Robin Hood Ethos

Robin Hood is perhaps one of the most iconic English luminaries, an outlaw living in Sherwood Forest with his ‘Merry Men’ . His ethos of “robbing from the rich and giving to the poor” made him adored by many, as he is seen as a figure who fought for the downtrodden. He was a commoner who was truculent against the aristocrats and fought the inequitable ruling of them. He was a dexterous archer and swordsman that courageously defended his fellow commoners and his Merry Men . Some dispute if Robin Hood was real or just a simple fairy tale. Is he real or is he just a figure in British literature? Some historians believe that Robin Hood and his Merry Men were fictional characters, the earliest documents of the characters are
Some have even argued that Robin Hood could have been a mythological character, and that the tales about him are filled with symbolic and metaphorical meanings. Some historians have declared that the traditional color of Robin Hood’s attire, lincoln green, was signified to represent the traditional color of fairies. The color green may also be associated and identified with spring, which is featured prominently in the ballads, hence symbolically connecting Robin Hood with life and growth. An additional argument is that Robin Hood was a “medieval trickster” character. For instance, Robin Hood has been fraternized with the Teutonic elf Hodekin, Woden and the hobgoblin known as Robin Goodfellow, known also as Puck from Shakespeare's “A midsummer night's dream”. All three figures are supernatural characters, and it has been debated that Robin Hood should also be viewed one of them. Another symbolic meaning in the
In the last 100 years alone, the story of Robin Hood has been retold in various forms, thanks to television, films, plays, books and academics. Thus, numerous versions of Robin Hood now exist, ranging from the nationalistic hero to an anthropomorphic fox in Disney’s Robin Hood. Robin Hood has become a symbol of a character we would like to idealise. Someone fighting injustice, standing up for women and “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor”, being loyal to the rightful King, being physically strong and skilled. We may never know if Robin Hood was an actual person or just a fairy tale. There is not enough evidence to say if he existed or not. All sources say the same thing about the hero’s death. Legend says that Robin Hood was wounded in a fight and fled to a convent. The head of the nuns there was his cousin, and he begged her for help. She made a cut so that blood could flow from his vein, a common medical practice of the time to “bleed out the problem”. Unknown to Robin, however, she was his enemy. She left him without tying up the vein, and he lay bleeding in a locked room. Severely weakened, he sounded three faint blasts on his horn. His friends in the forest heard his cry for help and came to the convent, but they were too late to save their leader Robin. He shot one last