For the previous 30 years, Ade Andrews has realized the secret of time journey: entering into Sherwood Forest and discovering himself in the Middle Ages.
The legendary house of Robin Hood hit the headlines final week with the demise of the Major Oak — a 1,000-year-old tree in the forest, stated to be the place the legendary hero used to cover out with his Merry Men.
While this bodily hyperlink to a legend has perished, the international obsession with the man who stole from the wealthy and gave to the poor stays as alive as ever. From medieval ballads to films, the world stays captivated by this elusive determine — one other large display screen portrayal, this time by Hugh Jackman in “The Death of Robin Hood,” was launched in the US on June 19. Today, Robin Hood is greater than folklore — he’s a pilgrimage vacation spot, drawing vacationers, historical past buffs and movie fanatics to the English greenwood.
But who was the actual Robin Hood? Was he the romanticized, honorable rogue popularized by fashionable media, or a brutal, unprovoked medieval gangster?
The demise of the Major Oak marks a symbolic turning level for a legend that has developed from a disreputable 13th-century bandit right into a multi-billion-dollar international pop-culture phenomenon — and a large tourism driver for England.
From its 92-foot cover, the tree lived via fashionable British historical past: from the Norman conquest to the English Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and even Brexit.
And it did so in an surroundings that appeared barely modified since its medieval heyday: 400 large centuries-old oaks nonetheless stand proudly, cocooned by sycamores, silver birches, ash bushes and heathland. Today’s Sherwood Forest could also be a fraction of its unique dimension — it has been lowered from 100,000 to the present 800 acres — however what stays is its unique core, says Andrews. Stepping inside plunges you into one other world.
“It’s a magical landscape,” says Andrews “It seems like a totally totally different place. In the metropolis, you’re in the twenty first century, in a concrete jungle. In Sherwood Forest, as quickly as you step from the customer middle onto the greenwood path between the oaks, you step again in time.
“You don’t need to imagine. Your mind is receptive to the experience of being in the past.”
Andrews has been wandering Sherwood Forest for greater than three many years, together with a six-year stint as a heritage ranger, earlier than graduating to changing into Robin Hood himself. A historian and actor, he clothes up as the world’s most well-known outlaw to take guests round Nottingham metropolis middle and out to what he calls the “magical and medieval world” of Sherwood Forest, round 25 miles, or an hour’s drive, north of the metropolis.
While the fashionable metropolis of Nottingham bears little resemblance to the medieval city namechecked in the legends — though it does nonetheless have a ceremonial Sheriff — the forest is the place the previous involves life.
Set out from the fashionable customer middle, and also you’ll peel again 10 centuries in the 20 minutes it takes you to achieve the Major Oak.
“You got a sense its life force was receding, it was on its way out,” says Andrews, who turned a trustworthy good friend to the tree over the many years. “But that’s part of life, isn’t it? Even in death it’s still giving life to the forest, and its story is still unfolding.”
The tree’s story is indelibly linked to that of Robin Hood. The outlaw who stole from the wealthy and gave to the poor has, over the centuries, launched a thousand legends.
The title “Robin Hood” first entered the public consciousness in late medieval England, says Allen W. Wright, who arrange the Robin Hood web site Bold Outlaw in 1997.
In “Piers Plowman,” a poem from the 1370s, a personality mentions that he doesn’t know the Lord’s Prayer — however he does know some poems about Robin Hood.
It’s a useful literary system to out this man as a foul seed: not simply irreligious, but additionally a fan of bandits. The Robin Hood alluded to right here is definitely not the power for good that Andrews — who inhabits the character in Nottingham at this time — believes him to be.
“He has a disreputable reputation from the first literary reference,” says Wright, of Robin. But does that imply he was actual?
There are just a few traces of a attainable Robin in actual life — and so they emerge earlier than that first literary cameo, suggesting that maybe that Piers Plowman reference wasn’t pure fiction. In 1262, a “William Robehod” was tried for larceny in Reading, a metropolis west of London and round 120 miles south of Nottingham.
More folks with “Robynhod” as a surname are talked about in the 1200s — a uncommon surname, in accordance with historian David Crook, which doubtlessly suggests a historic hyperlink. “It points to knowledge of the legend 100 years before we get a clear reference in stories or rhymes,” says Wright of those early references.
He seems in historic texts in addition to fictional ballads. In a 1420 text that dates him to the 1280s, Robin will get a point out as an outlaw who lived with Little John in Barnsdale, in the northern English area of Yorkshire and round 60 miles north of Nottingham. Forty years later, he’s described in one other historical past e book, the “Scotichronicon,”as a “famous cut-throat” who lived in 1266.
So far, so unattractive.
And but — name it the lure of the dangerous boy — by the second half of the 1400s, ballads began showing all through England that romanticized Robin Hood. By now, he was nonetheless an outlaw however he was not a cut-throat. In reality, he was a yeoman — someplace between a peasant and a nobleman.
