Part Two: Robin Hood and the Legacy of Outlaws in Medieval England

Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening, there's people trying and do good things, even if they do it in morally complicated ways by being Robin Hood. I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today is my guest Jokasabian. How are you.

I'm good. I'm good. You know, it's a little bit warm, which I'm not a fan of, but I'm good. How you doing well.

The air conditioner has been off this entire time, and the air filter's been off this entire time, so my eyes are a little bit burnie and I am sweating in my chair, but not enough to stop me from being excited about the topic of this week's episodes, Robin Hood, who I've wanted to cover since I started this show we last left our heroes. We barely even introduced him at all. Actually, Robin Hood has not even entered the written word yet. But we were talking about a book called Piers Plowman from thirteen seventy seven, and in that book there is a character named Sloth. Sloth is not a good character when I first read just about it.

That's why I fell down a deeper rabbit hole reading about the whole book and learned about the Peasants Uprising, which is the whole reason I fell down that rabbit hole talking about it. Whatever. People listen to this show, they're probably used to that. But one of the things I read was like, oh, there's a character named Sloth, and I was like, that is the most punk rock name I've ever heard. But actually, rather than being a self named non binary person named Sloth, it is the sin personified, and Sloth in the book says I do not know my Lord's prayer perfectly as the priest sings it, but I know rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolph Earl of Chester. Or actually it says, I cannot perfectly my pot or noster as the priest it singeth, but can

rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolph Earl of Chester.

That doesn't sound like something Sloth from the Goonies would say.

How fuck that is slow? Oh my god. Maybe the whole thing is a Piers Plowman reference. Maybe that's the whole secret history of that anti gentrification classic, the Goonies.

That's what I believe now for sure.

Yeah, And so basically the character Sloth is just like a populist. I mean, it's like basically like complaining about like the dumb yokels. Right. I don't go to church and do good things, but I sure do love my comic book stories more or less. The first reference to Robin Hood in English.

I can't believe jd. Vance existed even back then.

As for this Earl of Chester, the other person referenced he did not wind up famous today, but he had the good fortune of actually being a real person who lived and died. Except we don't know which of the three Ranulfs of Chester, the third, fourth, and sixth Earl of Chester was named Ranulf. It might have been the fourth or the sixth. I'm going to tell you about the fourth just in case. But this is basically it's like, this is other people that ballads are about. Right, So as a comparison, here's someone who's being mentioned in the same breath as Robin Hood. The second Randolph, Earl of Chester.

The fourth Earl of Chester fought in one of the Civil Wars, one of the million Civil Wars, specifically the one. Smoke is really bad for your lungs. I don't know if y'all knew this anyway, Let's see how my voice is affected by doing this show. You all didn't hear it, but we took a brief break because I turned on my air filter, which I'm glad for because I was at one hundred and seventy four parts per million two point five or whatever I was at.

Bad.

My air filter is read and apparently it's not coming in. So now I'll be able to tell you about Robin Hood without further damaging my throat and eyes in the process. I love living in the apocalypse. There was a civil war with the sick name the Anarchy Hell yeah, and it was like when there wasn't central rule of England.

The fourth fought on the behalf of Empress Matilda against King Stephen, and he helped put the first reigning woman onto the throne of England. But Scotland decided to back Matilda too, and Ranolf was like, wait a minute, that's a step too far. I can't be siding with Scotland, so he switched sides. But then he tried to switch sides and then the king that he defected to he was like, ah, I'm not with Matilda anymore, I'm with you.

The King didn't trust him and had him arrested and put so many chains on him that he was literally like buried in chains, like he was just under the chains, which is again only the medieval English mind would have bothered to come up with that idea.

Or a sick album cover one of the two.

That's true, but it's not Alice from the first one in chains. That would be a different band, true, true, and they did eventually let him out of his being buried under chains. Buried under chains would be like a I would probably listen to that album like three times. It would be like New Metal ee but kind of still go hard with good riffs. Buried under chains.

Yeah, it could be post hardcore too, like it's very like two thousand and six coded at Warped Tour.

If it was post hardcore from England, I have to admit the best post hardcore comes from England.

I'm sorry.

I don't want to shout out anything about England.

Oh God, that hurts me as a person from the Midwest.

Well that's a different Oh, there's probably multiple things that are called post hardcore. This hadn't occurred to me almost certainly. No, No, anyway, this is besides the point buried in chains. Eventually he was released from jail and he was like, all right, fuck this Stephen guy, and he kept attacking him. And during all this restructuring of everything, Randolph the Earl of Chester was given the hereditary title keeper of the Forest of Sherwood. This is probably a coincidence, but I just think it's really interesting because then there's a chance that that reference of Robin Hood and the Randolf Earl of Chester was basically being like, I know the story of Robin Hood versus Randolph, Earl of Chester, but we don't know.

But it's the kind of thing that I when you study something obsessively for a week, these things get really interesting. What we do know is that Ranolph was stripped of all of his titles of the Sherwood thing eventually and poison to death. So it didn't go great for him.

