Hereward - Robin Hood's predecessor?

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Are the Robin Hood legends, written at a time when Anglo-Norman England was searching for popular heroes (La Morte's D'Arthur?), lifted directly from the actual events of the revolt of the famous Anglo-Danish warrior Hereward[the Wake], and his fierce, prolonged campaign with 100's men against King William (and baron William de Warenne, Ivo Taillebois, etc) on the Isle of Ely in 1070-1?

1. Hereward also led a large, prolonged and successful 'guerilla' army, finally maybe 3,000 strong, of highly-organised 'Silvatici'(the Norman name for outlaws living in woodlands and fighting covertly).

2. He was temporarily-based on the Isle of Ely and operated amongst the marshes and trackways, along with many of King William's most troublesome enemies(Earl Morcar, Siward Barn, Bishop Aethelwine, etc) - an impenetrable and lethal series of swamps, reeds, trees and deceptive high tides etc- (as 'impenetrable' as the dense Sherwood Forest was?) which cost the Normans v.dear in men as they were repeatedly repulsed as they tried to build causeways across to the hostile defenders on the Isle, over the months.

3. Hereward too, like Robin, had honed his valuable military skills and leadership of men by fighting abroad, the former as a mercenary in Flanders, the latter supposedly in the Holy Land.

4. Hereward's nemesis, (until King William - ala "King John"?- deemed this revolt and 'fortress' island so serious a threat that he came in person) was a new and warlike Norman- Turold(ala "Sheriff of Nottingham" type character?) who was appointed by William as Abbot of Peterborough- where Hereward had an inheritance from his uncle, Abbot Brand- land held by the church to prevent Normans 'acquiring' it.

5. They were both reputedly dispossessed minor nobles.
The few months of brutal campaigning at Ely ended when William personally led his troops in eventually storming the Isle(by the treachery of some Ely monks), at heavy cost in men and horses, and though several of the many English leaders were either blinded or had hands/feet severed(and the 'common people' were allowed free unharmed), Hereward escaped into obscurity...maybe to Flanders, where he had made important contacts fighting there years before, and may have fought again as a mercenary?

Or are there many such folk heroes, actual or ficticious, with many overlapping similarities?

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Read this at the age of 11 at school (Hereward the Wake - can't remember the author but a classic tale)

not really like Robin Hood though - soggy marshes don't compare with forests and Lincoln Green Very Happy

and Hereward was fighting an invader rather than an unpopular regent. I lived not too far from Ely at the time.

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Archtypes are archtypes.

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Comparisons

Vivien wrote:

Read this at the age of 11 at school (Hereward the Wake - can't remember the author but a classic tale)

not really like Robin Hood though - soggy marshes don't compare with forests and Lincoln Green and Hereward was fighting an invader rather than an unpopular regent. I lived not too far from Ely at the time.

Yes, I was well aware of the topographical differences, that's why I said "as 'impenetrable' as the dense Sherwood Forest was?". I didn't state that they were the same, but that there are many similarities.

But I feel that much of the folk hero Robin Hood legends are lifted from this earlier, factual rebellion. William was a very 'unpopular regent' in his time.

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William was a foreign invader - not a regent at all! He was French, an illegitimate son of a nobleman and killed the rightful king at the battle of Hastings.

Before William the 'peasants' were free men - under Norman rule they became serfs - with no freedom to move or take up trades without permission.

From what I know of them I wouldn't have said they were similar.

Robin was of course much later as you know.

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Regent

Vivien wrote:

William was a foreign invader - not a regent at all! He was French, an illegitimate son of a nobleman and killed the rightful king at the battle of Hastings.

Before William the 'peasants' were free men - under Norman rule they became serfs - with no freedom to move or take up trades without permission.

From what I know of them I wouldn't have said they were similar.

Robin was of course much later as you know.

Theow- An Anglo-Saxon slave, (unfree lower peasant)either a conquered native or an Anglo-Saxon felon. He had no rights whatsoever.

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I am lazily reading La Morte D'Arthur and am disappointed. T. H. White did a better job with the same subject matter.

Someone once told me that Robinson was the most common surname in the British Isles because of festivities surrounding the celebration of spring in the Greenwood. I do not believe it.