In “A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode,” a ballad written in Middle English round 1450 (also called “A Gest of Robyn Hode), his storyline was laid out, including the origins of his outlawdom (shooting some of the king’s servants during an archery contest), the introduction of his Merry Men, and his death at the hands of a scheming nun. The ballad asks that he may rest in peace, “for he was a good outlaw.”
“This was populist entertainment,” says Wright.
The legend took off from right here. From the late fifteenth century, Robin Hood turned a preferred determine to decorate up as at village festivals and festivals. Robin Hood ballads turned a fixture of spring and May Day festivities, says Tom Hahn, emeritus professor in English literature at the University of Rochester, and a founding father of the International Association of Robin Hood Studies. His college can be the house of the Robin Hood Project, a database of historical Robin Hood texts.
In the 1500s, one appalled bishop wrote that he had discovered a church door locked on a feast day in one in every of his parishes, as a result of the inhabitants had been all off celebrating “Robin Hood’s day.” In 1510, even King Henry VIII dressed up as Robin Hood to shock his spouse.
It was an indication that the legend was transferring into the higher courses. Robin was immediately the topic of performs — however regardless that he turned leisure for literate folks, his enchantment remained broad.
“By the later 17th century you get collections put together very cheaply and sold for a small price — a whole array of ballads often starting with him [becoming an] outlaw and ending with his death,” says Hahn. “It continues through the 18th and 19th century.”
With so many references over so lengthy a time span, certainly this factors towards somebody who actually existed?
“Nobody’s quite sure if Robin Hood is real … unless they have a book to sell,” says Wright, who thinks the determine “maybe” has roots in an actual individual.
If there was an actual Robin Hood, nonetheless, he could have lived removed from Sherwood Forest. Wright’s greatest guess as to who the actual Robin might need been — “the best shot in the gloaming” as he places it — is one “Roberd Hood,” a 1220s outlaw from Yorkshire. He makes a cameo in the data as an “outlaw” throughout a number of years, says Wright, and since that is earlier than the ballads began, it will probably’t be somebody copying Robin’s title. “It’s still very circumstantial,” he says of Roberd Hood’s declare to fame. “But it’s better than the other candidates.”
As for how the story was transposed round 70 miles south to Nottingham, Wright says {that a} Thirteenth-century sheriff of York had beforehand been the deputy sheriff of Nottingham, which may clarify some confusion.
More importantly, the early variations of the legend counsel that Robin certainly began farther north — Barnsdale, to be exact, an space of South Yorkshire which additionally had a forest — after which migrated south to Nottingham.
If Roberd Hood is our man, he doesn’t sound significantly good. Hahn says the legends contained “an emphasis on violence — sometimes unprovoked.”
But as anybody who’s watched a Hollywood film will know, not all baddies are considered the similar.
“It’s a bit like the Westerns starting in 19th century America. There’s a definite sense of being an outlaw in a lawless [society],” says Hahn. Over time, the legend was softened — maybe on account of a rising cynicism of peculiar folks. By the time Henry VIII was dressing up, there was the concept of Robin as a hero “in the same way that Western [stars] or gangsters can be heroes,” says Wright.
“It helps that the people he’s against are more crooked than him — the sheriff doesn’t keep his word, but the outlaw does. The legend thrives on the irony that he’s still more honorable than the people supposed to be good.”
In the similar means, romance was by no means on the playing cards for Robin initially. “It was a real ‘guys with guys’ story from the earliest times,” says Hahn. But as Robin and his Merry Men morphed from cut-throats to lovable rogues, house was made for a love curiosity: Maid Marian, who appeared round the 18th century.
While Robin was at all times an English folks hero, it was, says Hahn, an American who turned Robin Hood into the international determine he’s at this time. In 1883, US writer and illustrator Howard Pyle printed “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire.”
This was no low-cost ballad; it was a lavish e book printed by Scribner’s, through which Pyle had remixed the content material of the poems right into a family-friendly novel. The e book met with “immediate success,” says Hahn, who provides that it “Americanized” the legend. It additionally sanitized it: “It made Robin Hood into a nice guy.”
Pyle’s e book was adopted in 1922 by a silent film, through which the function of Robin was performed by Douglas Fairbanks (who humbly titled the movie, “Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood”). It was the first movement image in historical past to obtain a Hollywood premiere.
From there, the film trade took the legend and ran. In 1938, Errol Flynn donned his well-known tights. In 1976, Sean Connery performed an growing old Robin Hood to Audrey Hepburn’s Maid Marian in “Robin and Marian.” In 1991, Kevin Costner performed Robin, whereas Bryan Adams’ theme music “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” set the world alight. It spent 16 consecutive weeks at primary on the UK’s singles chart, a feat that has but to be equalled.
