the form of plays, operas and adventure stories. But by far the largest number of books about him during the last hundred years consist of various forms of retelling of the old legends – none of which has found a permanent place on the shelf reserved for The Blue Fairy Book, The Heroes and Tanglewood Tales.

  My book is based on authority throughout – but that authority has not stopped short with Munday or the Ballads. They have been the main basis of my fabric, but in certain places I have sought the aid of later, literary sources – Noyes and Tennyson as well as Peacock and Scott or Jonson and Greene. I have used all my sources mainly for the outline of the tales, though the dialogue wherever possible is adapted from the ballads – occasionally from the earlier plays, in a few instances from Peacock, and in one obvious instance from Scott.

  My first four chapters show perhaps the most varied example of this method of literary mosaic. Chapters 5 to 15 follow almost entirely the Lytell Geste and the ballads, but with selection and a certain amount of conflation and regrouping. Chapter 16 uses two scenes of George-a-Greene; Chapter 17 combines a ballad with a chapter of Peacock; Chapter 18 is based on The Sad Shepherd (but with my own ending, since that made by F. G. Waldron in the eighteenth century seemed inadequate: the final song alone is Waldron’s); Chapter 19 combines two ballads; Chapter 20 selects from Ivanhoe, with slight variations to fit my general scheme; 21 is mainly ballad, but here all the authorities converge – one can find lines in the various descriptions of this same incident which are almost identical in Scott, Peacock, Tennyson and Noyes; 22 uses the ballad of ‘Robin Hood and the Monk’, perhaps the finest of all the ballads regarded as poetry, and an incident from Noyes; while the two final chapters are almost pure ballad, the Death of Robin touching the only note of pathos or tragedy in all the older literature of the subject. Prologue and Epilogue follow ballads also, the second but distantly and with licence. The songs are from Peacock, Tennyson, and medieval sources.

  As for the setting I have followed most writers and traditions in choosing the reign of Richard I: but the history, it must be remembered, is legendary history, and I have not felt that detailed accuracy in background would help the story. The ballads pay no attention whatever to historical setting, some placing Robin in the reign of Richard I, others in that of one of the Edwards, some even in the time of Henry VIII. Geography too has no place in ballad literature: Robin can flee from Nottingham in the morning, on foot, and find himself in Lancashire the same afternoon, while no ballad writer troubles to wonder why the Bishop of Hereford should be in Sherwood Forest. I have amended some of the grosser errors, just as I have reduced some of Robin’s record shots with bow and arrow to within sight at least of probability.

  ‘Many talk of Robin Hood who never shot with his bow,’ runs the old saying: I have at least dwelt with him in the Sherwood Forest of romance, and brought back I trust a true report of his life and doings there. For Robin Hood’s is a story that can never die, nor cease to fire the imagination. Like the old fairytales it must be told and told again – for like them it is touched with enchantment and few of us can fail to come under its spell –

  Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,

  In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

  ROGER LANCELYN GREEN

  Raigne of King Richard the First…

  In this time were many Robbers and Outlawes, among the which, Robert Hood, and little John, renowned Theeves, continued in woods, dispoyling and robbing the goods of the rich. They killed none but such as would invade them or by resistance to their owne defence.

  The said Robert intertained an hundred tall men, and good archers with such spoiles and thefts as he got, upon whom foure hundred (were they never so strong) durst not give the onset. Hee suffered no woman to be oppressed, violated or otherwise molested: poore mens goods hee spared, aboundantlie relieving them with that which by thefte he got from Abbeys and the houses of rich Carles: whom Maior blameth for his rapine and theft but of all theeves hee affirmeth him to bee the Prince: and the most gentle Theefe…

  STOW: ANNALS OF ENGLAND, 1580

  Prologue

  The Birth of Robert Fitzooth

  And mony ane sings o’ grass, o’ grass,

  And mony ane sings o’ corn,

  And mony ane sings o’ Robin Hood

  Kens little where he was born.

  It wasna in the ha’, the ha’,

  Nor in the painted bower;

  But it was in the gude green-wood,

  Amang the lily-flower.

  BALLAD: The Birth of Robin Hood

  Although it was a hundred years since the Battle of Hastings, there was no real peace in England. William the Conqueror had divided the country amongst his followers, only in special cases leaving the old Saxon Thanes the ownership of even a small part of what had once been their properties. Often the new Norman earls and barons and knights, and their sons and grandsons also, treated the Saxons as mere slaves – serfs to till the land for them and follow them in war – serfs with no rights of their own and no chance of real justice.

  England was still an ‘occupied’ country in the twelfth century, and although there were no big outbreaks after the death of Hereward the Wake, there were many small ‘underground movements’, and in every forest there were outlaws and gangs of robbers. These forests were the property of the king, and the penalties for killing the king’s deer were cruel and barbarous.

  No wonder that in the year 1160 there was little friendship be
tween Saxon and Norman: no wonder Sir George Gamwell of Gamwell Hall in Nottinghamshire, a Saxon knight holding the scarred remnant of his ancestors’ lands, did not encourage young William Fitzooth, son of the Baron of Kyme, when he came wooing his daughter Joanna.

  Sir George was short-tempered and fierce, a bitter man who could never forget his wrongs, nor forgive the Normans whose fathers and grandfathers had wronged him.

  As it happened, young William Fitzooth had a Saxon mother and a Saxon grandmother, and was already beginning to feel that he was neither Norman nor Saxon, but British – and that the way to find contentment and security for the country was by justice and not by cruelty.

  But Sir George would not listen to William, and forbade him ever to enter his house again. Nor would he listen to his daughter, but ordered her as fiercely to keep to her rooms and have no more dealings with the accursed Norman.

  Joanna went weeping away: but she did not obey her father. That night William Fitzooth stood beneath her window, and they swore to be faithful to one another for ever. And not long after, though Sir George had no idea of it, these two were married in secret, meeting like Romeo and Juliet at a nearby chapel.

  Then William visited Joanna night by night, climbing perilously to her window in the darkness, and leaving in haste before the daylight came.

  Spring turned into Summer, and William was called away for several months to follow his father to London on the king’s business. When he returned to Gamwell, a messenger brought him in secret a letter from Joanna.

  ‘I am in sore trouble,’ she wrote, ‘for, though I keep my bed and fain to be ill, my father will soon know what has chanced between us – and then his fury will be terrible. If he catches you, he will certainly hang you – and I do not know what he will do to me, or to our child when it is born. So come to me quickly, dear William, and carry me away, for I am in constant fear until I feel your strong arms around me.’