There is no scholarly agreement as to the century in which Robin Hood lived, and some who say he never did, that his name became a repository for a kind of robber's tale popular once, when rich men prospered upon the labors of the poor. What we truly know of Robin Hood resides in a score or so of original ballads, spanning several centuries, passed down through oral tradition, many of these collected and committed to paper by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. If possible, the truth of Robin Hood has become more and more composite, as the early ballads were increasingly embellished and elaborated upon in stories and plays by writers intrigued, as most of us are, by the themes of Robin Hood. Even working from the early ballads, any artist endeavoring to tell these tales centuries later is not unlike a painter, with his own perspective and position, looking at articles of a still life from somewhere in a circle.

In the version that follows here I have retained some of the honesty of violence as it exists in several of the early ballads, unportrayed in most prevailing Robin Hood stories, after the outlaw was gentrified. As to the matter of Maid Marian, I have enhanced her role from what it was in the early ballads; as Dobson and Taylor write in Rymes of Robin Hood, "The element is absolutely essential for the later elaboration and survival of the legend." I justify her benevolent presence, to a purpose, in the knowledge that Marian and Robin's story evolved over the course of hundreds of years, in medieval festivals, through the medium of formalized dances and in the morris dances of the English May Games.

I was searching for humanity while writing The Ballads of Robin Hood. Though I have failed to some extent, it is my hope or prayer that you feel and see some of yourself here. There has always been and yet remains, something familiar about the characters of the early ballads, they seeming so much like real people to me. When born they did cry, when cut they did bleed, and knew the wealth of human deed, the taste of happiness or compassion, the same as you and me, even when the world is not the way we think it ought to be.

Lythe and listin, gentilmen,
That be of frebore blode;
I shall you tel of a gode yeman,
His name was Robyn Hode.

Robyn was a prude outlaw,
Whyles he walked on grounde:
So curteyse an outlawe as he was one
Was nevere non founde.

Robyn stode in Bernesdale,
And lenyd hym to a tre,
And bi hym stode Litell Johnn,
A gode yeman was he.

And alsoo dyd gode Scarlok,
And Much, the millers son:
There was none ynch of his bodi
But it was worth a grome.

--from Child Ballad: A Gest of Robyn Hode