Mike Dixon-Kennedy

This book shows the sad distinction between research and scholarship -- for of research it has much but of scholarship little. As a source for modern materials such as Robin Hood movies and modern "retellings" of the Robin Hood legend, it is excellent. But if you want to know about the "real" Robin Hood, or at least the earliest recoverable Robin Hood, you won't find it here. The early sources -- "The Gest of Robyn Hode" [#117 in Francis James Child's collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and known to have been printed at least three times by 1534], "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" [Child 118], "Robin Hood and the Monk" [Child 119; probably copied before 1500], "Robin Hood and the Potter" [Child 121; probably copied before 1500] -- are completely ignored, and the modern legends built up by Joseph Ritson and others treated as if they were anything other than modern fiction. Thus the book claims Robin Hood lived in the time of Richard I and John, even though the longbow was not in use then and the "Gest of Robyn Hode" explicitly says that Robin Hood's monarch was "Edward our comely King." If you want to look up movies, this is fine; if you want to look up Robin Hood, refer to the works by J. C. Holt or R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor or Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, or find a copy of Child's magnum opus.… (meer)