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iron axe -- I came across one of last year's notebooks that I carry with me when attending conferences and lectures which has notes I took at a speech delivered by UCLA Prof. Joseph NAgy (Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literatures from HArvard) entitled, "Robin Hood's 'Irish Knife.'"

It's a scholarly examination of Child Ballad 118, "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne." You can see we are already in the area of cross cultural influence.

Some of the references he included are:
A. L. Lord, The Singer Resumes the Tale
D. E. Bynum, The Daemon in the Wood: A Study of Oral Narrative Patterns
E. A. Gray, "Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure," from two editions of the scholarly journal Eigse, 18 and 19.

His own book, The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition.

And an article Nagy contributed to editor Stephen Knight's, Robin Hood: An ANthology of Scholarship and Criticism, entitled, "The Paradoxes of Robin Hood."

There is R.B. Dobson's and John Taylor's (eds.), Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw,"

and two web sites: http://lib.rochester.edu/camelot/rh/rhaumenu.htm and http://emc.english.ecsb.edu/ballad_project/

But, wait! There's more!

Edited by Helen Phillips, Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval contains three articles of interest:

R. F. Green, "The Hermit and the Outlaw: New Evidence for Robin Hood's Death?"

T. S. Jones, "'Oublie ai chevalrie': Tristan, MAlory and the Oulaw-Knight"

Derek Pearsall, "Little John and the Ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk"

(this is an Irish book and therefore expensive. Frankly, you need access to a university library or an academic used book store for most of this stuff.)

And, as if that isn't enough, you also get with this bibliography:

Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hiberniae (trans. John O'Mara)

Jaan Puhvel, Comparative Mythology

D. S. Thomson (ed) Branwen eurch Lyr (trans. P. K. ford, THe Mabinogi and Other Welsh Tales)

W. Stokes, "Find and the Phantoms," Revue Celtique 7

(Find is an alternate spelling for Finn)

Since this is already a great deal of material, I will summarize my lecture notes in another post.

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Nagy summarized:

He began with the 16th C., Scot's poet Wm. Dunbar who called Guy of Gisbourne as good a shooter as Robin and said Dunbar's was a good text for comparison of the "late Medieval version of Robin" with the "early Medieval figure of Hereward the Wake, an Anglo-Saxon hero."

Hereward's brother was slain by Normans and Hereward fetches (his -- brother's?) horse from Flanders. In a later story, Hereward slays the horse Swallow to prevent others from claiming him.

Nagy also brought in Egil's Saga in which a cursing pole topped with a horse's head is set up.

Nagy spoke of Green's writing of Robin dying at the hands of a trecherous kinswoman prioress and bleeding excessively and of Jones paralleling Robin and Tristam, as well as Pearsall's comment on Robin breaking the Code of the Greenwood by putting on airs.

There is a great deal more, but I am running out of time and may have to continue tomorrow.

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Ah! A few more minutes, so here is the rest of Professor Nagy's talk.

The ballad (Child 118) features the motif of horse mutilation and an exchange of identities, which are motifs found in both Irish and Welsh tales.

The first Celtic analog comes from Gerald of Wales and tells of the inauguration of an Ulster king featuring the slaughter of a horse and the preparation of a bath in a broth made of horse flesh. The king then bathed in the broth and drank it with his hands.

SNorri tells the tale of Haakenin the Good who was expected to eat horse flesh and drink the broth or at least smell it.

These men then became the embodiment of the horses or changed id's with them.

There is the Indian ritual of slaughtering a stallion after the queen had intercourse with the horse and a branch of the Welsh Mabinogi in which the horses that were part of Branwen's dowry when she was given in marriage to the king of Ireland were mutilated following the discovery that Branwen was mistreated by her husband.

Finally, in Finn and the Phatoms from the 12th C book of Leinster there is a horse race and the granting of the title of king to Finn.

Horses symbolize kingship although in late stories like those of Finn and Robin, they symbolize knighthood.

What really addresses your question, iron axe, is Nagy's conclusion:

We may accept an affinity among these tales but what does that affinity mean?

That the range of human imagination is limited?

That they all share an Indo-European heritage?

That there was a folklore exchange in northern Europe?

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Hereward - Robin Hood's predecessor?

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