That's unfortunate, I suppose, I guess.

So mear really, you know, I don't know a moral feeling about the Randolph Ranolf one way or the other, but yeah.

I don't feel like I should feel sorry for the guy who is like the cop of the woods.

Yeah no, yeah, yep. So this is the first reference to Robin Hood thirteen seventy seven, and it's a reference saying this shit has been going on for years. We've been talking talking about Robin Hood for so long that it's this cliche thing that you listen to instead of the our Father. There's a few more references to these stories before the stories themselves come into print over the next few decades. And what I think I mentioned at the top of the first one, all of the other names of people that he's referenced with are real people because they're rich. They were written down in history, so we know it. That's why I think that this is the best argument I've seen for why robin Hood might be real, is that literally everyone else he's mentioned in

the same breath of about ballads is real. It took another one hundred years or so before the stories themselves were written down, at least as far as we know. The printing press hit the scene in the fourteen forties and more shit started getting written down, and lots of ballads like robin Hood. Ballads were really popular, so people sold them. You have ballads like robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Potter, and I think actually literally like Robin Hood's death is one of them. I know there's a new movie we'll talk about at the end called The Robin Hood. A lot of these rifted off of each other, right, because these are just I mean, it's folk, it's like folklore for folk music, folk poetry.

The longest one was called A Little Jest of Robin Hood sometime from around the late fourteen hundreds or early fifteen hundreds, like fifteen ten or so. It also has the names the Jest of Robin Hood and Mary Jest of Robin Hoodie and other shit like that.

Robin Hoodie is like a cool fucking name.

I know. I know it's probably pronounced hood which just as an e at the end. But I like saying hoodie because I like saying y oldie sorty times.

I like hoodie sounds like a skate brand.

Yeah, Robin Hoodie, Yeah, it does exactly. Yeah, y'all ever heard of a jest? A gest?

Is it like a jape? Perhaps? Oh?

I don't think it's japeish?

Oh?

But is it like a Kiro's tale? It is? It is, Sophie. I'm not sure timeline wise, but I had to look it up. Okay, I haven't really fucked with Middle English and Early Modern English much on this show. So I had to look up a bunch of stuff, and just gest means an adventure tale. Ah. And if you're wondering if this is somehow where just like a joke comes from, it is unlike tithe where it was false friends, A jest is an adventure tale, and a jester was a storyteller. Hm. Okay, and then became the person who makes one of people or whatever. And Mary, as in the Mary Men, I already ruined this one. In part one, Mary didn't mean like laughter, but instead like pleasant. So the Mary Jest of robin Hood is the Pleasant Adventures of Robin Hood,

A nice little tale.

Do you want to know where I know the word just from?

I do from those Red Wall books, those like children.

I love red Wall. Yeah it's a good one.

My brother they love them too. You read like every single look. Yeah. And we even watched the little animated show when we were kids.

I did too. It was on right before I went to school.

Yeah, it was really good.

But that's where I like, I've known that word.

Since I was a child. This is why reading is so good.

You like learn weird words.

Yeah, you're like, not everyone knows what a crenulation in a castle is. I don't understand. They are such an important part of my childhood. I thought they're like quicksand you know, they're like a thing that, of course I'm gonna have to worry about at some point.

Yeah. My childhood word that I would use that would freak out adults was jovial.

I would use the word jovial all the.

Time because it was like in one of my books. Oh that's that's good. Imagine your like six year old daughter coming to you and dropping the word jovial. I would be so proud.

Yeah, yeah, just to say I'm a little freak.

It's fine. Yeah, we all are. How do you think we ended up here? Yeah? It was a festively jovial jest.

The jest of Robinhood starts. I've done minor translation from Old English for this attend and listen, gentleman, that be of freeborn blood. I shall tell you of a good yeoman. His name was Robin Hood. And the whole thing is in that rhyming scheme, and it works like it's still Middle English and like fucking indecipherable. But somehow, when you're reading it and it's rhyming. You can kind of just figure more of it out. I read an annotated version that explained a lot of it to me. That helped me a lot.

But hey, bars are universal.

Yeah, the gest of the story, that's my gist joke. Robin Hood was a good and pious outlaw, especially loyal to Mother Mary. There's a kind of a specific thing where he's like, he's very religious and pious, but he hates the church, so he likes Mother Mary, which gets into the kind of the pagan accusations. So just like, I don't know, that's cool. I relate to that. And he makes sure his men only steal from rich people, especially bishops and archbishops. He loved Mother Mary so much that he would never hurt not just any woman, but any group of people with a woman in it, because he might hurt the woman by accident. They would often waylay strangers, and the way they did it, it's fucking sick.

