Selects: Was There A Real Robin Hood?

Is it true that Robin Hood hung out in Sherwood Forest and stole from the rich to give to the poor? No. No, it’s not. Find out the real story in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
chosen our episode, Was There a Real Robin Hood? From
the Heady Innocent Days of twenty eighteen. It's a super
neat history episode where we search for the real Robin
Hood and find some really great candidates. Was there a
Real Robin Hood? I guess you'll just have to listen
to find out.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
We're just horsing around saying who's a Who's Ah?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Actually, I think people might like a little recree of
what just happened.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Let's hear it.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Jerry said, I need to check levels. We didn't really
say anything, and she said, all right, you're ready. And
you said, we didn't say anything for levels. She said,
I don't need you to say anything.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
She's like, in fact, I need you to stop talking.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, And then I had to wait until she said
start talking his mouth start talking? Monkey?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Goodness me? Is that where we are? Yep? How's it going?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
It's good. I just want to before we really get started.
Chuck on to point something. I'm not sure if you
know this or not. O, boy, you have a paper
clip holding your glasses together.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
At first I was like, is he just storing the
paper clip? And I thought, no, he's not storing a
paper clip. Keep that tucked in his cheek. If he
were just storing.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
It, that would like everything else store.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
It's on the arm of your glasses where your glasses
meet the body.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Uh huh. You see there, it goes through.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
It's the it's acting as the screw because the thing,
the screw came out and I need my glasses on
in order to put the screw in the glasses.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
It's quite an under him.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Were you raised in Oklahoma in the depression?

Speaker 4 (02:03):
No?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Why because you can get other glasses.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Dude, that's how busy I am. I can't go by
the glasses store.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I don't need new ones.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
I just need someone with tiny fingers, okay, and good vision.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
In Oklahoma could probably help you to put in the screw.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Ironically, and this is this worked so well.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
I stuck this the paper clip in there, bent it
around and I kind of like it.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
It is. It's handsome. It's a handsome. Look I think
you're gonna start there. Well, I like it. Oh boy,
thanks for playing a long sure. So, uh we're talking today.
The reason I said who's A? Who's A? Is because
we're talking Robinhood.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Is that from Robin Hood?

Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, it's actually from the movie Role Models, the Paul
Rudd movie.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
I like that movie.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's good. I saw it the other day again.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Good dumb fun. Yeah, I love it. You know he
like wrote that Rud Yeah he's great. I like a Stiffler.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, he's great in that too.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
His little buddy in that movie or whatever they call.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Him, Ronnie, Yeah, yeah, he was Ronnie. Yeah, he's amazing.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
I expect great, great things from that kid. Ye, at
least I hope so.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Well.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Anyway, I was watching roll Miles the other day and
one of the larp guys comes up and goes, who's A?
And I was like, I always thought it was huzzah. Yeah,
Strickland always says it when he's dressed up like the
King of the Renaissance Festival.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, those larp scenes were funny too, right, But the
guy comes up and says, who's A?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
So I was like, I can't wait to incorporate that
somehow Robin Hood here we go.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Prince of Thieves.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, And the reason why that would work is because
the LARPers were set in the medieval era, and everyone
knows Robin Hood's set in the medieval era. But actually
that's totally incorrect. Yeah, most of the time when you
see Robin Hood, it's set in the Tudor era, almost
almost variably in Sherwood Forest, which is a wooded area

(04:04):
and about the right smack dab in the center of England.
And everybody running around is acting like it's the fourteen hundreds,
maybe the fifteen hundreds, And that's all well and good.
If you're making a Disney version of it, reality just
goes right out the window. Right, it's Disney. It's a cartoon,
for goodness sake. Everybody lighting up.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
But I love that version.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's entirely possible and it's a good one. And there
are historians who believe that there was a real Robin Hood,
and they have spent a lot of time and effort
trying to track down exactly who it might be, exactly
when he might have lived, and my money and a
lot of historians place it right around the beginning of

(04:50):
the twelve hundreds the thirteenth century in England, long before
the tutors werever even a twinkle in anybody's loins.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
But here's my bet is that Robin Hood is a
an amalgam amalgam of a few dudes that the writers
of history have filled in some blanks and then the
writers of literature just like ran with it.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, that's that's my take on it, as well as
that it's a few people served as role models for it,
role models and new plan that Paul rud is everywhere.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
But there are some people who still think that there
was no such person at all, or maybe even persons.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
It might have been wholly created.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Sure, But then on the opposite side, there are some
people and there are few and far between from what
I can tell, you believe there was a single person, yeah,
named Robin Hood, who did most of this stuff and
was the basis for these legends that.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
They're called people who want to sell books.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
So there's right, there's like they're like Robin Hood case
closed a big stamp to do it was like a
whole spectrum that you can just walk right up and say,
I believe this, and you're as right as anybody on
the Robin Hood train.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, so if we go back in time, you know,
I think everyone knows that early historians had a lot
of blanks and they weren't the most reliable narrators.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
No, because they would just fill them in with stuff
they made up.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, because I think they didn't. I don't know if
they realized that early on. I'm speculating here that they.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Were really good historians.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, that they're like recording history. I think it was
more like, hey, this is a good story, and I
don't know, in five hundred years people are going to.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Be taking this as is written history. There's spinning yarn.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
In this case. I don't think that's correct. I think
that they were they considered themselves actual historian thinks who
were getting to the bottom of history. But they had
a worldview, and specifically with Robinhood, it was I think
fifteenth century or sixteenth century Scottish historians who were the
ones who really kind of gave us the image of

