A recent PBS Special, "Secrets of the Dead," described a catastrophe around the year 535 A.D. that sounds similar to the one that occurred in the 1300s. A volcanic explosion in the South Pacific was given as the most probable cause.

Maid Marian

This illustration of children playing Hood Man Blind-- a game similar to Blind Man's Buff-- is from an early 14th century manuscript. The "robin" redbreast watching the "hood" -man is almost certainly a visual pun. The conflict evokes the story line of a Robin Hood ballad. In this ballad, Robin Hood and Maid Marian meet each other in the forest. They are both wearing disguises and do not recognize one another. "They provd foes, and so fell to blows..." Marian nearly wacks Robin to kingdom-come during an hour long battle. But he cries out for mercy and his life is saved when she recognizes the sound of his voice.

There is only one Francis Child ballad that features Marian as a major player, and it is not one of the earliest ballads. However, a comic opera Robin et Marion was popular in France after 1283. It was introduced into England by John Gower a century later. "In his Mirour de l'omme or Speculum Meditantis (1376-9), a long poem on vices and virtues, written in French, [Gower] had Robin and Marion participating in rustic festivals and condemned the revels of monks with the comment that they obeyed the rule of Robin rather than that of St. Augustine." [Holt,pg.160] According to Holt, the opera depicts the shepherdess Marion, loyal to her lover Robin, successfully resisting the advances of a knight. There is at least one web page dedicated to it in English. De la Halle's work generates a large volume of commentary in France. It must be stated that the Child ballads are so different from the de la Halle work that many authorities question whether there can be any connection between the two at all.

Bibliography

Britain until 1688 by Maurice Ashley

The Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman, 1973

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1957. This ancient edition has detailed articles on no less than eight people with the family name "Hood." (not counting Robin Hood). They all seem to be related to one another. All but two of them were military men from the 18th and 19th centuries. Mt. Hood, in my home state of Oregon, is named after one of them. One of the nonmilitary Hoods, Thomas Hood, wrote The Song of the Shirt, a poem protesting working conditions during the Industrial Revolution. Britain's largest naval vessel during the outbreak of World War II was the H.M.S. Hood.

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads by Francis James Child.

English Life in Chaucer's Day by Roger Hart.

English Social History by G. H. Trevelyan, Longman, London and New York, 1978.

The Germans by George Bailey. A detailed Huedekin anecdote is found in this book.

The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century, by William Chester Jordan, Princeton University, 1996. The rumor that your Caucasian ancestors and mine resorted to cannibalism during the 14th century--and even developed a taste for human flesh long after the crisis had passed--is not dispelled.

Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor. This book gossips about the politics of academia. Cantor regrets the lack of fresh air in the great universities, and rejoices over the fact that the highly acclaimed Barbara Tuchman holds no more than a Bachelors Degree. Along the way, Cantor provides evidence to support the idea that the original residents of Wakefield and other Anglo Saxon villages (specifically Cantor mentions those in the south and west of England) had no other occupation than to sing and dance and carry victuals for the idle rich. (If you want to know what that was like, watch the serial dramatization of the Berkeley family on PBS. The Berkeley name is also very prominant in the history of the State of Virginia.) Cantor also mentions another god awful disaster that exploded during the 14th century: anti-Semitism.

John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe by Anthony Goodman, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992. Having "won the jackpot in English noble inheritance" by his first marriage, Gaunt devoted his time to England's problems at home and abroad, the most important problem abroad being the defeat of the Serbs at Kosovo. Gaunt set an example of "public service" long before the concept was introduced by political scientists. Goodman explains that Gaunt's "cardinal error" may have been "his failure to develop a harmonious personal relationship with Richard." Goodman's chapter on Gaunt and the Church is especially interesting. Like Robin Hood, Gaunt was devoted to the Virgin, and made pilgrimages to Her shrines all over England.

John of Gaunt by Sydney Armitage-Smith, Barnes & Noble, 1964.

Kings and Queens of England __ Murray

Hereward by Victor Head, Alan Sutton, 1995. This closely researched book validates many of Kingsley's classic assertions about the (arguably) last great Anglo Saxon defender against the Normans. There are intriguing similarities between King Richard II and Hereward. For example, Robin Hood, Richard and Hereward all had problems getting along with monks. Richard and Hereward also had a difficult but fabulously wealthy family friend named "Gaunt" (Gilbert De Gaunt and John of Gaunt) on whom they depended for their survival. They had interesting mothers (Joan the Countess of Kent, and the notorious Lady Godiva). In fact, Joan's mother belonged to the family Wake, which claims a connection to Hereward. The names "Hood" and "Hereward" are similar enough to invite speculation. There are many other similarities among Hood, Richard and Hereward, but these similarities remind us of what the Book of Ecclesiastes says about history: "What once was, will be again. There is nothing new under the Sun." In the Medieval world, as in the Old Testament, history does not progress. It circles. Did I mention that half of Gilbert De Gaunt's lordships were in Nottinghamshire, and that a Robin Hood inn now rests on the site of one of his castles....?

Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley, Grosset & Dunlap, [no date] "And then Hereward rode up the Ermine Street, through primeval glades of mighty oak and ash, with holly and thorn beneath, swarming with game... the yellow roes stood and stared at him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and thrush sang out from every bough; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak tops, and sank down on them as his song sank down. And Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all." Pg.47. On the other hand, the English greenwood could be "...a sad place enough, when the autumn fog crawled round the gorse, and dripped off the hollies, and choked alike the breath and the eyesight; when the air sickened with the graveyard smell of rotting leaves, and the rain-water stood in the clay holes over the poached and sloppy lawns." Pg.437

The Hollow Crown by H. F. Hutchison, The John Day Company, New York, 1961. This is a classic work about Richard II. The title is from Shakespeare's Richard II.

The Normans by Hazel Mary Martell, New Discovery, New York, 1992. The picture of the robin and the hood man, above, is taken from this book.

Richard II by Anthony Steel, Cambridge, 1962

Richard II by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is rarely accused of getting his history right. However, most historians do agree that Richard's tragic flaw was his extraordinary faith in the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.

Robin Hood by J. C. Holt, Thames and Hudson, 1982, 1989. "No sane man goes in search of 'Robinhood' or any other unusual surnames through unprinted and unindexed government records." Holt complains. Some of us geniuses could go out and help him of course.

Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism, Stephen Knight (ed), D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1999

St. Francis of Assisi, by E. M. Almedingen, Knopf, N.Y., 1967. "There was a gaiety and liberty in his approach to nature which seemed utterly alien and therefore dangerous to the ecclesiastical temper of his day."

The University of Rochester. The complete Francis Child ballads of Robin Hood may be found here. It's fun to read them out loud. However, there is a more understandable version provided elsewhere in this Web Ring.

On Hereditary Italian Witchcraft by Raven Grimassi. The major difference between the Italian and English tradition"...probably lies in the fact that the Hooded One could be either a male or a female. Legend says that the Hood helped to conceal the gender."

Links to Sherwood Oregon U.S.A.

The Annual Sherwood
Robin Hood Festival

The Sherwood Lions Club
History Page.

Sherwood Oregon
City Hall Page.

An American Connection:
The Gaunt Family