Third post on Robin Hood fun facts! Today’s edition: his heritage.
Robin’s social status before he became an outlaw has always been a point of contention! Is he from Loxley or from Yorkshire, the Earl of Huntington or a commoner?
The amazing part of the Robin Hood ballads is that they all contradict each other, therefore any Robin you think of is a canon one!
Between his noble lineage and his commoner status, the latter is commonly considered the older one. That is because the trend of Robin Hood being noble is said to have originated after his initial popularity, to appease aristocrats. However, between the two ballads that both name him an origin and also coincidentally describe his two love interests, it is not actually established which one of them is older. In “Robin Hood’s birth, breeding, valour and marriage” he is described to hail from Loxley as an ordinary yeoman with his sister. As far as the Joseph Ritson ballads go this seems to be the only one where he is explicitly stated to hail from Loxley. In this he marries a shepherdess, Clorinda, a young woman whose deer shooting skills impressed Robin. The other one, “Robin Hood and Maid Marian” he is stated to be the Earl of Huntington with Maid Marian as his lover. In it, Maid Marian goes out looking for him and they end up fighting each other for hours by accident (as one does, and Robin obviously loses).
However, there is another ballad, commonly referred to as “Willie and Earl Richard’s daughter”, which is not considered part of the Robin Hood cycle, retells a version of his birth. Thor Ewing, one of the translators of the Robin Hood ballads however, puts serious stake into this being potentially the oldest among the ballads. In this one, Robin is the bastard child of the daughter of the Earl of Huntington and a common man. The common man is sentenced to death, but the child, Robin, is kept and named.
Therefore the question of whether Robin Hood is a commoner or a noble man remains unanswered- whether he is one or other or even both is up to the individual to decide!