(07:03):
Robinhood that we have drunk, the robbing from the rich
to give to the poor, the chivalry, a lot of
that stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Anti establishment.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, that actually was part of it before they had
to kind of figure out how to make that one
work because it didn't make sense to them at the time.
But they basically said, here, we've got these ballads that
were written in the thirteen hundred, it's the fourteenth century,
and we think they're historical, so we're going to try
to put this in context. And the stuff we don't understand,

(07:34):
we're just gonna make up, but we're going to pass
it off as real. So there's this if you it's
one of those great things like with fairy tales. We
know all these fairy tales, and you remember we did
those those episodes on it. Yeah, but if you strip
away this stuff that's been added over the years and
get to the bare bones, it's way darker, a lot different, yeah,
and a lot different than what we know and love,

(07:56):
as you know, for in this case the robin Hood legend.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Right, So if you want to look at literature, like
you mentioned these ballads, the actual canon for robin Hood,
the very first mention is one called Piers Plowman p I. E. R. S.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Like Piers Morgan exactly.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
From William Langland about thirteen seventy seven. And then there
were a host of other ballads and this is all
what was this Middle English, I think, so is that
what you would call it?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
I don't know, maybe even old.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Like why's for vowels and things like that, like cannaburytail stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
I really don't know if it's Middle or Old English. Way,
it's barely legible.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
It is a little and that is spelled l y
t y lll, which is great.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
A little gest of robin Hood.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Those was that like Sean Connery maybe dope.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Gest of robin Hood. That's just straight up says Robin Hood.
And then a few more robin Hood and the Monk
robin Hood, and the Potter robin Hood, and Guy of
Gisborne and Robin Hood in the Temple of Doom.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, that one was super dark.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
It was very dark.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
The author had just broken up with his girlfriend.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
And I think that's what brought us the PG thirteen rating.
It was mistaken that incremlins. So whether or not you
believe this stuff basically has to do with whether or
not these early songs you think are just songs or a.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Matter of history historical record.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, Like that's how before people commonly wrote stuff down.
Like at this time when this stuff was being written,
the people who were writing it were monks, those are
the only people educated enough to write, but people still
pass stories down. They did it through oral histories. So
it's entirely possible that these early ballads were meant to

(09:57):
were created to commemorate person or people or events or
something like that, and then just over time we lost
Wait a minute, are these fiction or nonfiction? But you're right,
like that's the divide when it comes to approaching robin
hood from an historical advantage, like are these just totally fiction, right,

(10:18):
or are they meant to commemorate something that actually happened.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, And it's easy through today's lens to dismiss these
things as songs. But back then, like you're saying, it's
like what better way to remember history, sure than to
set it to Come on, Eileen, you know.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Why that man? Why'd you just do that?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's a great song.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
It was the first thousand times I heard it.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Oh, you don't like anymore? You know.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's one of the problems is it's like it's like
they just made ten songs in the eighties and that's
all you ever hear. There were so many more songs.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Burning down the house.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, it was once a great song as well.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
I'm going to see David burndon night.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Oh cool with uh, So you've won't listen to kime
on Aileen, but you'll regurgitate the what's up Budweiser guys.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
That was from the nineties. I've heard that less frequently.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
What connection did I hear recently from the guy who
directed those I think he's directing movies now or something.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
The guy who directed those commercials.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Right, they're like, you may like, you've never heard of
this movie director, but you right, remember these guys.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
That was the gist of it.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
I'm surprised those ads never got like a full movie themselves. Yeah,
it was that. That definitely that era.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Oh for sure.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Remember the Caveman from the Geico Ads. H they had
their own TV show for a come out. Yeah, like
for like three episodes see that.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, this totally could have been a TV show and
call it What's Up?

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Guys?

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Right, what's happening was taken?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
All right?

Speaker 3 (11:49):
So where were we? We were talking about the talking heads?

