Robin Hood

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Robin Hood is a legendary English outlaw, known principally from ballads. The earliest of these ballads place him in Barnesdale, an area north of Doncaster, but later ones in Sherwood forest in Nottinghamshire, with which he is mostly associated in modern folklore. If he ever existed, it may have been in the reigns of Edward I, Edward II or Edward III, but Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe placed him in the time of Richard I.[1] The appearance of surnames like Robinhood in late 13th-century sources suggests this may be about right.[2]

  1. Drabble, M. ed. Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press. 1995
  2. Dictionary of National Biography, new edition