The Ballads of Robin Hood
by David Cook
Publishing Date 2018
Listen and you will hear the tale of Robin Hood, what speaks of love, and of what is fair and good. Though it happened long ago it is a likely tale for those who lived it. Just as now, there was some quiet acceptance of how any day was spent, though so many had come into a poverty they had never thought to live. Normans governed Saxons then, lawmakers to a peasantry, and although the land was good only a few enjoyed its abundance, even while many went without enough to eat. Laws and taxes were the means by which a few achieved their bitter purpose, and for a while in the world, it seemed as though greed were a virtue. Robin Hood was a tall young man, a courteous outlaw, and the leader of a band of others who were fugitives. Some had killed the king’s deer to feed their families; some had lost their lands by acts of the Sheriff of Nottingham whose pen was mightier than his sword. Robin and all with him swore resistance to that kind of legal tyranny that can rule a country, as when a small but powerful group of men of church or state work the laws of a land to their own advantage. But for all of this, Robin and his men were happier than most, for they yet retained their liberty and lived in a forest whose realm was so dark and deep many feared it. It was known as the Forest of Sherwood, and forest to the king. There were stories of what lurked therein, which told of worse than robbers and thieves, stories of ghosts and goblins haunted these tales such as mothers tell their children so they will not wander far; and travelers, who had all been children once, would rise at cock’s crow and begin their journey through Sherwood early so as to be assured of arriving on the other side before darkness fell.