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Oh, let's talk about the forest.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well, the reason we're talking about the forest is because, well,
a character may or may not have existed. The stuff
in the ballads definitely bears a strong resemblance sexual historical events.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah right.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, the forest is significant here because at the time
in the Middle Ages, how much head a percentage of
two thirds of the land in England was forest land and.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
It was sort of a.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
It was a place where the king, it was a
place where people could go hide out. So that's where
it gets this sort of outlaw lore is it was
a legit place for outlaws to go do their business.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Right, but it was also an outlaw hideout. Yeah, because
just by hanging out in the forest you were by
definition an outlaw because of those forest laws that were
super unpopular among people.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
You know, forest law means what I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, I'll tell.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
You what's days. What happens in the forest days in
the forest?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeahs unless somebody comes out and blabs about what goes
on in the forest. Do you remember, like being a
kid though, hanging out in the forest, in the woods,
like playing.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
I grew up in on two acres in the woods,
so yeah, I was always in the woods.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Its own place it is. So you can imagine like
your whole country is like that, and like that's how
you're living. You're just an outlaw with your buddies hanging out,
having a campfire every night, eating roast pig that you
find wandering around.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Yeah, but it was weird because the king could like
that was his land where he could go have, you know,
go hunting, right and have his his dudes hunting. But
it was also lawless in a place to hide.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
It was weird. There was a lot going on in
the forest, right.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
So the reason why you were just by definition and
outlaw if you were hanging out in the forest is
because the king had these forest laws that said, all
this forest, this is mine. Yeah, this is for my hunting,
my friend's hunting, and that's it. If you're hanging out
in the forest, you're breaking the law. And it was
like a big law and like there was serious punishments first,
So just being in the forest made you an outlaw.

(14:05):
But even more than that, the people who went and
lived in the forest weren't like on the run necessarily
from the king and the king's officials. They were like
at war with the king and the king's officials. This
is a time where like just some schmoe like you
or me could like wage war directly with the King
of England and get him to come fight us basically,

(14:26):
and that's kind of what happened, and that's why the
forest was a backdrop for all of the robin Hood
legends from the beginning of the ballads up to the
Robinhood Men and Tights. They were all set in the forest.
And because this happened, the forest laws were passed and
everyone was really upset about it. So, whether it's a

(14:46):
metaphor or whether they're saying, like the king did this
and we need to commemorate it, or they were just
you know, building a foundation for why this action was
taking place, The forest like plays a huge role.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Yeah, and there's a new Robinhood movie out. Yeah, it's crazy,
Like it seems like every couple of years this this
just won't die. They're going to do a new version
of it. And there's a new one with the kid
from Kidd and play the Yeah with kid from Kidd
and Play.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
He's awesome. He does that like jump through he remember
foot and then jump through this.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
I used to could do that.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
No, Yeah, I never could. Yeah, I would just fall
flat on my face.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Young Chuck was a little more fleet of foot.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Uh, it's got the kid from the Kingsman, you know
that guy he plays Robin Hood and Jamie Jamie Fox
is Little John, I guess, but it's you know, of
course this one he's he's shooting like literally like five
arrows at once, and they all manage to go in
different directions somehow.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Oh is it a comedy?

Speaker 2 (15:48):
No, No, it's real.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Oh okay, Like there's guys coming at him from different directions.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
And so he'll put like three arrows and shoot them
at the same time. Yet they'll all like spread out
like a machine gun fire or something, her shotgun.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
And for some weird reason, he's going yeah, yeah with
every shot.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
And then I was looking up movies today just while
we're on that, and I totally forgot there was a
Russell Crowe version that I didn't even see.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
I think that was just Robin Hood, right.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Robin Hood from like twenty ten.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Surprisedly, Yeah, No, that's not the one. There's one that
like historians are like, this is about as close to
accurate as we've gotten.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, I looked up on the Russell Crowe and then
I think the deal is that one is a prequel
of sorts, because it's it's like the Wars before he
became you know, Robin hood.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
That you know robs and gives to the poor.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
I would go check that one out. The one that
I was thinking of is from nineteen ninety one. It
was directed by John Irvin, starring Patrick Bergen, remember him,
Oh yeah, and Uma Thurman. That's the one of the
historians are like, this really is the best out of
all of them, not Costner.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
I like that movie when it came out. I'll admit it.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
I saw JFK on the plane to Australian and I
gotta tell you as it came a Costner fan with
that one all over again is a great actor.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
You fell in love all over again?

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah. Well, I specifically avoided Draft Day so I could
leave the door open to be a fan again.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's funny. I don't remember.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
All I remember was that preview for Draft Day.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
That's all I saw it too.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
But I just remember that.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
They built up in that previous it's about the NFL Draft,
something so big, like I can't believe that happened, It's
gonna happen. I was like, what did they like kill
somebody in the draft room.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
No, they drafted calling Kernick Capernick, that's so you Kaepernick whatever, let's.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Take a break. I feel like we're off the rails
and we're lost in the forest.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, and we'll come back right after this as W
s K as.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
Big should know that.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
That's why s K.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
You should know why s K.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
That we should know knows. But Josh Clark, by the way,
I want to say, I admire Colin Kaepernick or Kpernick,
and I might no disrespect by saying his name. You're right,
that is just so me.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Of course I knew you're kneeling right now.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
In fact, I know that you knew, but I just
wanted to sure you know.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
All right, So they're in the forest. The forest makes
historical sense, like we pointed out, that's where outlaws did
their bidding. And now we should talk about the king
because it's sort of not all over the map. But
there's a few a few people that some historians believe

