Who was the first person to tell the ledged of robin hood?

Answer 1

The answer to this question can never be known. My novel The Robin Hood Chronicles is based on the earliest existing sources of the legend, which are some ballads written before 1450. Very likely these ballads were themselves based on oral narratives which circulated around northern England in the fourteenth century. But the names of the people who first told these stories was never recorded.

Answer 2

There were singers in the 14th century that sang about a yeoman who fought with the sheriff of Nottingham.

The first known reference to Robin appears in William Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman written in 1377. In it, a drunken chaplain sitting by the roadside declares (quote) "I can not (know not) know my pater noster as the prest hit saith, But I can (know) rymes of Robyn Hode and Randle Erle of Chester" (unquote). Some 19th Century writers have claimed that he never existed at all and was a relic of ancient Germanic pagan or fairy beliefs, or an idealised hero created by the needs and discontents of the Mediaeval peasantry. In the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum there is an anonymous account which states that he was born in about 1160 'in Lockesley in Yorkshire, or Nottinghamshire'. Although no such place exists in either English county today, there is a Loxley in Staffordshire, where his father is thought to have held land. Another account places his heyday in the mid-1200s as a supporter of Simon de Montfort, who was outlawed after the Battle of Evesham in 1265, whilst another says that he was a Wakefield man who took part in Thomas of Lancaster's rebellion in 1322. It is probable that he was based upon a historical figure, but may have been elaborated upon and exaggerated over the Centuries to create the romanticised egalitarian figure who fought for the poor that we now see in fiction and legend today. What historical evidence there is that suggests that he WAS a real person, indicates that he himself would not have been of peasant stock but of the minor landed classes known as yeomanry, who owned their own land and rented it out to tenant farmers and smallholders. It also indicates that he would have been outlawed after taking place in a rebellion against the Crown and thence probably fleeing to join a band of guerrilla fighters who continued their struggle on a piecemeal basis. This would have inevitably involved conflict with the Sherriff of Nottingham and MAY have involved his brigade of rebels using part of Sherwood Forest (which would have been very much bigger in Mediaeval times than it is today) as a refuge amongst other places. However, there is nothing to suggest that the Sherriff was any more cruel or tyrannical than any other official of the Royal Government of the day, and there is no evidence for the existence of any of the members of his 'band' other than Little John, who is said to be buried in the churchyard of St.Michael's Church in Hathersage, Derbyshire. The grave was exhumed in the 1930s and did, indeed, find the bones of an unusually large tall man- it is thought that his surname may have been Nailer, or possibly his name was 'John Little'. Other figures, such as Will Scarlett, Friar Tuck, Much the Miller's Son and others, have no historical evidence to support their existence, but none to deny it either, so their existence is possible but just unproveable. However, the figure of Maid Marian is probably fictional.

Answer 3

Howard Pyle