A Gest of Robyn Hode

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"A Gest of Robyn Hode" is Child Ballad 117. It is one of the oldest surviving tales of Robin Hood, printed between 1492 and 1534, but shows every sign of having been put together from several already existing tales. It is a lengthy tale, consisting of eight fyttes.

1 Synopsis
2 Adaptations
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Robin Hood refused to eat unless he has a guest. Little John finds a sorrowful knight and compels him to come. When Robin asks how much money he has, the knight says he has ten shillings. They demand to know how this came about, and the knight explains that his son killed two men, and he had to spend all his money, and mortgage his land, to save him. Robin lends him the money in St. Mary's name, and the rest of the band -- Little John, Much the Miller's Son, and Scarlock -- insist on giving him fine clothing, a packhorse, and a courser as well, and because a knight should have an attendant, Little John goes with him.

The knight pleads with the abbot for mercy. The abbot insists, and the knight pays him. Afterwards, the knight saves money to repay Robin, and also gets a hundred bows, with arrows fletched with peacock feathers. One day, while watching a wrestling match, he saw a yeoman who was winning the fight but because he was a stranger, was likely to be killed, and so he saved him.

One day, Little John went to an archery contest and won. The sheriff took him into his service, after he got leave from the knight. One day, he woke late and wanted to eat. The steward, the bottler, and finally the cook tried to stop him, because it was not meal time. The cook put up a good fight, and Little John proposed that he should come to the forest and join the band. He agreed and fed Little John. They plundered the house and went to Robin. There, Little John tricked the sheriff to coming to Robin. Robin only permitted him to leave when he had sworn to do them no harm.

Robin again refused to eat unless he has a guest. The men caught a monk from St. Mary's Abbey, who claimed after the feast to have only twenty marks. He was carrying eight hundred pounds, and Robin claimed it: St. Mary has sent him it. The knight arrives. He explained that he is late because he saved the yeoman at the wrestling; Robin told him that whoever helped a yeoman was his friend, and refused to accept repayment. When the knight gave him the bows, Robin paid him half the eight hundred pounds.

The sheriff held an archery contest. All the band showed well, but Robin won. The sheriff tried to seize him. They escaped to the castle of Sir Richard at the Lee, the knight (who first is named at this point), and the sheriff could not break in. He complained to the king, who insisted he must catch him. The sheriff took Sir Richard prisoner, and his lady went to Robin for help. They staged a rescue.

The king came to take Robin and was outraged by the damage to his deer. He promised Sir Richard's land to whoever killed the knight, and was told that no one could hold the land while Robin Hood was at large. After months, he was persuaded to disguise himself and some men as monks, and by that means, get Robin to take them. Robin captured them and took half of their forty pounds. The "abbot" handed him an invitation from the king, to dine at Nottingham. For that, Robin said he would dine with them. After the meal, they set up an archery contest, and whoever failed had to suffer a blow. Robin failed, and had the abbot deliver the blow. The king knocked him down and revealed himself. Robin, his men, and Sir Richard all knelt.

The king took Robin to court, but Robin longed for the forest and returned home. A prioress finally killed him, at the instigation of her lover Roger, by bleeding him.

[edit] Adaptations

Many portions of this tale have reappeared in latter versions. Some appeared in other ballads: the king's insistence on the capture and the archery contest to catch Robin in Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow (though in the opposite order), the rescue in Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly and Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires, the king's intervention in The King's Disguise, and Friendship with Robin Hood, and the final murder in Robin Hood's Death.

Howard Pyle and other retellers of the Robin Hood stories have included many of them. The king's visit is, in fact, in virtually every version that purports to tell the entire story.

The archery contest is a standard in filmed adaptions of the legends. The Sheriff usually sees through Robin's disguise, leading to a fight scene between his men and the outlaws (who are hidden in the crowd). Examples include:

The Adventures of Robin Hood, where Prince John sets the tournament as a trap, and Robin is captured, to be rescued in another fight when he is to hang
Walt Disney's animated Robin Hood, in which Robin (a fox) disguises himself as a stork.
The pilot episode of Robin of Sherwood (Robin Hood and the Sorcerer), in which the prize is a magical silver arrow, sacred to Herne.
Episode two of the children's comedy Maid Marian and Her Merry Men is a parody of this story. Robin of Kensington disguises himself in a chicken outfit, and enters the contest as "Robert the Incredible Chicken". However, because Marian is a better archer, the Sheriff concludes she must be Robin in disguise.

In later versions of the story, Robin sometimes wins by splitting an opponent's arrow down the middle. Other versions of the archery contests do not include the fight; often, as in Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow, the disguises succeed in fooling the sheriff. Still further divergences have appeared. In Walt Disney's live-action The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, Robin and his father win such a contest, but as Prince John staged it to find archers for his service and both of them refuse, Prince John tries to have them killed; his father dies, and Robin is outlawed for defending himself. In Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham, Robin is going to a shooting contest when he has the conflict that leads to his being outlawed.