(18:54):
could have been the King of note.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, but what's what's weird is if you read those
original ballads that are spelled all crazy, they mentioned the
king once. Out of all of you, there's just one
mention of the king, and they refer to him as Edward,
our comely King.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, which I think is Edward three.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Right, that's what some historians say if you take the
ballads at face value and that they were written contemporaneously
to Robin Hood's exploits.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Right.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
But a lot of people and even in the popular culture,
the kings that are most associated with the robin Hood
legend are Richard the Lion Heart and his brother, the
sniveling villain, King John.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
He's always sniveling and when he and so.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
In the In the robin Hood legends, Robin Hood frequently
helped Richard the Lion Heart regain his throne from King John,
who had scheme to get it away from him. King
John's the villain King King. Really, Robin Hood's the hero,
but King Richard's like the backup hero. But they think
that it's possible in some of the best candidates for

(20:00):
who robin Hood is based on. Actually, we're running around
and interacting with the real life King John, if not
also King Richard too.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Yeah, but that doesn't make sense time wise, right, because
unless they just took a while to get around to
writing these stories, because they were around one hundred years
before the first Robin Hood ballad started appearing.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Right, which, in my opinion, lends credence to the idea
that the ballads are folklore based on actual events, because
that time span is just about enough for things to
be kind of changed and compressed and added to and
for a folklore to develop. Like, think about it, if
you're describing like an outlaw, Like if you or I

(20:44):
like wrote something about Billy the Kid based on stuff
we'd heard, what will we come up with? It'd be close,
but it wouldn't be like one hundred percent accurate, right right, Yeah,
that's a good point.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Richard, though, had a pretty interesting story when he died,
and this is something that is not lower but is
as close to recorded fact as we can get. He
was walking around the perimeter of a chateau in France
where he that was just there was a battle going on,
basically didn't have I get the feeling that it was

(21:16):
sort of winding down. So he may have d chain
mailed and was like just airing out his armpits or something.
Oh so sweaty, and he was shot with a crossbow
in the shoulder. Ordinarily might not have been a big deal,
but it turned gangrenous. And some people say as he
was dying, he said, bring me the man who shot me,

(21:38):
and they bring the man and he like forgave him
and said, spare this man. I may die, but do
not do anything to him. But that's not how it
turned out.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Is it. It's not the guy's name Peter Basil. And
after the king died, everybody turned to Peter Basil and
was like, you know you're dead, right.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
He's like, I probably figured it.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, He's like I was really hoping that wasn't the case, best, right,
But didn't you hear him? He just said right, mother.
But they flayed him alive, which meant peeling the skin
off of his head while he was alive, unbelievable. And
then after he endured a lot of agony, they hanged
him without the skin because I'm sure they peeled it
off of his neck as well. Imagine how bad a
hanging would be. But then without your skin on your neck,

(22:22):
it's adding insult to injuries, what it is.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, So it was custom at the time that you
bury the king in different places, which sounds really horrific now,
but he was. He was cut up and buried in
different places heart in Normandy, his entrails and shallows, and
apparently the rest of his remains in anjou.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Right, so that was a good brother.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, that was Richard the lion Heart.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
So he wasn't like deposed by his brother John. He
actually died. He was king for two years after their father.
What was his name, Henry, I believe, Henry the second, Yeah,
Henry the Second, right, Yeah, Okay, so after Henry the
Second died, Richard took over for two years, then he

(23:11):
dies and then John ascends to the.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Throne reign of terror.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
And John was like he's known among historians as the
worst king England's ever had.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, he was, like you said, he was paranoid, he
had no scruples, he was humorless.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
He was just not a good guy.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
They point out in this article you sent he was
the opposite of Robin Hood and that he took from
the rich and the poor and just.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Gave it to himself.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
I actually wrote that, did you write that?

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Very well done?

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Thank you, Thank you everybody.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
It sounded like a Josh Clark line.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
And in the movies, like John's always just sort of
a just that he's sort of a whiny baby.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
He is, but he's also very powerful and very evil
and deadly.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yes, and vindictive.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Right, Yeah, So this is in real life. That's how
he's remembered and just described. He was very well known
for being a heavy taxer. He would take your state
and he would use these funds to like enrich himself
basically like you were saying. But he was the noble
or he was the king that the nobles rebelled against

(24:16):
and forced to sign the magnet Karta. That was John. Yeah,
that means that he was such a bad king that
his own people rose up and took London hostage and
forced him to negotiate with them, and he signed this
document that forms the basis of civil and individual liberties
in the Western world, you know, the Magnet Carta signed