This is the like weird way of robbing that I was talking about earlier. They'd be like, ah, a lot stranger, come have dinner with us, and they would bring them like to their camp and then feed them like really good food, like pretty elaborate cooked food, and then be like, but it isn't appropriate that a yeoman should pay for a night's dinner, now is it, And be like, so now, now give us money, and like there's versions of this in like tourist hustling today, you know, yeah, where it's like it's not the furthest thing from robbery, but it's also very respectable. Or you're like, oh, you were on a cruise like I was, did security on a goth cruise because my life is what it is. And at the stops people would be like, oh, yeah, totally, come

have dinner with us, and you're like, no, I don't have any money, don't do this.

It also leads back to Redwall, because anybody who's read Redwall dose of how well the author described all of the food that they're eating.

Those books have made me hungry. I read those books in middle school, and I honestly I disassociated most of middle school, so I mostly just remember that there was a mouse on the cover.

It's probably for the best.

So they would rob them by basically saying, now you got to pay for dinner, but it's a still pretty polite they like, wouldn't beat them up or anything, right, I mean, unless they didn't pay. And they do this to a knight who has no money and he's in debt to the Abbot, he's like broke, right, And he's like, oh, I'm losing my land. I'm a broke night. I kind of fallen out of my horse, tired, my hoods hanging down over my eyes. And so they're like, oh, no, you don't how any money, and you owe the Abbot money, and the Abbot sucks. Here's three hundred pounds or whatever the money is. I can't remember, even though I literally just read this yesterday. They also give him a yeoman of his own, a servant. They give him little John

to be his servant for a while. And the knight then repays Robin Hood and the merry men and gives them a bunch of guns and ammo, I'm sorry, bows and arrows, and also one hundred hired mercenaries. Do I guess the bandits sick?

This is a good exchange, you're funny? No, yeah, worked out really well for him who says bartering doesn't work.

I know you. It's like a charity right. You're like, oh shit, we didn't know you were broke. Here will lend you money, but not in an evil way, but you're still going to repay us really well. And then little John stops yeomaning for the night and starts yeomaning for the sheriff, the evil sheriff of nodding him, and then he and the sheriff's cook rob the sheriff and take off and rejoin the bandits. There's more to it, There's more ins and outs. There's more adventure happening here.

They rob the sheriff again when he comes after them, but first they offer him dinner served on his own silverware because they stole all his silverware, and like, ah, yeah, come and eat.

But what a shitty sheriff falls for this twice I know, Oh, you guys are gonna rob me again.

Yeah, well, I guess the first time they stole, right, because they steal everything and run, so the seconde's a robbery. And then they make the sheriff and his men sleep outside without their outer clothes, just like shirt and pants or whatever, which is actually always cold. Every time I have slept outside without a sleeping bag, I have been cold, same, no matter what summer it is. And then the sheriff tries to arrest Robinhood. He shows up an archery contest wins, and then the sheriff tries to arrest him. So they all run away and they hole up in their night friend's castle. So the sheriff is a little snitch. He runs to the king and is like, Sir Richard, that's the NIC's name. It's like he's trying to make himself

a lord using the outlaws. And so the sheriff captures Sir Richard. So Robin Hood shows up, and I'm just gonna read the lines. Robin bent a full good bow an arrow he drove at Will, I drew at Will. I didn't bother changing this to modern English. So I'm going to fuck this up.

He hits.

So the proud Sheriff upon the ground, he lay full still, and ere he might up arise on his feet to stand. He smote off the Sheriff's head with his bright brand. Lie thou there, thou, proud sheriff. Evil mote thou chev badly? May you end? That's the way it gets translated. There might no man to the trust thou while thou still were alive. He shoots the sheriff down he cuts off his head and says, you died badly and no one was ever able to trust you.

Fuck you. It's like the Robin Hood version of Dracula Flow, and I'm here for it.

Why was Dracula Flow?

Oh, I don't even know if we have the time to go into that. It is this very strange rapper. I suppose it's an old man dressed up like Dracula very badly, to the point that he has the Dracula hair sharp eat on. Yeah, uh huh, and he has fed incredibly nonsensical rap lyrics by filthy Frank And it's just something you have to experience.

I want to see him do the jest of Robin Hood.

Then he could do it. I fully believe he could do it.

Yeah, so kill the Sheriff of Nottingham. There's no like long back and forth of who's the villain. They're like, I fucking killed this guy, cut off his head, and then I laughed at him while he was dead. The king shows up and is like, wait, what the fuck happened? Like, what the fuck just happened? So he goes into disguise in the forest. The king is like, I'm going to go as a commoner or whatever meets robin Hood, and robin Hood is like, oh, you work for the king.

I love the king. You're not the king, but I do love the king, but you serve him, so I like you. And then they have an archery contest back at the in the woods, right at the bandit camp, and the king is so impressed because Robinhood has humility. When he loses that when he reveals himself and he's like, you're all pardoned, You're so great. I love all of you.

You can come live with me at court, which is the most folklore ass shit in the world. If you ever read like Russian folklore, it's like and then the king is like, now you want you get to live with me at court, but robin Hood is like, look, I only go if I can bring all my men, And the King's like, yeah, all right, and then he goes and he's like he lives there for a year, and he's like now, fuck this, and he goes back to the forest and then he lives for another twenty two years in the forest.

