Sherwood Oregon USA 1999

The little town of Sherwood put down its roots in 1889, at about the same time Walt Disney was saving up his boyhood memories of Marceline, Missouri for the Main Street U.S.A. exhibit at Disneyland. Sherwood might have stimulated a young man's creativity as much as Marceline. But if you had your entire life to live in such a town, you would have seen another side. Far from being a dream from which America awoke and to which no return was possible, a small American town could be a nightmare from which no waking up was possible. It was the kind of place visited by Sinclair Lewis or endured by Sherwood Anderson. It could be the kind of place our dear Sherwood Mayor Marjorie Stewart was always trying to save us from. She was on the Sherwood City Council when I was Mayor and we argued constantly about the importance of "saving" the town's historic core. Among her many duties to the City of Sherwood, she had once served as Police Matron. She would be rousted out of her warm bed any day of the week at 2:00 in the morning to go down and frisk some drunken female candidate to the Sherwood Town Jail. With the stench of vomit mixed with straw and night soil in her nostrils, Stewart remembered little worth saving in those nine blocks which I and my generation call "Olde Towne Sherwood." Marg no doubt remembered all the other nightmares familiar to residents of Turn of the Century American small towns. How gossip was never ending. You could be shunned for infractions against rules you didn't even understand. Today, the victim would simply pack his bags and disappear onto the Interstate freeway. But back in the glory days, there was no such option. You couldn't afford to simply get up and leave town any time you felt like it. You stuck it out.

But Sherwood Oregon U.S.A. also had a bright side. It was illuminated by the feathered hero Robin Hood. He was the world's most famous good guy. Who could argue with that? If you were a friend of Robin Hood, you couldn't go wrong. His cheery environmentally green costume could be spotted a mile away. On Robin Hood's day, the bad guys were recognized with just as little difficulty. They had an evil glint in their eyes and their teeth were a shiny as knives. Once a year in Sherwood Oregon USA, the good and the bad came marching down the street together, while we shouted "Rob from the rich. Give to the poor." We only said so because that's what Robin Hood says in the movies. It wasn't about money.

Seeing Robin Hood endlessly rescuing his Lady Faire from the Wicked Sheriff made you think hard about how interesting the world would be if good people and bad people would only reveal themselves this way all the time, instead of wearing disguises the way they do every other day of the year. The most precious thing Robin Hood brought to our typical little American railroad town was the moral clarity.

So Who Is Robin Hood!?

Lately the British have confessed to being caught off guard by the popularity of their feathered icon. Some of England's finest scholars have begun to tackle the question of why Robin, Marian and their merry crew should deserve any more praise than we grant to the common thieves and vagabonds we read about in the papers. The scholar J. C. Holt almost risked his sanity boring through ancient volumes of unprinted and unindexed government records to find a historical basis for the Legend of Robin Hood. (He faced what my trusty old Britannica warns about when researching English legal history: "it is rather the enormous bulk than any dearth of available materials that will prevent the scholar's progress.") Holt found the name "Robin Hood," or similar names, many times. He realized that these must be only the tip of the iceberg. Some of the names made fairly good candidates for the original hero (See Timeline). Holt could almost smell the beer baited breath and hear the deer horn sounding. He almost chooses an original, the one and only, Robin Hood for us. However, in the second edition of Robin Hood Holt reaches a conclusion that every Robin Hood scholar struggles to avoid: "There was not just one 'original' Robin Hood, real or fictional, but many." he confesses, "Each one acknowledged the legend by adopting the surname or by accepting it from others." (Holt, Page 190)

Holt's search left him at an intolerable crossroad. We are grownup enough to face the fact that there was more than one Robin Hood-- perhaps hundreds of them-- in the historical record. We will just have to face the fact that there were many outlaws in England who resembled Robin Hood in everything but name. “The Anglo-Saxon Earl Godwin and Hereward the Wake, the French Eustache the Monk and the Anglo-Norman Fouke fitz Waryn are among the many ancestors of Robin Hood....” (Ohlgren, Medieval Outlaws). But what is it about the one we know least about-- the outlaw called Robin Hood-- that makes him such a commemorated figure in the modern world?

Liberty's Crucible

Sherwood Oregon USA 1999

Britain occupied one particularly remote and troublesome corner of that empire. When Caesar ventured there in 55 B.C., "No one, except for traders, went there as a matter of course and not even they knew anything beyond the coastline and the areas facing [the English Channel]." (The Gallic Wars, by Julius Caesar). One century later, in 70 A.D., it would have been feasible for General Titus to use British troops in the seige of Jerusalem. Thanks to the historical connection between two great empires, the concept of individual liberty became so deeply ingrained in western thought that it was impossible to imagine anyone anywhere on the planet not prizing it just as highly.

For the historians and moral philosophers of our own time the question to be resolved is this: Is the degree of toleration which Roman citizens routinely showed to "robber bands of runaway slaves..." (Freedom, pg. 228) the same thing that is experienced by crowds at the Sherwood Oregon USA Robin Hood Festival today?