(24:37):
in twelve fifteen. So John was forced to sign that,
and this rebellion is kind of part of the Robinhood
legend as well.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Pretty cool. Yeah, he wasn't cool.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
No, but I just thought everything going on around him
was cool. And I think that the point of John
and the reason why I think that he was part
of the basis of the robin Hood legend historically, is
that prior to John, when his father was king, there
was a respect for the rule of law and things

(25:08):
were just kind of run well, like the king didn't
act above the law. Well, King John was very much
not like that. He was above the law and acted
like it and flawn at it. So when his father
was around, the idea of an outlaw, an outlaw was
a villain. By the time John took over, or after
John took over, that had reversed. The outlaw was in

(25:30):
opposition to the king. The law was what was corrupt,
and so John's reign kind of gave this fertile ground
for a legend like Robin Hood, an outlaw hero to develop,
possibly for the first time in Western culture.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, it was prime time for something like this to
take hold. Right.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
So, as far as who Robinhood may have been, historians
have tossed a lot of people into the pot over
the years, and most of them have some variation of
that name.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
There was a Robin with a Y.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Hod h o d, a Robert Hood or Robertus not bad,
that was Gilbert Robin Hood.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Sure, why not with a Y N. So all these
historians are like, oh, it's got to be these three guys.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Right, Yeah, robin Hood with a U.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
But here's what some other folks have finally said, is
you know what I think that name is not a name,
but it is a term for an outlaw. Yeah, so
it was created and there's a little bit to back
that up.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, there really is. They actually this is like as
clever as an historian.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Can get pretty good stuff here, clever.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
And lucky some historians. I didn't find out who it
was or when, but they came upon a I guess
like a civic proclamation about prior, which is a church
official being pardoned for seizing somebody's assets. Yes, and the
person and he seized him without a warrant, which is

(27:05):
what he was being pardoned for. But the person whose
assets he sees was an outlaw named William Robehood. Okay,
Robin Hood right, rob e Hod. So they were like, okay,
this is a Robin Hood right here. They managed to
find the year's court record before for the same area

(27:26):
that there was only one prior in the area, and
that noted that the prior had seized the assets of
a guy named Robert Son or no william Son, yeah,
william Son of Robert Lefever. So what they figured out
was that the clerk in the pardoning proclamation wrote down
that the guy was a Robohoud, which meant a fugitive

(27:49):
an outlaw, and they say, okay, this is proof positive
that as late as twelve sixty two, no later than
twelve sixty two, the idea of using the term robin
hood or some variation of that as a term for
an outlaw generic term for an outlaw was so widespread
that a clerk could write that down denote somebody as
a robohod and people would know what they were talking about,

(28:13):
which means that that legend of Robinhood had to have
been around prior to this and in circulation for long
enough that it had spread.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
So in effect, William's son of Robert Lefever is the
same person as William Robahod, right, And this dude in
twelve sixty two, this clerk just took it upon himself
to give him that name, and no one thought he
was crazy.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Right, Almost like he had written down William the bank robber, right,
or William the bandit yeah yeah, rather than writing his
last name, which frankly, he didn't have a last name.
He was son of Robert Lefever, yeah, because they didn't
have last names very much back then. So it was
very much like the clerk wrote William the Outlaw Bannit, Yes,
but what he used robahod or robin Hood instead of

(29:00):
outlaw Bandit is just somewhere over the ages we lost
that knowledge that Robahad or robin Hood meant that and
wasn't an actual person.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Right. So there's this other guy, Fulk Fitzwarren.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
This guy, he is a bad dude.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
He was a bad dude and he was a real guy.
And it turns out there was actually a personal link
to King John. They were pals, Little Fulk Fitzwarren and
Young John, who I bet Young John was a not
fun to be around. Now he's probably not a fun playmate,
yea mine. And here's one story. They were playing chess

(29:37):
one day, John got mad, broke his chessboard over Folk's head.
Folk kicked him in the stomach and John almost said
little John, but that would be a mistake. Little John
was a character which, by the way, I don't think
we mentioned Little John was referenced in all those old ballads.
See he's been around kind of since the beginning.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
And they think they found his grave.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
So this John, as he was younger, went crying to
Daddy and said, he kicked me in the stomach. Expecting
to get some sort of back up, and apparently that
would have been Henry the second. I don't know if
he beat him, but he was beaten for complaining about
being kicked in the stomach.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Kanked him good.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah, so no wonder John grew up to be a jerk,
right His dad did never have his back.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
It sounds like, yeah, that's part of it, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
So flash forward a bit. Folk's father passes away in
eleven ninety seven. He inherits his ancestral holding at Whittington.
John comes to power and says, I remember when you
kicked me in the stomach, what at bastard? I am
going to take your holdings, take your family estate basically,

