Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham
Encyclopedia
Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham is Child ballad 139, a Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....

 ballad, and in fact an original story.

Synopsis

A fifteen-year-old Robin Hood set out to Nottingham to compete in a shooting contest. The king's foresters make fun of him, offering a bet that he could not kill a deer. When he does so, they refuse to pay. Robin shoots fourteen of them and flees to the forest.

In the late 16th century Sloane Life of Robin Hood a version of this story is told, probably from a lost earlier version of the ballad. The Sloane version makes Robin Hood's actions more explicable and less gratuitously bloodthirsty; the foresters had bet their money against Robin Hood's "head" or life, and one of them tried to put him off his aim. Having won the wager Robin waived the debt for all of the foresters except that one, suggesting that they drink the money together. This was not good enough for the foresters and the quarrel developed with fatal results for them. The Sloane account, unlike the extant ballad, makes no mention however of a general mayhem of Nottingham townsmen.

Adaptions

Although this tale never became as definitive as many origin stories for the Merry Men, Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.__FORCETOC__...

 used it in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire is an 1883 novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. Consisting of a series of episodes in the story of the English outlaw Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, the novel compiles traditional material into a...

, modifying it slightly: the foresters also threaten to arrest him for poaching, one tries to shoot him, and that one is the only one he kills.

The Location

Nottingham was founded as an Anglo-Saxon settlement and in the 9th Century by the Danes conquered. Under the Danelaw Nottingham was one of five boroughs.From the beginning, there were parts of the settlement of caves that were carved into the soft sandstone. The town was name as Tigguo Cobauc ('House of Caves') and Snottingham.The present inhabitants of the city are certainly grateful that the S was lost with time, as snotty as much as to say in English, snotty 'or' common '.
Nottingham was founded as an Anglo-Saxon settlement and in the 9th Century by the Danes conquered. Under the Danelaw Nottingham was one of five boroughs.From the beginning, there were parts of the settlement of caves that were carved into the soft sandstone. The town was name as Tigguo Cobauc ('House of Caves') and Snottingham.The present inhabitants of the city are certainly grateful that the S was lost with time, as snotty as much as to say in English, snotty 'or' common '.

External links

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