The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood first published by Scribner's in 1883, and met with immediate success, ushering in a new era of Robin Hood stories. It helped solidify the image of a heroic Robin Hood, which had begun in earlier works such as Walter Scott's 1819 novel "Ivanhoe". In Pyle's wake, Robin Hood has become a staunch philanthropist protecting innocents against increasingly aggressive villains. Along with the publication of the Child Ballads by Francis James Child, which included most of the surviving Robin Hood ballads, Pyle's novel helped increase the popularity of the Robin Hood legend in the United States. "The Merry Adventures" also had
Robin Hood Robin's integration into May Day rituals towards the end of the Middle Ages; "Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham", among other points of interest, contains the earliest reference to Friar Tuck. The plots of neither "the Monk" nor "the Potter" are included in the Gest; and neither is the plot of "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne", which is probably at least as old as those two ballads although preserved in a more recent copy. Each of these three ballads survived in a single copy, so it is unclear how much of the medieval legend has survived, and what