That's the gist of robin Hood, all right. I appreciate that he brought all his friends with him.

I know much like, you can bring your friends, invite them not to listen to this podcast. The podcast is fine, invite your friends to listen to the ads of this podcast.

And we're back.

And obviously the most important takeaway in this is what's the deal with class medieval England and archery. That's obviously where everyone's mind has gone.

I know mine did.

Yeah, so I'm going to answer that. You ever, like, watch the people who are like really big fans of the English longbow, the war bow I have.

And I know they tend to split hardly into two camps. One is like, you know, actual enthusiasts who are really deep in the weeds and the stuff, kind of like you know, we have become, or people who insist that it is like some kind of symbol of supremacy.

Oh interesting, yeah, oh wow, Oh that doesn't surprise me. I wish that didn't surprise me. Everything to do with history has that camp. Unfortunately, rather than you know, the longbow generally being the tool of the peasants, that's what we're gonna talk about.

Yeah, yeah.

Whenever I was watching the nineteen fifty one conservative Robin Hood for about ten minutes last night, and then I was like why am I doing this to myself? And I stopped it? And the like when baby Robin has like his good and honest, hard working Anglo Saxon Dad is killed by the Norman usurper, but Anglo Saxon Dad is still a king or a noble or whatever the fuck you know. They grabbed Dad's bow that's inscribed off the wall. It would have been a fucking crossbow, that's what. Yeah, that was the upper class weapon.

Yeah. Using a long bow effectively required a lifetime of training, which was mandated because it is insanely strong draw pole. It is hard to do to the point of deformed people's bones.

Yeah, and it's also why like England had Well, okay, we'll get to it all right. So Robinhood starts off a yeoman in this story, right, the third line is like, he's a yeoman, don't worry, we got this. He's one of us. But later stories around the sixteen hundreds, I think maybe sixteenth century. I always get those two mixed up in my head when I read them, and don't put them in my script. Later he becomes a noble.

But it's not a coincidence that he's the most famous archer in English history and a yeoman. The knights were nobles and they fought up close and personal or with crossbows. But it was the yeoman archer who made England the medieval force that it was. The English longbowmen is one of the most famous and deadly forces of military history. Ah. Yeah, No, whenever there's the like these are the best people in military history, there's like people who are like the Katana's the best and also I'm a fascist, and you're like, you could just like Katanas. You don't have to throw in the fascist part.

Yeah, you don't have to uchiomechium of the shit up. You could just enjoy swords.

You know, Like, no, the mounted horseback rider is the best possible soldier. And that's why I'm a fascist. You're like, God, damn it.

I think it always has something to do with And this is something I run into all the time as a military historian, is whenever something is revolutionary in a way and asserts a kind of military supremacy on the battlefield and then intern in politics, it always has to be coming from a position of power supremacy. Of course, that always gets chained to a modern nation state which didn't exist a race, which is a concept that didn't exist.

Yet this always happens rather than obviously in the case of the katana, that legitimately is the case. It was a symbol of the upper class, right, whereas the long bow is the most peasant thing, the most peasant symbol that could exist on the battlefield other than just being unarmed.

Yeah. Well, and it's like, because there's still they're like the peasant middle class of the military, right, and so it's like it's going to be hundreds of years, but eventually the Omen are going to come up, right, you know. Yeah, But the military use of the long bow. You have the famous battle of I don't know how to pronounce French agin Court, where there was a muddy field and the English long woman just killed the shit out of all the French knights. The French nights were like, we got this, and then they were just like, now we're just gonna keep shooting you kind of the original go charge that machine gun nest.

Yeah, uphill in a muddy field while wearing plate armor. It was one of the dumbest battle plans I think I've ever talked about on my Well, actually, that's a high title to give anything at this point.

But yeah, that is the title of your podcast, basically, Legend Daily Stupid. Yeah, and the Yeomen were commoners. They're middle class commoners, but they're commoners. Nonetheless. In thirteen sixty seven, as you mentioned, England decreed that every Englishman should be good with either a crossbow or a long bow. And it's kind of bonkers to imagine that today. The equivalent, obviously would be everyone should know how to use an air fifteen. Yeah, and I don't see even the United States saying, hey, everyone, you'll have to learn how to use air fifteens. Only the wealthier folks could afford a crossbow, which is way easier to use with less training and less like deforming your to pull back one hundred town bow.

And you know, and I wanted to say when I was first thinking this through, I was like, obviously the English trusted their people more back then, But it doesn't really work out for them that they trust their people, right, Like, I guess it makes good for conscripting everyone and going to war. I guess because there's not as much like standing army stuff. I actually know less about the history of when England picked up standing army stuff, but there's so many uprisings all throughout English history. Mmmm that maybe teaching everyone how to use an air fifteen. I don't know whatever. I like most of the uprisings. I wish they had won most of them. Got mixed feelings about the English Civil War.