(30:47):
and I don't give it to your enemy, old Maury
fits Roger. Yeah, sorry, Maury's. There's a name as an
ess at the end.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
These names are great.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
So Folk ends up murdering Maury's.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
It might it might even be Morris Morris maybe.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Yeah, probably today it would be Morris fitz Roger.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
That's a new pseudonym.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
Fulk kills Morris, flees and basically wages a robin Hood
like war against John and his men for about three years.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
So this could be him.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, it could be because not just the fact that
he was battling King John and fled to the forest
where he used as his base of operations. But there
are a few other things that came up. Like one
thing that's part of the legends but actually isn't part
of the earliest ballads is that that robinhood was a

(31:45):
fallen nobleman bud of noble birth who either lost or
renounced their title and became an outlaw and then regained it.
That's the story of Fulk fitz Warren, like he lost
his land, he lost his title to this other guy,
and then finally got it back when he was pardoned
in twelve oh three.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Right, pretty good candidate.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
That was one. There's another one where Folk was known
to while he was a forest bandit. He would hijack
like the King's people who were carrying the King's money
album and he would say what do you have on you?
And the ones who told the truth about what they

(32:29):
actually had, the amount of currency they had on them,
he would let live very Robin Hoodie, very like straight
out of the legend. But the ones who lied, he
would you know, punish with their lives or whatever that
was super Robin Hoodie. There was also another character trait
of Robin Hood was disguised as using disguises. Folk Fitzwarren
was not above disguising himself.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yeah, there was another guy historical outlaw named Eustace the
Monk who also had the disguised thing down, very much
like Robin exactly. He would disguise himself as a potter
and that even goes to the Disney cartoon. Yeah, these
disguises very much a Robin Hood thing.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
I haven't I don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Eustace the Monk doesn't seem as enticing to me as
Old fitz Warren.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
No, fitz Fitz or Folk is.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
He's my guy to Speaking of fits, though, we should
tell everyone that that little tag at the beginning of
the name means that you're.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
You're a bastard child, right.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
An illegitimate son. I look that up because it sounded
too good to be true. But the there was definitely
a kid named Fitzroy, which meant illegitimate son of roy
of the king. And I can't remember what king or
what the guy's first name was, and since then it's
kind of become code. But I don't know that that

(33:48):
was widespread at the time that necessarily Folk Fitzwarren was
an illegitimate son, or that any of the other fits
is were.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Oh yeah, I wonder today if like Patrick and Fitzgibbons
and like Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald is all Is that all mean
illegitimate son of Gerald or Patrick?

Speaker 1 (34:07):
I don't know. I don't know what's the truth anymore?

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Very interesting fits. Should we take another break?

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah, we'll let everybody ste on that one for a
little while.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
We'll be back right after this. As why why why
s K?

Speaker 4 (34:22):
As he should know?

Speaker 2 (34:31):
That's why SK.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
We should know why s K.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
We should know?

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Knows Clark.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
All right, so we've covered Folk, and we covered Eustace Folk.
By the way, we got to tell that one story
real quick about him.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
The beginning.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, he found out that another another band that was
using his name.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Pierce Morgan what was his name?

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Pierce?

Speaker 2 (35:04):
What Pierce to Bruville?

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Okay, that sounds like these sounds like romance novel names. Yeah,
But he found out Pierce was using his name robbing
somewhere else. And he captured Pierce and his men, and
he made Pierce tie his men up and then go
around and behead every single one of them with his
own hands.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
With I guess, with the assumption that he would be let.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Go, I guess, but he didn't. Then he cut off
Pierce's hands when he was dead. If this happened, Chuck,
can you imagine being in that house, that room where
there's like five, six, ten guys? I have no idea
how many men there were who were systematically beheaded and
so like, as you're waiting in line as the guy next,

(35:47):
he's getting his head cut off and your turns next.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
There's heads everywhere.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah, how much blood and gore was everywhere? Like can
you imagine like really put yourself into that situation like
that may have actually happened? So disturbing, so disturbing, Yeah,
like losing your head, that's that's I think that's probably
like the first mortal fear any humans ever experienced.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, Like we just.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Know, on like a primal level, the head is supposed
to be attached to the body, and when it's not,
there's something bad wrong that's going on.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah, like your your death.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, didn't we determine though in a podcast nine and
a half years ago, that you stay alive for like
what six or seven seconds?

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Second? That's what they found in rats after you were beheaded.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
I remember that one guy who was guillotine like, he
kept like looking over and like trying to die. But
then they'd say his name and his eyes would open
back up and he'd be like what.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
Oh, could you imagine the horror of potentially looking up
for four seconds and seeing your headless body?

Speaker 1 (36:48):
No, No, my mind just rails against going there. Yeah,
it should, it's replacing it with the what that.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
All? Right?

