Robin Hood and the Monk

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Robin Hood and the Monk (German Robin Hood and the Monk ) is one of the oldest still existing ballads about the legendary English robber chief Robin Hood . In Francis James Child's representative collection of traditional English and Scottish folk ballads , the Child Ballads , it is number 119. The text that has survived comes from the late 15th century. It describes the fearless liberation of their leader from captivity by the Sheriff of Nottingham, undertaken by two companions of Robin Hood, into which he was caught by the betrayal of a monk while attending mass .

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The late medieval ballad begins with a poetic glorification of summer. Robin Hood cannot resist the desire to hear Mass again. He wants to go to church in Nottingham , but is advised by his loyal Much the miller's son that such an excursion also involves risks; after all, he and his companions, the "Merry Men", are all outlaws. The robber captain refuses to go out with at least twelve gang members and is content with taking his most loyal friend Little John with him. On the way, the two organize a shooting competition with their bows, during which Robin Hood denies that Little John has won. So he does not pay his betting debt and angrily continues on his way alone. In Nottingham, Robin Hood attends the service in St. Mary's Church as planned , but is noticed by a monk he once robbed and betrayed to the sheriff . This comes with a superior force and puts Robin Hood to fight.

At this point the text of the manuscript breaks off and only begins again with the description of the shock of Robin Hood's men about the news of the arrest of the gang leader. Despite his previous argument with Robin Hood, Little John does not hesitate to rush to his aid with Much. You come across the treacherous monk who, together with a little page, is supposed to inform the king (not named) about the arrest of Robin Hood. Little John and Much claim to the man of God and his companion to have become a victim of Robin Hood and go with them, supposedly to protect them. As a result, they not only kill the monk, but also his page, although he is only a teenage boy, because he shouldn't be able to tell anything.

Little John and Much then bring the slain cleric's letters, in which Robin Hood's imprisonment is announced, to the king, to whom they pretend that the monk died on the way. The king gives them presents, his seal and instructions that the sheriff should have the outlawed leader handed over to him, who has been in safe custody for the time being. So it is possible for Little John and Much to pretend to be royal messengers. They go to the Sheriff of Nottingham and argue that the monk did not come because the King had appointed him abbot. After the deceived sheriff got drunk at a subsequent feast, they kill the prison guard and flee with their gang leader.

After this maneuver was successful, Little John explains that he has done his leader a good service in exchange for his bad. Robin Hood acknowledges this and suggests that Little John should take his place as robber chief, which the latter rejects. When the king hears the story of Robin Hood's flight, he is angry, but admits that Little John is the most loyal man in England and does not draw any further conclusions. In the last verses of the ballad, God is extolled as the crowned ruler.

Dating - Tradition - Reception

Robin Hood and the Monk was written in Middle English and received in a manuscript from the University of Cambridge written around or shortly after 1450 , which has a large gap in the text and is difficult to read. The text was first reprinted , albeit in a rather distorted form, in 1806 by the Scottish antiquarian Robert Jamieson in his Popular Ballads and Songs . A single sheet of another manuscript of the ballad, apparently also from the second half of the 15th century, is preserved in the Bagford Ballads of the British Library and could offer some better readings of individual passages of the ballad.

In the ballad, as in other early sources, Robin Hood's social position is located in the rural Yeomen milieu. The title hero appears as a great admirer of the Virgin Mary . The most closely related contemporary text, the summary of a Robin Hood story in the Scotichronicon written in the 1440s by the Scottish historian Walter Bower , also emphasizes the great piety of the gang leader. The motif of the disguise of the "Merry Men" in their adventures, described in Robin Hood and the Monk, recurs in other Robin Hood ballads. The trait of the cruelty of the gang members in dealing with enemies, for example when Little John and Much kill the monk and his young pages, is also shown here in other early texts such as the Gest of Robyn Hode or Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne .

Although Robin Hood and the Monk did not have a significant influence on the later tradition of the legendary robber and was missing in the many Robin Hood garlands of the 17th and 18th centuries, it is still counted among the classic Robin Hood ballads.

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  • Francis James Child: English and Scottish Popular Ballads , 5 vols., New York Reprint 1995, Vol. 3, No. 119, pp. 94-101.

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