So I'm better than others. Yeah.

Yeah, not a big fan of the Puritans. But this rising middle class. They didn't have jousting tournaments as for the rich. They had archery competitions, not just in England but also in the Netherlands and presumably in France. The wealth if your people did crossbow at these things. The poorer people used bows, but there's an odd amount of social mobility that relates to specifically being good with a bow.

It was like a very important class symbol, but like a complicated one. People formed militias called confraternities and trained John Block Friedman in his piece Because I Love My Job. In his academic piece Robin Hood in the social context of late medieval archery, described archery competitions with a wooden bird.

You may get a wooden bird called a popinjay, and you put it on top of a pole and quote whoever knocked the bird off the pole was acclaimed king for a year, obeyed by other members of the confraternity, granted a suit of clothes, wine, and other signs of civic status. If he succeeded three years running, he was crowned emperor and given hereditary nobility, and you get a fancy guilt collar that looked like what nobility wore, but like obbe see the cheap knockoff version. But it's like a wrestling belt. You have to give it up to the next person after you.

Okay, oh well, it's kind of like wrestling would be preordained, so more like mma in a way, right, Like I assume some things were also rigged, you know, perhaps there was a hull cogan of archery. I don't know.

Yeah, someone's like over there just kind of kicks the pole and the popinjay falls off.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think this is interesting too, because I don't even remember which episodes to see large chunks of, especially when I talked about Irish history. But this idea of like having like false kings and like being like, ah, your nobility but kind of in a fun way is so common all throughout the medieval world and the ancient world of just this like way of being like, I've kind of like fucking with actual kings by being like, no, this guy's kN like turn the world upside down for a day. It's a very common holiday thing to do.

This isn't quite this is much later than most of that. But I just think it's interesting that it's like you're king now because you won. And obviously these competitions are important in the jest of Robinhood. There are three different I didn't mention one of them, Little John wins one. There's three different archery competitions just in the jest of robin Hood. And I think this is my own conjecture here that kind of implies that the written versions of robin Hood were for a yeoman rather than surf audience. Right, and he is a yeoman, so that's obviously also implied.

But this might be now that these are like written and printed, this actually might be the first kind of literal gentrification of Robinhood. It might be the first taking him up a social class. Right. Yeah, but this is entirely my own conjecture. Robinhood used the bow, not the crossbow. But there's a lot of class fantasy, at least in the jest. I am fascinated by how Robin Hood hates the middle nobility but loves the good and noble king.

This is so common throughout all monarchies. You live in a monarchy, I do. Yeah. I remember once walking around the Netherlands and there was a this is when Beatrix was queen. I think, hmm, and I just like walking by and there's just like this giant portrait of the queen, and I like turn to my friends and I'm like, I keep forgetting y'all live in a monarchy.

That's kind of like the weird way about it here is that unlike the UK, where people, you know, have actual feelings towards the monarchy. Yeah, Like Dutch people don't give a shit, you know, it's just not a part of life.

Yeah. Yeah, I think they forget too, And that seems fine until you see like the crown on the paperwork, Like oh yeah. I remember reading a piece by Jjack that annoyed me, But then now that I read more history, I like hate that. I have to hand it to Gjack. I was talking about how like populist, including lefty populism in England likes the monarchy like they're kind of the people's mascots, you know, And so like, there's this idea that I've read about all throughout history, going back to fucking three thousand years ago, that the king is the good protector of the people, while the rich and the lesser nobility they are the ones who oppress us. They are the ones because they're the ones you actually see

oppressing people right right, Like the sheriff is coming around collecting taxes. It's for the king. But everyone's like, ah, but if the king knew I was starving, he never would have asked me for my shilling. Like, no, he he specifically doesn't give a shit and asked for your shilling. John, Yeah, good or whatever your fucking name is. If you're English, you know, people would say like, oh, the czar doesn't know what's happening. If only if the father or good father knew. Last week I wrote about the first ever labor strike in recorded history, which was three thousand years ago, and Egypt and the tomb builders when they went on strike, they were like, we just got to get a message to the pharaoh. As soon as the pharaoh learns about

our plate, everything's going to be fine. But in robinhood, So when Robin Hood's like, oh, I like the real king, right, And there's also some Pierce Plowman in this story about how the peasants are the true nobles. And there's also a cross class idea that I find oddly American. The ultimate American man, I would argue, is someone who is both somehow working class and upper class. Yeah, this is why eighty thousand dollars pickup trucks exist, Yes.

And why like this you know, mid level guy who works something to do with his hands, but also makes him upper middle class. Like nobody is like, look at the manly I don't know, middle manager, investment banker. Yeah, like, no, nobody's looking at that guy. It's always gonna be semi indecipherably rustic in a fake way. Like yeah, they have the duly, that's eighty thousand dollars. They live on a large piece of land, but they do not use that truck for any manual labor.