Speaker 3 (37:01):
So there was a guy who wrote a book. A
lot of people are still trying to pieces together. This
is not something that historians put to bed years and
years ago. Definitely, not only fourteen years ago, in two
thousand and four, and probably since then. But there was
a dude named Brian Benison who wrote a book called
Robin Hood colon.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Case Closed, always a cult, the real story.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
That's pretty close to Case Closed.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
And he says he's a lot, he's in the camp,
that Robin Hood is a name, like a title, similar,
he says to Billy the Kid.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Right, I thought Billy Kidd was a real dude.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Though, right, Yeah, I think his name is William Bonnie.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, but I mean he knew at the time that
he was called Billy the Kid.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Right, right, Yeah, it's a terrible analogy. I think so too,
because it'd be like Robin son of le Fever, right,
but you call him Robin Hood not even close now.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
But at any rate, he claims it's a nickname and
that of a man named Roger Godbird or go Baird,
and he said he's the real guy. He said he
lived in the thirteenth century. He was a friend originally
of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Reginald Degray.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
That's pretty significant.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
And we should point out too that the one reason
we can't pinpoint a lot of this is that they
never name of the Sheriff of Nottingham they're talking about
in any of these stories, right, And that's not a
person's name, that's a title.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
No, But there is such a thing as the Sheriff
of Nottingham that there was back then. But there were
many of them, right, exactly, just one after the other.
So that doesn't help that much, but it does zero
in sure on the area. But yeah, it doesn't help
get a time period down.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
No, But he claims that it was specifically Reginald Degray
that Sheriff of Nottingham and after what four years is
an outlaw. The dude was captured, went to jail, pardoned,
and then farmed peacefully for the rest of his life.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, and I mean, that guy's a pretty good candidate.
He is because one of the things about the robin
Hood themes, despite some in some of that, I think
the ballads, No, not in the ballads. It would have
been in the ones that came later, so I guess
the ones that the Scottish historians added. He was battling
the king in the original ballads. All of the people

(39:19):
he was rebelling against and fighting were like local authorities,
like the sheriff of Nottingham. Yeah, so he was kind
of a working class hero among like the first working
class the West has ever seen. The Yooman farmers of
the era or of the area. They were like the
first like middle class that ever developed. Because either you

(39:41):
were a peasant, meaning you were a feudal slave to
the feudal lord and you worked the land whether you
liked it or not, or you were landed gentry like
you were a feudal lord and you had a peasantry
and you had, you know, a bunch of land. You're
friends with the king. Yeah, but in between there were yeomans.
I think that's how you say it. Why an yeomen yeoman?

(40:02):
There were yeoman farmers who were they weren't slaves, but
they didn't have a title. They just kind of made
their own way. And supposedly that's what Robinhood was. So
it sounds like that this was what this Roger Gobert
is right, he was the same thing. And the idea
that he was battling the sheriff of Nottingham, that would

(40:22):
place him more in the historical lens than say, if
he were like battling King John. That's actually a mark
against folk fitz Warren, because that doesn't appear in the
original ballads. It was he was battling the sheriff of Nottingham,
where he's battling local church officials. He hated the church officials,
but he loved God. He did so much so that

(40:43):
he would get arrested to come out to go to church.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right. He just hated the clergy.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Right, which at the time those were the people who
were taking your land or throwing you in jail or
taking your stuff without a warrant.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
And also when you look back on a lot of
these early ballads and stories, they're very, very different from
what the legend of Robinhood became to us in like
contemporary fiction. Apparently that the Jest Ballad only had a
couple of things that he did that were even close
to like these big altruistic acts that he's really really

(41:17):
most known for now.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
I think one of them was he agreed to lend
money to a knight of the.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Really, here's five bucks, just pay it back with a
two percent big.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Right, But that right, but that whole steal from the
rich and give to the poor thing. Yeah, that came
thanks to the Scottish historians.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Yeah, all these authors sort of littered it with that
stuff because they found a champion of the underling basically
and the common man and ran with.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
It just from standing up to the king or to
the authority who were acting unjustly and above the law themselves.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
There's also no mention in those early tales of a
maid Marian, who seems to have come along later and
is actually one of a great example of one of
the first examples in literature of female empowerment of a character.
Because made Marian was no one's chump no in any
of these stories, and she was like a sort of

(42:11):
an equal to Robin, partially because of her spunk and
partially because Robin and the.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Stories at least, was kind of down with equality.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Right, Yeah, that was one thing. That and basically being
in Nottingham area or Yorkshire area but somewhere in the woods.
Those two things are basically the two constants throughout all
the Robin Hood legends that he was very much down with.
He was a feminist, yeah, and made Marian from what

(42:43):
I saw, she had her own series of ballads before
she appeared in the Robin Hood ballads. She was her
own character, and so when they were brought together, it
was kind of analogous to like putting Superman and Wonder
Woman in the same comic book basically, which is a
pretty cool move. That is a cool move, And to
keep her equal to him, that's huge.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, it is huge.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Whether or not any of that happened, it's kind of
irrelevant as far as literature's concern. There was one historian
in fifteen twenty one that wrote, Robin permitted no harm
to women, nor sees the goods of the poor, but
helped them generously with what he took from abbots, like
we were saying earlier with the clergy. But then in
some of the earlier stories, there's not a whole lot

