English Ballads

The Robin Hood Ballads
• The various ballads of Robin Hood are gathered into a collection called “The Geste of Robin Hood,” in which the whole life of the hero is portrayed. • Robin Hood, a legendary popular hero, is depicted in the ballads as a valiant outlaw, famous in archery, living under the greenwood tree with his merry men, taking from the rich and giv-ing to the poor, waging war against bishops and archbishops, and constantly hunted by the sheriffs, whom he constantly outwits.
• The subjects of ballads are various in kind, as the struggle of young lovers against their feudal-minded families, the conflict between love and wealth, the cruelty of jealousy, the criticism of the civil war, and the matters of class struggle. Of paramount importance are the ballads of Robin Hood.
• In spite of this, the Robin Hood ballads show the fighting spirit, indomitaห้องสมุดไป่ตู้le courage and revolutionary energy of the Eng-lish peasantry. In them are best exemplified the views of the exploited classes of feudal society.
• Another feature of Robin's view is his reverence for the King. This reverence is found in the ballads side by side with the most outspoken attacks on the lay and ecclesiastical nobility. The King appears in the ballads as an intermediary between the outlaws and his officials and judges, as the humorous and understanding guest in the greenwood, feasting on his own stolen deer.
The Character of Robin Hood
• The character of Robin Hood is many-sided. Strong, brave and clever, he is at the same time tenderhearted and affectionate. He is a man with a twinkle in his eye, a man fond of a merry joke and a hearty laugh. But the dominant key in his character is his hatred for the cruel oppressors and his love for the poor and downtrodden. His particular enemies are the upper ranks of the nobility—earls, barons, archbishops, bishops and ab-bots. And the king's officials are the object of his most intense an-imosity, as typified in the ballads by the Sheriff of Nottingham, a man noted for rapacity and treachery, who meets his death at the hands of Robin Hood and his merry men of the greenwood.
The Ballads
• The most important department of English folk literature is the ballad. • A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the second and fourth lines rhymed. When it was chanted by ballad-singers, the audience pined in a refrain that usually followed each stanza.
• The ballads are in various English and Scottish dialects. No one knows who composed them. They were created collectively by the people and constantly revised in the process of being banded down from mouth to mouth. Most of them were not written down until they had passed through centuries of life on the lips of the people. They are mainly the literature of the peasants, and in them one is able to understand the outlook of the English common people in feudal society.
• Robin Hood appears to be devout and orthodox in religion, though orthodoxy does not prevent him from despoiling the rich clergymen, especially the abbots.
• As a counterpart to his hostility towards the upper ranks of society is his tenderness for the peasants, his own folk. Says Rob-in Hood to his friend Little John:
Supplementary Reading: Robin Hood and the Bishop
– – – – – – – – – Come, gentlemen all, and listen a while, Hey down down an a down And a story I 'Ie to you unfold; I 'Ie tell you how Robin Hood served the Bishop, When he robbed him of his gold. As it fell out on a sun-shining day, When Phebus was in his prime,5 Then Robin Hood, that archer good, In mirth would spend some time.
• This conception of the King's position as one above the contending classes of society was, of course, an illusion. In fact, the medieval king was the representative of the feudal nobility. But it was the peasants' traditional illusion for the King that disarmed the peasants in l381, deluded as they were by the King's false promises of freedom.
The Origin of the Robin Hood Ballads
• Clearly the historical origin of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws is to be found in the perpetual struggles of the peasants against the landlords, against the local officials and, against the king's judges. Robin Hood is a partly historical and partly legendary character. According to some historians, Robin Hood was a Saxon by birth, an outlaw, but he robbed only the rich and never molested the poor and needy. He waged a guerrilla war, say the chronicles, on the Norman invaders long after the Norman Conquest, and his archers were invincible, and the king's and baron's soldiers could do nothing to them.