Yeah. Yeah, I think about this so much, partly because I'm a podcast who owns a truck. But I bought it while living off grid, and like it's like all fucked up, you know, because I like, yeah, live in the fucking woods. But yeah, this this idea. The eighty thousand dollars truck is just the ultimate fucking example of this idea of masculinity, because being rich is cool, but also you have to somehow be working class, and so you have to be both at once, and it drives men insane, Like I kind of feel bad for like some American men who hold themselves to these standards, even Red Tarzan.

Probably, but I definitely remember the movie better.

I recently, and by recently I mean about fifteen years ago, but as an adult, so therefore it all conflates down to itself. I recently read the first Tarzan book, and I'd always been familiar with the idea of it. Right, you have a guy who's raised in the jungle, but don't worry, he's white. And also in the original Tarzan book he literally hangs the first black man he ever meets.

Oh, if I.

Remember correctly, he is rough and tumble, and he swings from the vines. But also in these books he cleans up nice, he learns languages with ease, he can make himself comfortable and accepted in high society. So he's when he chooses the woods, he's choosing the woods. This is what matters. This is what elevates him above the like savages. Again, these are racist books. That's the America man like. I'm kind of obsessed with that archetype and how much it fucks everyone up. And I think robin Hood is playing with this a little bit. Robinhood is both a man of the people but also someone who could make it in high society. He just doesn't want to. He'd rather be in the woods.

That does track.

Yeah, and I don't like that read because I like robin Hood. But stories are what they are. I can't force it into well. Later we'll talk about someone who forced it into just like straight up a communist narrative. But before we talk about anyone who wrote Bows against the Barons, we should talk about the products and services that support this show. I often rely on both products and services as part of my life. I don't know about you will, and we're back. So that's the earliest robin Hood, the jest of robin Hood. But the idea of robin Hood has never gone away, and there have been new robin Hood stories over and over again. I'm a little sad that there was no real I expect it to be, like, I'm just writing about outlaws instead

of doing like literary history this particular episode, but it is what it is. I still find all this shit fascinating. By the late sixteenth century, he became a dispossessed nobleman. Right around the start of the nineteenth century, robin Hood just got fuck off popular in England, which is funny because like the nineteenth century is when like everything got popular.

I don't know, I'm always like And then the Victorians discovered this thing and started doing it badly. That's like they do that with everything. Book after book were written about robin Hood, plus theater, plus music, operas, and he becomes Robin of Locksley. He was not Robin of Locksley until the nineteenth century. His full name is Robin of Locksley, alias Robin Hood, and that comes from a novel called Ivanhoe from eighteen nineteen, which was written by this conservative Scottish guy named Walter Scott. And this is also where Robin Hood is returning from the Crusades to find everything fucked up comes from two So Ivanhoe is where we get a lot of our modern robin Hood, especially the more annoying part of it. I'm a little out of

my depth here about this Walter Scott guy. You wever find that there's like the people who are so famous that you just everyone pretends like they already know about them, but then you realize no one actually knows about them. Oh yeah, that's Walter Scott. Yeah. I think if someone has said, do you know who Walter Scott is? I would have been like no. But if someone said Ivano, I would have been like, that's a book. Walter Scott was one of the most popular writers of his era, although later people were like, his books are silly and his politics are bad, which is good because his politics were bad. The twentieth century Scottish poet Hugh macdarmid basically said that it was Walter Scott who convinced the Scottish

people that there was no point in trying to revolt in that they like, literally like, it's it's Walter Scott's fault that Scotland isn't free.

I'm willing to blame him for that. He doesn't seem like a nice guy. His last name is Scott, he should be pro Scottish.

Well, so he's a Scottish nationalist, but he's one who insisted that Scotland should stay part of the UK because he loves our traditions, not our watchly im as Scottish as I'm Irish, but whatever. He loves the Scottish traditions, but they're backwards and needed to be advanced by the English, so they had to join with the English in order to like move away to a higher stage of human societal evolution. He believed strongly in stages of history that every society has to go through. And what's funny is I read this piece I think was written by conservative about why Walter Scott's like cool and it specifically had to spend a lot of time because I read that, and I was like, that's just Karl Marx, which is

one of the big things that Karl Marx is wrong about, right, was this like stages of history that everyone has to go through. But I was like, he's just saying what Carl Marx said. And so then the whole article is like, I swear he does it different. I swear it's not the Carl Marx version, even though he also believed, and this is a Karl Marx belief too, that people are generally the same everywhere and it's their material conditions in society that shape them into who they are. But Ivanhoe basically puts robin Hood into the Saxon versus Norman conflict of medieval England and is like, well, the Normans are invading and like kind of taken away or like cool Saxon stuff, but honestly they're the more advanced society, so

we should probably let them, right. That is like the lesson learned. I think I haven't read Ivanhoe, but by many of the characters in Ivanhoe is that they're like, ah, I even though we're Saxon, we don't like the Normans. They are better, so I guess they should win.

