Robin Hood

Robin Hood has haunted the English imagination for at least seven centuries, appearing in ballads as early as the late thirteenth century — predating the printing press, the Renaissance, and almost every institution of the England we recognise. Whether he was a specific historical figure, a composite of forgotten outlaws, or a literary invention who then acquired geographical memory, he belongs to the land as much as any named king.

The core of the legend is simple and endlessly renewable: a skilled archer, living under the greenwood of Sherwood Forest, who robs from those who have too much and gives to those who have nothing, and who cannot be taken by the corrupt sheriff who hunts him. Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John, and Will Scarlet are later additions; the early ballads show a harder, less romantic figure — sometimes violent, sometimes devotional, always elusive.

The Major Oak, a vast pollarded oak in the heart of Sherwood Forest near Edwinstowe, is traditionally associated with Robin's camp, its hollow trunk large enough to have sheltered men. It is almost certainly far too young to have been there in any historical Robin's time, but tradition does not require botanical accuracy. The tree still stands, propped and protected, and visitors still come.