In other words: Is this thing called "Liberty" still Sherwood's "most important social goal"?

Robin Hood and His Shady Past

The Robin Hood we meet in Robin Hood and the Monk, the earliest surviving Robin Hood ballad, is as common as any Englishman you might have met at a forest crossroad. In all the ballads, his adversaries are just as down-to-earth. There are no dragons or sorcerers or ghostly visitors of any kind for him to do battle with. In fact, the spirit world of the Christian Church is not even open to him.

Yet still there is a feeling that something else is lurking. "Constantly we catch, in the Middle Ages, hints of an undercurrent, of a yearning after the pagan past...." (Colton, Medieval Panorama, Pg. 116) More than one historian has commented on the degree to which England held to her pre-Christian roots. A passage from Shakespeare provides a clue:

Sherwood Oregon USA 2007. Photo by D. K. Boljat.

FALSTAFF - "let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal."

PRINCE HENRY - "Thou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon."

--Henry IV Part One, Act 1, Scene 2.

Apparently Shakespeare's 17th Century audience weren't the least bit startled to see Crown Prince Henry V (1387-1422) worshipping the same deity that's being praised in Chapter 19 of The Acts of the Apostles.

We can only think kindly of Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) who advised his missionaries not to destroy the pagan centers in Britain. Rather, he advised, "Destroy the idols; purify the buildings with holy water; set relics there; and let them become temples of the living God. Thus the people will have no need to change their places of concourse..." (Coulton, Page 607)

Lady Alice and King Richard (Julian Thornton), 2007.

For many years, it seems, cathedrals could be built over the pagan centers, but it made no difference to the old believers who went right on with "their places of concourse." As one English Puritan describes it:

Thus all things set in order, then have they their hobby-horses, their dragons and other antiques, togither with their baudie pipers, and thundering drummers, to strike up the Devils Daunce withall; then martch this heathen company towards the church and church-yarde their pypers pypying, thier drummers thundering, their stumpes dauncing, their belles iyngling, their handkercheefes fluttering about their heades like madde men, their hobbie horses, and other monsters skirmishing amongst the throng : and in this sorte they goe to the church (though the minister be at prayer or preaching) dauncing and swinging their handkerchiefes over their heades in the church like Devils incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne voyce. --Phillip Stubbes (1583)

I came once myself to a place, riding on a journey homeward from London. I sent word overnight into the town, that I would preach there in the morning. It was a holiday [May Day] and methought it was a holiday's work. The church stood in my way and I took my horse and my company and went thither. I thought I should have found a great company in the church. When I came there the church door was locked fast. I tarried there half an hour or more. At last the key was found and one of the parish comes to me and says, 'Sir, this is a busy day with us. We cannot hear you. It is Robin Hood's Day. The parish are gone abroad to gather [money] for Robin Hood. I pray you let them off.'

I was fain to give place to Robin Hood. I thought my rochet would have been more highly regarded, though I were not; but it would not serve. I was fain to give place to Robin Hood's men. A heavy matter. A heavy matter, under the pretense of gathering for Robin Hood, a traitor and a thief....

--Bishop Hugh Latimer, April 12, 1549.

Latimer's words were taken down by a scribe who was on the scene. The increasingly brief utterances that the Bishop makes suggest a disruptive audience. Like the Monk in Robin Hood and the Monk, the good Bishop risks being hooted out of his own church.

A Special Kind of Thief

Sherwood Oregon USA 1999

Robin Hood is the most famous Englishman who ever lived. Ask any kid in America or England. Ask any British Prime Minister! In Prime Minister Winston Churchill's opinion, the typical medieval British outlaw represented-- not a vestige of England's outworn and obsolete pagan past, but rather England's "stubborn wish for *practical freedom." (Pg. 275) It was a wish that made England so different from other countries ...countries like France, for example (note the use of Roman numerals in this passage):

It hath ben often seen in England that iii or iv thiefes, for povertie, hath sett upon vii or viii true men and robbed them al. But it hath not been seen in Fraunce... they have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therefor mo men hangyd in England, in a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime in vii yers.
--Sir John Fortescue
--Shakespeare seems to lampoon statements of this kind in Act II Scene IV, Henry IV Part One.

How did you become one of these vastly admired sort of Englishmen? The following passage from C.G.Coulton provides a clue.

In 1311 William of Wellington, a clergyman(!) by trade, confessed to murder. He was found guilty and he was given a choice. Either he could hang or he could leave the country ("abjure the realm"). The second choice seemed the best, but not by much!

