Robin Hood Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depicted as being of noble birth, and having fought in the Crusades before returning to England to find his lands taken by the Sheriff. In other versions this is not the case and he is instead born into the yeoman class. Traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to have robbed from the rich and given to the
Robin Hood the time. The Robin Hood games are known to have flourished in the later 15th and 16th centuries. It is commonly stated as fact that Maid Marian and a jolly friar (at least partly identifiable with Friar Tuck) entered the legend through the May Games. The earliest surviving text of a Robin Hood ballad is the 15th-century "Robin Hood and the Monk". This is preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48. Written after 1450, it contains many of the elements still associated with the legend, from the Nottingham setting to the bitter enmity between Robin and the local sheriff. The first