LONDON (dpa) – According to a recent survey in England, Robin Hood is better known than Jesus. The world’s best loved outlaw who robbed the rich to give to the poor has enjoyed the status of a folk hero on this island and beyond for more than 500 years.
Throughout this time, however, the identity of Robin Hood has remained a mystery. Scholars have argued for years whether the man in the green tights was a forest official, a woodland gnome, a poacher or gay – every theory has its own champion, usually a professor of some kind. Amid the debate it’s not even certain if a man called Robin Hood ever really existed.Historians Richard Almond and Tony Pollard have presented a fresh study which claims the popular figure who went riding through the glen to champion the rights of the dispossessed was really a disgraced civil servant.“Our suggestion is that he was a forest official who had done something wrong and who had fled into the greenwood. It is based on the use of hunting and falconry terms in rhymes,” said the experts who found much falconry terminology in Robin Hood ballads from the 15h century.The two men from Darlington College and Teeside University in northern England are blazing a new trail in the hunt to discover the real Robin Hood. Until now the bold outlaw was generally considered to have been a simple farmer although others vehemently support the theory that he was of aristocratic stock.“We say he was in the middle,” said Almond.The bane of all Robin Hood enthusiasts is Stephen Knight, professor for English Literature at the University of Cardiff in Wales. In his considered opinion Robin Hood was a tormented homosexual. Shunned by heterosexual society he retreated into the woods with his band of “merry men”.“The ballads could not say outright that he was gay because of the prevailing moral climate, but they do contain a great deal of erotic imagery. The green wood itself is a symbol of virility and the references to arrows, quivers and swords make it clear too,” explained Knight.Maid Marion, traditionally Robin Hood’s sweetheart, doesn’t crop up at all in the ballads. Knight believes she was invented in the 16th century in order to give the folk hero an alibi. Robin’s true love it seems was his faithful follower Little John – that giant of a man who impressed the bandit with his staff skills during an encounter in the forest.Knight is not the only one to hold opinions like these either. Barry Dobson, a professor for Medieval History at Cambridge University, points out that homosexuality was widely tolerated in the 12th century.“But in the 13th the church became much less tolerant and such people were driven underground.”The British gay organization “Outrage” believes the outing of Robin Hood is long overdue: “It’s about time school history lessons acknowledged the contribution of famous homosexuals.”Other versions of the story have little in common with the numerous Hollywood film portrayals of Robin Hood as a valiant man of the people.They imply that Hood was a legend dating back to pagan times and related to fertility gods who hid in Sherwood Forest, what used to be a much larger area of royal woodland preserve near Nottingham. Does this mean Robin Hood was a kind of woodland gnome?No, say other voices – he was a devout hermit.Whole books have been written about Robin the heretic, the political rebel or simply Robin the robber. There are even adherents of the theory that Robin Hood wasn’t English at all but rather Scottish or that he was actually freedom fighter William Wallace (Braveheart) who hated the English and took up swords against them. One thing is clear.Like the sheriff of Nottingham, another figure who has given rise to a great deal of colourful speculation, the essence of Robin Hood is still proving elusive.
