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Hello, the first printed version of the Robin Hood story begins like this

Lith and listen gentlemen that be a freebore blood

I shall tell of a good human his name was Robin Hood Robin was a proud outlaw while she walked on ground

So courteous an outlaw as he was one was never non-e-found

Robin Hood is described as a yeoman a freeman and though he's courteous

There's not even a hint of the aristocrat he became in later versions in fact in the early balance

There's no made marion no fray of tuck

Robin does not live in the time of bad Prince John all the crusades does not lead a large and merry gang and certainly never

Robbs the rich to give to the poor, but he always remains a trickster an outlaw and a man with a bow in a forest

So why does this man become a myth go through so many changes and so many centuries and was that ever a real outlaw

Robin Hood on whom the ballads plays novels and movies are based

With me to help on earth Robin Hood our Stephen Knight professor of English at Cardiff University and author of Robin Hood

Amithic biography Thomas Harn professor of English literature at University of Rochester and New York and

Julia Wood Secretary of the Folk Law Society

Stephen Knight, where do we find the first reference to Robin Hood in English literature?

Well the first reference is in William Langlands Piers Plowman, which is dated some time in the 1370s and

A caratical sloathe who is at this time at priest

Says he doesn't know his paternoster his laws bra, he's sort of confessing, but I know rhymes of Robin Hood, he says so

1370s, they're well known, but from this church viewpoint they're frowned on

Too popular to be good. So what do you draw from the fact that sloth who knows nothing about things?

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