Robin Hood

[wendypol]

Who wrote the original Robin Hood books? Did Charles Kingsley write one about him?
Wendypol

[Bathsheba]

Roger Lancelyn Green wrote Robin Hood books

[wendypol]

Thanks Bathsheba What about the Charles Kingsley part of the question any ideas?
Wendypol

[Bathsheba]

Kingsley wrote Water Babies xx

[Bathsheba]

Ooh!! Charles Kingsley might have done poem about Robin Hood- why don't you Google him? Haven't got time at moment x

[dundurn]

The "original" stories weren't books but ballads - song/ poems that contain most of the well-known incidents in Robin's life. All are anonymous and I think the first major collection was in Child's Ballads (1890ish). The various texts date from as early as the 15th century, though some are quite a bit later. Remembering that the events the ballads purport to relate are from the late 1100s, it's not surprising that all sorts of stories and fables have got mixed up together, for example, Friar Tuck was a real person but there wasn't a record of him until c1400, so he and Robin never met.

Sir Walter Scott included Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, he was one of the characters in TH WHite's "The Once Sword in the Stone", but the only connection to Kingsley that I know about is that Kingsley's poem "Old and New" is shown at the start of the Douglas Fairbanks silent film, "Robin Hood".

[wendypol]

thanks dundurn and in a pickle for your answers you may be right but can I point out I ain`t that old to remember silent pictures just in case anyone was wondering. no offence taken though.
Wendypol