Hello everyone!
And I have a book review for you all, first and foremost.
Tuesday's blog didn't get written up so it will be bumped to a Synopsis Saturday one, which you'll all hopefully read just as well, as I'm planning on recapping the premiere of Outlander's sixth season. Are we ready for what's undoubtedly going to be a bumpy ride? Hopefully!
In the meantime, this blog post is a sort of connected one? Maybe? But our own Fraser was an outlaw for a little bit of time there so I suppose the inspiration was certainly in the works.
However MY outlaw is probably the one that's basically the most known across literature and film if you think about it. When someone says rob from the rich and give to the poor, you usually know right off the bat who this is about.
There were many authors who wrote about him, but Henry Gilbert's Robin Hood was the first book I ever read about the famous archer.
I think I have a collection of pieces all connecting back to Robin Hood, and you can find links to those I have at the bottom of this page, as per usual!
Robin begins his life as a freeman, actually, he's neither a serf nor a lord, which is an interesting take since often enough in these retellings he rules over Locksley in some way, shape or form, but here he simply owns a bit of land outright, but it's land that Guy of Gisbourne and a rather power-hungry Abbot want.
Which is why they try in many ways to force him from it, and eventually succeed by declaring him outlaw after he kills a few of their ruffian guards who've come to mess up the serfs who work for him. Then he and a number of others smoke out Guy of Gisbourne, sending him fleeing, before they themselves take to the woods.
They become "wolfs-heads", outlaws that can be shot on sight and a price is on all their heads, but what they do in turn is establish a toll over the forest roads, and Robin teaches his men the ways of the sword, and bow, and staff, so they become experienced fighters, and he makes friends all along the way as he does his outlawing.
For instance, he helps Alan-a-Dale out, and Alan helps him right back during an ambush, because in this version he isn't a minstrel but a squire, and he loves a lady that the villains of the story want to marry to a tyrant of a lord so they can control her lands and wealth again, but Robin intervenes, his outlaws kill a fair number of the ruffians, and Alan may marry his Lady Alice.
Robin also runs into Father Tuck, in a hilarious retelling of a Greek myth where he has to carry the monk across the river AND gets his butt handed to him for being too arrogant for words, plus Tuck helps him fight off some foresters who try and capture him, but are beaten to the punch by none other than Marian.
Now Marian and Robin are childhood sweethearts, but he's too low in the world to marry her, but she never wanted anyone else and denied any other attempts. They remain separate until her father's death when enemies close in around her and her lands of Malaset (it all goes back to the land eventually), but she's rescued from captivity by Robin's friends of the woods, small men who I'd call Hobbits if I didn't know better, and eventually marries Robin and lives with him in the woods.
Of course we can't forget that Will Scarlet and Little John are also part of the band, and become part of it rather early on, as Will is rescued from the gallows and Little John joins the crew after he tosses Robin off a narrow wooden bridge into the water below (this one is probably my favourite, to be honest). John is actually the closest to Robin from then on out through all their adventures together, and there are many.
See at one point the Sheriff of Nottingham finally makes his appearance, and often ends up bamboozled by the outlaws despite the fact he wants to catch Robin badly; he even sets up an archery competition, which Robin WINS, but still manages to escape with his life and his freedom.
Nottingham sends a cutthroat Richard Illbeast after the outlaw, but eventually the hand of justice finds the conniving man who really is more beast and man, and Robin hangs him from a tree, in the presence of an actual King's Justice.
He also often helps the poor or less fortunate, and actually saves Alan-a-Dale's father from poverty, which pays off towards the end, which we'll see. Most importantly, he ensures the money for King Richard's ransom in Germany is raised, and eventually meets the King himself, who pardons him and gifts to him the lands of Malaset, where he and Marian then take up residence.
At this time, a lot of the evil-doers which we follow throughout the short stories, who form a group living in a castle called Evil Hold (aptly named) are dead through some deed of Robin's, but when the barons rise against King John later and Robin rides with them, some of the remaining villains kill Marian and set fire to their home, which prompts Robin to call on most of his favours from his time as an outlaw, and he ends up killing all but one of the wrong-doers, destroying their castle forever.
He then returns to the forest, but visits a cousin of his in a nunnery often, where he also goes if age starts showing its teeth and he needs medicine, which is how he eventually meets his doom - the sole remaining survivor of Evil Hold hatches a plan with the abbess of the place, who bleeds Robin for too long, thus basically bleeding the life from him, and when the outlaws find him it's too late. He looses his last arrow and dies, after which they bury him where that arrow landed. Most then disperse and become honest men, and a lot of them end up with Alan-a-Dale who rules large amounts of land by this point through his father-in-law.
But as for Robin's grave, it continues to be visited and tended to by his little "Hobbit" friends, and his legend lives on.
If you ever get the chance to read any retelling of Robin Hood, I highly encourage you to do so. It's usually full of moral and stories that definitely make you think through what it is you would have done in Robin's position, but it's also a neat reminder that everything always comes full circle.
Especially to those who do evil.
10/10 recommend!
xx
*image not mine
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