....Coming to the gate of the church or churchyard, he swore solemnly before the assembled crowd: "Oyez, oyez, oyez! Coroner and other good folk: I, William of Wellington, for the crime of manslaughter which I have committed, will quit this land of England nevermore to return, except by leave of the Kings of England or their heirs: so help me God and His saints!" The coroner then assigned him a port, and a reasonable time for the journey; from Yelvertoft to Dover it would have been about a week. His bearing during this week was minutely prescribed: never to stray from the high-road, or spend two nights in the same place; to make straight for his port, and to embark without delay. If at Dover he found no vessel ready to sail, then he was bound daily to walk into the sea up to his knees- or, according to stricter authorities, up to his neck- and to take his rest only on the shore, in proof that he was ready in spirit to leave this land which by his crimes he had forfeited. His dress meanwhile was that of a felon condemned to death- a long, loose white tunic, bare feet, and a wooden cross in his hand to mark that he was under protection of Holy Church. English law was glad to have thus rid itself of a villain, and troubled no further; but the records leave us skeptical whether any very large proportion of these unwilling pilgrims actually found their way across the sea. (Medieval Panorama, Coulton, Pages 374-5)

Sherwood Oregon USA 1997

Coulton also explains that, as soon as William began his well-publicized journey to France, he would almost certainly be met by friends and relatives of the man he'd murdered. There would be no choice for him than to flee into the bushes as soon as he was out of sight of the village of Yelvertoft. Then, he would "...join that class of sturdy beggars or malefactors who bulk so largely in Piers Plowman. After all, such men were welcome recruits for the army; and there was generally fighting somewhere." (Coulton) He might even achieve high rank in the military, a possibility uniquely available to English outlaws. On his way to the top he might even begin to take on the mantle of Robin Hood. During the Wars of the Roses, two rebels did so: Robin of Redesdale (or Robin Mend-All) and Robin of Holderness. "The name Robin carried implications hinting that the leader was a champion of the poor and a righter of wrongs, a successor to Robin Hood...." (Neillands, Page 133)

In William of Wellington and all the other Robin Hood-types we see a demonstration of the quest for "practical freedom" among the English people so admired by Churchill. Orlando Patterson argues that this quest for freedom is not so wide-spread as people (most tragically, people like the United States government in Iraq) would like to think it is. Where did such a deeply held and particularly western conviction spring from? Patterson has a source to suggest:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now.... [and that] ...the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.
--Romans 8: 21-22

The observations of Paul of Tarsus are important because Patterson identifies Paul as the first known apostle of liberty. (Although it seems to me that the words of the Jewish sage, Philo of Alexandria [20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.] are just as passionate on the subject: "Now, when we are alive, we are so though our soul is dead and buried in our body, as if in a tomb. But if it were to die, then our soul would live according to its proper life being set free from the evil and dead body to which it is bound. "--Op. 67-69; LA 1.108 )

It is no wonder that Jesus causes such a stir with his use of the word "Liberty" in Luke 4:18.

The Lamp of Liberty

The history of the West is the story of how the lamp of Individual Liberty is nearly extinguished time and time again only to blaze forth with increased intensity each time it is rekindled. The Robin Hood Legend expresses a yearning for Liberty that alludes to more than political oppression. The natural environment is also a major player in the story.

Sherwood Oregon USA 1997

The Robin Hood legend makes its first certain appearance on the historical horizon during the 14th Century (where it is mentioned in Langland's Piers Plowman, around 1377) The planet we call home is facing a very serious crisis at this time. Rarely has society been so destabilized as during the 14th Century. The years beginning with "13" started out with a cold spell so severe that people sang songs (e.g. "Summer is a-coming In!") of joy when it was over. Children survived the starvation in order to face the first wave of the Black Death in 1348, when the world's population was reduced by as much as one third or more. The crisis was so severe that we still read about the aftershocks in today's headlines. Global warming makes us curious about the causes of the Little Ice Age. Photographs of ethnic cleansing bear an uncanny resemblance to woodcuts of the Plague. The vaunted "War on Terror" is nothing new to the Middle East, where our Medieval World (i.e. the Crusades) is their Modern World. The defeat of the Serbs by the Turks at Kosovo in 1389 --a post where American soldiers are keeping the peace today --proved that an Islamic overthrow of the West has never been all that far outside the realm of possibility.

In America some of the worst features of life in the Middle Ages seem to make their appearance. Here, the concept of Liberty has always been closely tied to the concept of private ownership of land, but here in the 21st Century the value of our real estate far out-weighs any amount of wealth the vast majority of us might hope to receive from our labors. The land owning class is being converted into a class of tenants and service workers. It's happening all over again. The rich are becoming a separate species from the poor. The wealthy take shelter inside gated communities, allow entry only to a few carefully selected poor, and do their shopping in faux towns where it is not possible for a beggar to play his guitar on a street corner without facing arrest.

The question raised by the Robin Hood Legend and the Sherwood Oregon USA Robin Hood Festival becomes more urgent than ever before. Namely: How long is it possible for Individual Liberty to remain America's most important social goal?

Sherwood Oregon USA 2000 A.D.