Robin Hood = Decoded

With the resurgence of popular adaptations to the myth of Robin Hood (TV series, and a Hollywood movie directed by Ridley Scott), I find it hard to believe that very little critical work was directed into deciphering the myth.

I would like to point out below some incredible (though purely circumstantial) historical elements that could be threaded together into forming a fascinating alternative picture to what and who Robin Hood really was.

It is my understanding that myths should be examined first and foremost in the context of their first appearance, only should we take a look at the time frame in which the myth and its narrative unfolds.

But first, let uss go over the basic narrative. Robin Hood returns from the Crusades (which crusades? We don’t know yet) to find that his land was seized by the greedy sheriff of Nottingham. He withdraws to Sherwood Forrest (in Nottinghamshire), where he joins with the Merry Men (Brother Tuck, Will Scarlett, Little John, etc) and begins a guerrilla war against the Sheriff’s people in which he steals tax money and redistributes it back to the peasants.

This mini-civil war escalated, until in the end: 1) He is captured and executed; Or 2) The return of Richard the Lionheart from the crusades, who acts as a deus-ex-machina, removes the sheriff from his post and allows Robin Hood to reclaim his title and land.

Before we take a look at the first and more plausible conclusion, lets take a look at the second ending. The first thing that sticks out is the introduction of King Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199), which gives us an actual time frame to these events, and the possible crusade in which Robin Hood participated, the Third Crusade (The Kings Crusade, 1189–1192).

If we to entertain this time-frame two problems arise immediately: First, we need to assume that Robin Hood returned to England between 1189 and 1192. This would in effect mean that the taxes Robin Hood was stealing from the sheriff were actually taxes funding the crusade, which means that Richard the Lionheart would not have been so inclined to restore Robin’s stature in English society.

Secondly, Richard the Lionheart didn’t even reside in England. He lived in Southwest France, ruling from afar, using England as a revenue source rather as his homeland.

I feel it’s safe to rule-out Richard the Lionheart as a meaningful element in the story of Robin Hood, though it does raise an interesting issue: Why would he be inserted (one would assume) in a later date, and what does his inclusion to the myth come to represent or hide?

One answer, is that at the time of the crusades the commoners had no interest in subsidizing their king’s ambitions in the holy land, and therefore Robin Hood and his Merry Men came to represent a justice in that respect.

In a later time, in which the crusades were gazed upon with lenses of nostalgia, the myth had to reconcile two conflicting arguments, and thus differentiated between the crusades and the unjust taxation inflicted on the commoners (which now were personified by an evil sheriff).

However, I still feel that the legend of Robin Hood requires much more scrutiny.

The first evidence of the name appears in the 14^th century (two hundred years after Richard the Lionheart), and I would like to argue that a something in the early 1300s was at play when the myth was a very current event.

Before we embark to my actual theory, let’s examine a few of the actors in this myth.

The first thing that comes to mind is that both Robin Hood and Will Scarlet could be seen as similar if we consider them to be signifiers rather than proper names. Scarlet and Robin share an etymological link with the bird, Scarlet Robin. Is it just a coincidence? Perhaps, but if we play around with the names, in which Scarlet will replace Robin and vice versa, at one of the combinations we will arrive at Scarlet Hood.

Though Robin Hood is mostly depicted wearing a cap in modern adaptations to the story, what if we imagine the Hood as an actual hood, or a cloak, or possibly a robe?

The color scarlet was worn by the clergy, more specifically, by Cardinals, specifically, a scarlet-colored robe. Additionally, one should take into account that only a hundred years after the first reference to a Robin Hood (1493) in a petition to the Parliament the name (now term) Robin Hood was used to describe a vagrant felon.

Which leads us to the question of vagrancy: Though vagrancy (wandering or displaced people) was quite common during the 14^th century throughout Europe, our particular case of vagrant people, i.e the Merry Men, are quite unique in the fact that they were all men. So we have a group of men, living together in the woods, possibly wearing scarlet robes, one of which is actually identified specifically as religious figure (Friar Tuck, or Brother Tuck).

Furthermore, if we to consider the ambiguousness in terms of Robin Hood’s origin; some narratives claim he came from the aristocracy; some claim he was a commoner; would it make sense that he was neither, or rather that he was somewhere in between.

And let us get back to Friar Tuck. While in the later versions of the story, he was described as a jolly food-loving character, in the earlier versions he was described as physically fit as well as a good fighter. There were two prominent groups of clergy men in those times known to be soldier-priests, could Friar Tuck be a member of one them? And should we make anything of his transformation from a soldier priest to a gluttonous fool? And was gluttony even a laughing matter in those times?

Now let us take a look at this at yet another angle: What about Robin Hood’s love interest, the Maiden Marianne. Though the British medieval scholar Maurice Keen tried to connect the myth of Robin Hood to 13^th century French Pastourelles and May festivities (in which the couple of Robin and Marion were prominent, I would like to assert that a single love-interest personified in a maiden lady seems too convenient.

In the earliest versions of the Robin Hood story from the 14^th century, Robin Hood was attributed a unique religious affinity: Marianism.

Marianism, as we know, is a belief that Jesus’s god was not the Hebrew Yahweh but rather a sacred feminine entity based on the Egyptian Isis. In this light, what do we make of the name of the Robin Hood’s group, the Merry Men?

And if we to assemble the separate threads: the color Scarlet, robes, the Crusades, fighting priests (later accused in a deadly sin, i.e. gluttony), and marianism, which group of people operating in those times fit the bill?

The Templars.

And let us look again at the arena in which this myth takes place, Nottinghamshire.

Though London was the base of the Templars leadership in England, Nottinghamshire was the key area for the Templars to obtain their wealth.

Nottinghamshire was the most productive area agriculturally in all of Britain, and most of the wealth in England was levied from it. The Templars presence there was extremely vital and therein very beneficial over the years.

And lets us reframe this again by contextualizing the Templars in the time-frame of the emergence of the myth: the early 1300s had signaled the end of the Templars throughout Europe, although in Britain the situation was slightly different.

The Templars were not executed in Britain, but rather mostly dissolved into yet another group: the Hospitallers. And particularly in Nottinghamshire the situation was quite interesting in our perspective: Though most of Templar property was confiscated by either the King Edward II and the Hospitallers, in Nottinghamshire the Templars were allowed to keep some of their possessions, by the king’s court decree of 1308, as long as they pay taxes to the local Hospitallers who were based… In Nottingham. In other words, the sheriff of Nottingham was at the time in fact a Hospitaller.

Could we not argue that the myth of Robin Hood was in fact the story of the last years of the Templar court in England, and its last struggle for survival against the Hopitallers between 1308 and 1312? Yes, I suppose we could, because today after Dan Brown’s book anything mysterious has to involve either the Templars, Illuminati and other such drivel. And did I waste your time here? Yes, I suppose I did. But it does make you think, don’t it?