CHAPTER SEVEN

ROBIN HOOD IN SCOTLAND

E. Patricia Dennison

Robin Hood has been a character well known even to young children for generations. Fictional or otherwise, he serves as a symbol of the struggle between the underdog and the oppressor. Twenty-fi rst-century lore would have us believe that the Anglo-Saxon Robin of Locksley, earl of Huntingdon, having been unfairly removed from his inheritance and outlawed by the Normans, made his living by highway robbery. England at this time was ruled by the devious Prince John, in the absence of his much-loved and good brother King Richard I (1189–99) on crusade. Th e country was in chaos, with John aligning with the wicked sheriff of Nottingham. Robin and his Merry Men took shelter in Sherwood Forest, from where they fought out the honour- able resistance of Englishmen against Norman oppression (probably a nineteenth-century invention). Aft er many adventures and on the return of the good king, Robin was recognised as an honest and worthy subject. He was reinstated and justice was seen by all to have been done. Robin Hood has thus, for some, epitomised a deep cynicism on the part of the ordinary people about those in power. But he was essentially an English fi gure. And yet throughout the sixteenth century Robin Hood was a well- loved fi gure in Scotland. isTh chapter intends to look at the role of Robin Hood in Scottish towns; to assess how far the telling of tales and the enactment or playing of Robin Hood, as the traditional defender of the underprivileged and the personifi cation of resistance, served to placate the fears or concerns of the populace about those in government; and how those in power related to Robin Hood and his cohorts in the six- teenth century. * * * Th e Robin Hood lore of the fi ft eenth and sixteenth centuries was some- what diff erent from that of the twenty-fi rst century. Th ere were, in fact, several stories associated with the character. At least eight of these ‘rymes’

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were drawn together as early as c.1400 and were recorded in writing some time aft er 1450. Many held the same themes and events—outlaws hidden in the forest, forays into Nottingham where the sheriff was out- witted, archery contests, pitched battles and daring escapes.1 As time went on, several more were invented, even into the twenty-fi rst century, the most recent reinterpretation being the BBC1 television series Robin Hood. Probably many other tales existed in the fi ft eenth century that were never committed to paper. ‘Robin Hood and the monk’ is possibly the oldest surviving manuscript and dates from the second half of the fi ft eenth century, as does ‘Robin Hood and the potter’. ‘Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne’ might also be dated, by language and content, to the same period.2 Th e Gest of Robyn Hode, the fi rst surviving printed edi- tion dating to 1492 but possibly having origins as early as 1400,3 drew together fi ve of these surviving tales as a compilation narrative—‘Robin Hood and the knight’, ‘Robin Hood and the sheriff ’, ‘Little John and the sheriff ’, ‘Robin Hood and the king’ and ‘Th e death of Robin Hood’; and it was probably on this Gest that all later versions of the Robin Hood tale were based. Th e fi rst known mention of Robin Hood as a historical fi gure comes early in the fi ft eenth century—and is Scottish. Andrew de Wyntoun in his Chronicle of c.1420 referred to Robin Hood and Little John as existing in the years 1283–5: ‘Th an litill Johne and Robyne rude Waichmen were commendit gud, In Yngilwode and Bernysdale And usit this tyme thar travale’.4 A little later, in the 1440s, Walter Bower in his Scotichronicon dated the emergence of Robin Hood to 1266. He stressed Robin’s love of the church, his hearing of the mass devoutly and his reverence for the sacrament, to dispel the common criticism of him as ‘the famous armed robber’ who roamed with Little John and their accomplices. ‘Th e foolish common folk eagerly celebrate the deeds of these men . . . with gawp- ing enthusiasm in comedies and tragedies, and take pleasure in hearing

1 A. J. Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood (Abingdon, 2004), 6, 2–3. 2 Pollard, Imagining, 6–7; R. B. Dobson, ‘Robin Hood: the genesis of a popular hero’, in T. G. Hahn (ed.), Robin Hood in Popular Culture (Cambridge, 2000), 64–70; R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: an Introduction to the English Outlaw (3rd edn., Stroud, 1997), 123–32, 140–5. 3 J. C. Holt, Robin Hood (London, 1982), 15. 4 Th e Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun, 6 vols., ed. F. J. Amours (STS, 1903– 14), v, 136.

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