In 2010 it was the flip of Russell Crowe, directed by Ridley Scott. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s best ladies together with Naomie Harris, Cate Blanchett, Uma Thurman and, in the 2026 movie, Jodie Comer, have acted alongside the Robins. And who can overlook the 1973 Disney model, that includes the late, nice Peter Ustinov as the voice of each Kings John and Richard, plus Robin as a fox voiced by Brian Bedford?
Today, Robin has permeated fashionable tradition. Type in “Robin Hood” on IMDB and also you’ll discover actually dozens of flicks about the lovable rogue who stole from the wealthy to present to the poor.
Even some supporters of Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, introduced him as a Robin Hood character.
It’s no shock. “The film industry has made Robin Hood an international pop culture subject,” says Hahn.
The totally different iterations of Robin additionally educate us about our personal cultures, he says. Until the twentieth century, Robin was a topic for males. But then, ladies began writing Robin Hood novels. It’s not simply the Maid Marian romance or the concept of a cross-dressing Marian holding her personal with the boys, he says; that concept we have now of fraternal bonding between the Merry Men? Hahn says that’s an element of the feminine authors, “presenting new looks of female bonding.”
While Robin’s actuality could also be in query, there’s no scarcity of Robin-themed locations to see in Nottingham.
Twenty miles north of the metropolis, Sherwood Forest has one in every of the largest concentrations of “ancient oaks”— the time period given to bushes as soon as they attain 400 years outdated — in Western Europe. Forget outlaws sheltering in the trunks; every can home hundreds of species of bugs, fungi, birds and mammals, and act as “miniature cities,” in accordance with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds charity, which manages the web site as a nature reserve.
The Major Oak will probably be left in situ to step by step break down in a years-long course of. “It’ll take a few decades to degrade which will be remarkable — watching the ‘king of kings’ dwindle away,” says Andrews. “The smaller branches will break off as climate change brings heavier rains. The bigger branches will remain longer. As it degrades, it’ll be a living piece of art in the landscape with a massive story to tell.”
While the Major Oak has succumbed to the passing of the years, its 400-odd compatriots are nonetheless going robust — and are simply as atmospheric, says Andrews. One, the Parliament Oak, can be regarded as round 1,000 years outdated, and will get its title from its use as an impromptu web site for parliament gatherings in the Thirteenth century.
You may additionally spy Andrews on one in every of his excursions. He’s onerous to overlook. Dressed in battered leather-based trousers, a jerkin and a bycocket hat, brandishing a sword and longbow and giving the occasional blast of his horn, he thinks of himself as a modern-day troubadour conserving these medieval ballads of Robin Hood alive. He calls himself a “manifestation of Robin Hood,” bringing a message of charity and goodwill to at this time’s turbulent instances.
Andrews’ tours of Nottingham inform the story of the metropolis via the legends of Robin Hood. It takes some telling. Although Nottingham has a protracted historical past, in Andrews’ phrases, it’s a “modern city” with some questionable Nineteen Sixties growth. Finding Robin right here means trying past the fashionable city structure.
His excursions soak up St. Mary’s Church — at this time surrounded by Victorian warehouses however a location visited by Robin, in accordance with the medieval ballad “Robin Hood and the Monk.”
He exhibits guests the National Justice Museum, housed in a late 18th-century constructing constructed on a web site that was based by the Normans once they first colonized England, and Nottingham Castle — really a Seventeenth-century palace, although it’s constructed on the web site of “one of the mightiest castles in the land in medieval England.”
And since conjuring up medieval Nottingham will be taxing, Andrews ends the tour at what’s stated to be England’s oldest pub, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, which has been brewing pints since 1189.
By mixing Nottingham’s historical past with the legend, he says, “people are surprised by the beauty of the city.”
Andrews — who calls Robin a “figure for good”— sees Robin via a non secular lens. He believes that the character was “willed into being by people in early medieval England,” and he thinks that Robin’s story remains to be doing good at this time. His excursions, he says, assist guests “find the spirit of Robin Hood in ourselves. The magic of Robin really lies in the inner psyche.”
People from throughout the world trek to Nottingham to comply with in Robin’s footsteps, however there are different websites for Robin Hood pilgrims, too. For a begin, you possibly can go to Barnsdale, the place you’ll discover “Robin Hood’s well” in addition to different Yorkshire locations talked about in the ballads, like Sayles Plantation, Wentbridge and Doncaster.
But you don’t even must go to England. Wherever you’re in the world, Robin Hood is omnipresent.
“You can’t really get through life without encountering Robin Hood someplace,” says Hahn, who equates the legend to “The Simpsons” as an English-language “cultural landmark.”
For Andrews, this cultural landmark is a power for good.
“Robin Hood was the first superhero,” he says. “And the world needs heroes.”