It's a very confusing kind of nationalism.

But okay, I know, well you don't understand the Turkish are just more advanced than the Armenians. You know, you all were still living in a more tribal societies. Obviously kind of just makes sense and nothing ever happened, and if it did, we deserved it, and it was good at the end of the day. As long as he stok it to call yourself Armenian, you can have no control and you have to accept the society of Turkey.

But you know, yeah, that's a yeah, and it's so funny because this is how Robin Hood becomes a more conservative character to people. But it's hard to make stick, right, Like whenever people are like trying to make Robin Hood a write wing character, it happens all the time, and there's like that Robin Hood. I couldn't make it through where he's just like basically like a modern war on terror army bro Oh have you seen this one?

I have it.

He's got short hair and he's like basically wearing a plate carrier, but he has a bow instead of an AR fifteen or a four or sixteen whatever. I don't know the military guns. Yeah, anyway, I assume that was the conservative Robin Hood. I couldn't make it through it. I was like, I'm not watching this shit. He's wearing a plate carrier. I can't take this series.

Robin Hood in a fast helmet writing his Navy seal biography, Yeah.

Exactly, that's the like. And then I came home and saved the people. Right.

I can't believe they gave Robin Hood a punisher tattoo. This sucks.

The punisher's skull, but with the Robin Hood jaunty cap with the feather.

Coming no that's that absolutely exists. It has to the punisher skull is like rule thirty four of being a conservative. It exists somewhere all forms of the Punishers.

Totaling, which is yet another example of like Punisher didn't like cops. I'm not coming out in bat in favor of the Punisher. He killed cops all the time, that was like his thing. Yeah, and the guy who wrote The Punisher said, cops fucking suck. Frank Castle would hate you. Yeah. So, actually robin Hood and the Punisher are a perfect matchup, kind of in this particular context. Fortunately, most understandings of robin Hood. At the end of the day, they constantly give us the like, oh he wants the good king, blah blah blah, blah blah. The main single thing that people remember about robin Hood is robed from the rich and give to the poor.

That's the most basic thing about robin Hood. Everybody does.

Yeah. Yeah. On the other hand, that's more or less also what Christianity says, and they keep turning that into the opposite of that too, So I guess they are really good at turning things into their opposite. But many such cases, yeah exactly, I tried watching ten minutes of nineteen fifty one's Tale of robin Hood, and it is amazing how much people can make Robin Hood into a right wing figure. But in the other direction, there's a book I want to read. I don't know if it's good or not, but I want to read it. Nineteen thirty four's published by British communists, Bows against the Barons, and it was written by Jeffrey Trees, who later felt bad about He was like, look that was my Like, I was youthful and naive. And so he later went

through it did a version of it that takes out most of the uses of the words worker and comrade from the.

Well, how fitting is it a guy with the surname Trees to write a book about Robin Hood.

Oh that's a good point. It's spelled tra Se And so I hadn't said it aloud in my head until just now.

Yeah, then we just have to accept it.

Yeah. As Robinhood became more popular, his sharp edges were shaved off. He became unambiguously good, His enemies became unambiguously bad. The bad Usurper is like, you know, we got to get rid of the bad usurper. The good King has to come back.

Mm hmm.

Have you seen the Death of Robin Hood, the new robin Hood?

I have not.

Nope, it reverses the usual Robin Hood. I'm not going to spoil it, but this is the premise of the movie. Robinhood is just kind of a brutal outlaw who kills people. He like kills a kid in like the first scene, and he's old and he's like, actually, damn, my life kind of sucks, and it's weird that people tell stories about me being good. I actually just kill people. I'm kind of shitty. That's the rough idea of the book, and it gets into some at a Christian shit. The movie presents the idea that Robin Hood was only worth loving in legend, and I liked the movie, but I also think it misunderstood robin Hood in a different direction, because it's like, I'm going to get rid of the shaved off edges of robin Hood. But at the same time,

the real outlaws of Sherwood Forest were killers and thieves for sure, but they were part of the lower class community of the area, and they kept getting pardoned byers sheltered from the law. I think they have more in common with like modern gang culture, right, Like there are outlaw cultures where they're also seen as good by the communities that they're in, or necessary evils, or like better than the state services that don't exist. You know. Yeah, I like to believe that the working class hero of robin Hood was a fucking scoundrel, but he was their scoundrel.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet it's a mesh of the two, you know, Like, I'm sure him and his band of merry min stacked bodies fucking waist high and did a lot of horrible shit, but they were still better than the alternative. Or you know, maybe they were so awful that their own threat of violence if people did not shelter them. You know, these things could both be true totally.

Yeah. I think that we do ourselves a disservice when we file off the edges off over romantic outlaws. But I think as a folk hero, as a folk story, I want something built from the synthesis of the class warrior and the bandit. But I haven't seen that particular thing represented too well. Maybe one day I will. And my final note is on robin Hood and mythology and paganism.