(43:26):
of mention of that kind of stuff, except for one
that just had one comment that Robin did poor men
much good.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
It's okay, sure, I guess it's better than like he
was the scourge of the poor.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, but it wasn't like they built the legend upon
that one kind of throwaway line. But I think they
did well yeah, yeah, yeah, right, but they didn't make
a lot of hay out of it, or at least
that one author didn't.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, not at the very beginning. In the ballads, yeah there,
it was also like way more violent, Like there was
one of the characters much the miller's son, Uh huh
much was his name? I just loved that guy's name.
Much was. I think in the ballads he lops off
the head of a page boy, a child to keep
him from like blabbing from what he saw. You know,

(44:10):
the location of where the merry Men were right there,
It was way more violent than than the later ones
depicted Robin hood.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Yeah, they were though, all Robin and his merry Men
archery was always a big deal. They're all very skilled
archers and one of the swordsmen, but they were all
super skilled horsemen, and that's not something that you see
as much, right, although I think in this new movie
there he's pretty good horsemen.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, I mean imagine, like it's it's hard enough to
be good on a horse, but a horse in a forest,
that's that's like a whole different level.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Shooting arrows. Yeah, like a Mongol exactly. And that was
who was so good.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yep, the Mongols. The Mongol hordes who made their thigh steaks.
Remember they sat on raw meat on their saddles to
cure it. Tar tar, stake, tartar.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
What else you got anything?

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Oh? He was killed by a treacherous priorus, a female
church official, kind of like a middle manager.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
None, a middle manager none.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, he went to go see none for oh right,
was he hurt healthcare? I'm not sure what it was,
but he went to go get bled and she purposefully
overbled him. And then when he asked to be buried
somewhere and she's like, nope, I'm going to bury you
on the side of the road. And she supposedly erected
a This is in Kirkles. She erected a stone that

(45:42):
said here lies Robin hood or something. I don't remember
exactly what variation of Robinhood it was Robert hood Hude
and supposedly she erected it, and this was written hundreds
of years later to basically let travelers through the woods
know that they didn't have to fear being held up

(46:03):
any longer.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Apparently if your name had the initials r h, it
was fair game.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
They really have.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
A lot of leeway here with with things like hood
hod Hod.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah. Well everybody was illiterate, so it didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Robin Robert robertus, come on, maybe I'm maybe, I'm I'm.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Mine, you middle English dumb dums.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
And supposedly, after as he was dying, he used his
last bit of energy to shoot it, to fire an
arrow and say that's where I want to be buried.
That's what she was like. That was nice for the movies,
but yeah, it's not happening.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
She's like, yeah, sure, sure you can die knowing that
I'll bury you.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
Just there over bled. Man, can you imagine, because I
guess you just get so weak.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
That I can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
You're probably like I think I'm good. But I'm not
feeling so hot. She's like, just a little more.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
I'm not dead yet. Yeah, you got anything else?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Nothing?

Speaker 1 (46:58):
So that was robin Hood history. And if you love
history too, we'll go look up some Roberhood stuff on
the internet. Since I said that it is time for
this moment.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
I'm gonna call this one of the many, many, many
roundabouts emails that we.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Got a lot. Everyone loves their roundabouts.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
I know.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
It was really surprising, like everyone wanted to talk about
their hometown roundabout.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Everybody's very proud of their roundabout.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Apologies to the people of Carmel.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Carmel.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
No, didn't say it was Carmel.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
I don't remember anymore.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
I think it's supposed to be Carmel.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Let's go with Carmel.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Hey, guys, just finished roundabouts. I thought i'd pitch a
little info on our local one. In Alexandria, Louisiana the
nineteen forties, it built two circles part of a road
project speed up travel between two local military bases that
had popped up to during World War Two. The larger
of the two is still in use, so it's notorious
and the area for traffic accidents, especially during heavy traffic

(47:55):
and bad weather. It's a two lane circle with a
large forested area in the very so that is probably
the size of a city block. Like other roundabouts, you
must yield to traffic already on the circle. There are
two lanes that funnel traffic under the circle, and only
one lane for getting off. This means that if you're
in the if you enter the left lane, you have
to merge to the right lane before you can exit.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Because the circle is so big.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Though the speed limit is forty five miles an hour,
within this circle, people inevitably go too fast, or sometimes
lanes change as slower cars are entering the circle, resulting
in rear end crashes. The problem is frequent enough that
the city is seriously looking into eliminating the circle.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Oooh no definitive planet.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
It's replacement has been settled on, and some locals are
concerned about disrupting wildlife in the forest as well, which
is delayed any definitive action on whether the circle will
continue to exist.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
May the Circle be unbroken.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Warmest regards.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
I love that Marshall Wells from Colfax, Louisiana.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
Thanks a lot, Marshall, appreciate that great story. Let us
know how it pans out because we worry about the
wildlife too.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Yeah, and thanks for everyone who wrote in about the roundabouts.
I love the enthusiasm.

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