By and large, modern scholarship dismisses the idea that Robinhood has derived from mythology. I don't know if you knew that. Like, there's like, especially the Victorians, but also modern folks. Whenever there's an old timey thing in Europe, people are like, ah, it's from pre Christian it's pagan, it's pagan. It's oh, it's like this cool thing, right, Oh yeah, And usually it's not true. You feel really smart when you learn that, but then it's not true. It's often from syncretic shit anyway, so people will be like, oh, Robinhood has to be a representation of the gods or has to be something else.

And it is almost certain that robin Hood was either a character that someone made up or there was a bandit named robin Hood that someone wrote a song about, and it was an idea whose time it had come and it spread. So it's probably only an old idea like one thousand, you know, six hundred and fifty to one thousand years old, not three thousand years old or whatever.

But there are people who feel that it or felt that it might come from older sources. F. H. Bradley, who was writing in the Victorian era. Just to present this argument, he wrote, quote, the whole story is ultimately derived from the great Aryan Sun myth. Robin Hood is hod the god of the Wind, a form of Woden, Made Marian as Morgan dawn Maiden. Friar Tuck is Tokey the spirit of frost and the snow. I suspect this isn't true, partly because Made Marion and Friar Talk were actually later additions to Robin Hood's stories.

It seems like a bit of a reach.

Yeah, and Robin Hood was a Marianist. That was like such an important part of his character. He holds Mary in very high esteem within Catholicism, which does have syncretic roots, right, like I worship the Mother Goddess. Like that's it. Yeah, that gets old. I'll give it that.

You know. Some could even go further. The Holy Trinity is itself evolution of those things?

Yeah, totally, But there was Okay, so I tend not to buy the like robin Hood is the gods thing. But there is one mythological element of robin Hood that stands out to me, and I hadn't seen anyone else discuss it. So again, this is purely conjecture from my non historian self, Robinhood and his mary Men remind me of the fairies. They live in the woods, they invite you to dinner. The dinner is an astounding and fine banquet, full of manners and refined beauty, despite the facture in the woods, and then there's a secret cost at the end of it that sounds like the fairies to me.

Yet it would be a kind of myth making and storytelling that these people be very familiar with.

Yeah, exactly. It's like I doubt it was like the fairies turned into Robin Hood. It's just like people were like, No, we're just like used to having stories about like, oh, you go hang out in the woods and someone's going to invite you to dinner and it's going to be real costly, you know.

Mm hmm.

And that's what I got inbou Robin Hood. Very little of the details about the Robbin and the Rissians giving to the poor, but it's a cool idea and it lives on forever.

I gotta admit, going into this, I assumed Robin Hood was a real dude at one point, me too, obviously. With a ballooning of myth over time and all of that. But like, you know, because the British history is not my forte I have. My background is military history and the very uplifting genocidal history, but not British myths, English myths. Yeah, I assumed he was a real guy.

No, I know, there's there's about eight people who people point to and are like, maybe this guy. General scholarly consensus is probably not of any of those eight specific people. It's a bunch of people named Robin Hood, you know. And there's like one guy who was named Robin Hood who was like worked for a similar place as someone named Little John or John the Little but there's no particular outlawry to them, you know. And then there's a couple like tombstones of Robin Hood, but they've been later been found to be like I'm gonna make this number up because I don't remember like eighteenth century forgeries, so like they're written in like fake Middle English.

You know. Hell, yeah, the tourist traps almost like people are gonna go to see that. I'm gonna get through shit like that rules.

Yeah, totally. Robin Hood would have probably approved of that, honestly.

Definitely, at least spiritually. I do like the idea that this might be the first English cryptid.

Oh shit, yeah, don't got w that's where Robinhood is, which case is fine.

Yeah, he only walks very quickly looking over his shoulder and appears very blurry and photographs.

Yeah totally. I mean that's what it is. The history. Yeah, there's very blurry ideas about who he might have been. Yeah. No. I went into this being like, all right, cool, I'm gonna like, I'm sure there's a guy. There's no the guy, but that's okay. Well what do you do? Who are you? You write books? What's going on?

Podcasts? I write books, I write and record podcasts. If you like fantasy, which I assume you do because you just listen to two hours of Robin Hood, I have a fantasy novel out called The Highlands Burn. It also involves robbing from the rich and stealing from the poor, kind of you should check it out. If you like wizards getting shot with magical revolvers, it might be the book for you. I also say military street podcast called The Lines Up by Donkey's podcasts. You can listen to wherever pods are casts and if you listen to it and you like it. We're having a live show in Cork, Ireland on September twenty sixth. Tickets are available now. If you can't make it, we're also live streaming it with

video on demand and you can find all those links somewhere below.

Perhaps hell yeah, and if you listener want to be your very own Robinhood then you can. I think that's a good idea and probably it's probably a crime. Anyway, I'll see you all next week. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of pool Zone Media. For more podcasts and pool Zone Media.

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Part Two: Robin Hood and the Legacy of Outlaws in Medieval England

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