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 episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. 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 ah, who's are Actually

(00:23):
I think people might like a little recree of what
just happened. Let's hear it. Jerry said, I need to
check levels. We didn't really say anything, and she went,
all right, you ready? And you said we didn't say
anything for levels. She said, I don't need you to
say anything. She's like, in fact, I needed to stop talking. Yeah,
And then I had to wait until she said start talking.

(00:43):
She mouthed, start talking, monkey, goodness me, is that where
we are? How's it going? It's good. I just want
to before we really get started, check on the point something.
I'm not sure if you know this or not. Boy,
you have a paper clip holding your glasses together. At first,
I was like, is he just storing the paper clip?
And I thought, no, he's not storing a paper clip

(01:05):
and keep that tucked in his cheek. If he were
just storing it like everything else the story, it's on
the arm of your glasses where your glasses meet the
body you see there goes through. 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. It's quite a conundrum. Were

(01:27):
you raised in Oklahoma in the depression? You know why?
Because you can get other glasses. Dude, that's how busy
I am. I can't go by the glasses store. I
don't need new ones. I just need someone with tiny
fingers and good vision from Oklahoma could probably help you
to put the screw. Ironically, Uh, and this is this
works so well. I stuck this the paper clip in there,

(01:50):
bent it around and I kind of like it. It
is it's handsome. It's a handsome. Look. I think you're
gonna start there. Well, I like it. Boy, Um, thanks
for playing lunch. So we're talking today. The reason I
said Who's Ah? Who's Ah? Is because we're talking Robin Hood?
Is that from Robin Hood? No, it's actually from the

(02:12):
movie Role Models, the Paul Rudd movie. I like that movie.
It's good and I saw it the other day again,
good dumb fun. Yeah, I love it. You know he
like wrote that Rudd. Yeah he's great. I like Stifflers. Yeah,
he's his little buddy in the movie or whatever they
call him. Ronnie. Yeah he was Ronnie. Yeah, he's amazing.

(02:36):
I expect great, great things from that kid, at least
I hope so. Well. Anyway, I was watching Roll Miles
the other day and one of the Lark guys comes
up and goes, who's ah, And I was like, I
always thought it was huzzah. Strickland always says it's dressed
up like the King of the Renaissance Festival. Yeah, those
Larpe those Larpe scenes were funny too write. But the

(02:57):
guy comes up and says, who's ah. So I was like,
I can't wait to incorporate that somehow. Robin Hood, here
we go, Prince of Thieves. Yeah. And the reason why
that would work is because the LARPers were set in
the medieval era, and everyone knows Robin Hood set in
the medieval era. But actually that's totally incorrect. Yeah, most

(03:18):
of the time when you see Robin Hood had set
in the Tudor era in England, almost almost invariably in
Sherwood Forest, which is a wooded area and about the
right smack dab in the center of England. Um, and
the everybody running around is acting like it's the fourteen hundreds,

(03:41):
maybe the fift 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 lighten up. But it's entirely possible.
And there it's a good one. And there are historians
who believe that there was a real Robin Hood, and

(04:03):
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, a lot of
historians place it right around the beginning of the twelve
hundred thirteenth century in England, long before the tutors were
ever even a twinkle in anybody's loins. Uh. Here's my

(04:27):
bet is that Robin Hood is a an amalgam amalgam
of a few dudes that, uh, the writers of history
have filled in some blanks and then the writers of
literature just like ran with it. Yeah, that's that's my
take on it as well, is that it's a few

(04:48):
people served as role models for it role models on
a new planet, Paul RhoD Is everywhere. But there are
some people who still think that there was no such
person at all, or maybe even persons might have been
wholly created. Sure, but then on the opposite side, there
are some people and there are few and far between.
From what I can tell, we believe there was a

(05:10):
single person named Robin Hood who did most of this
stuff and was the basis for these legends that they're
called people who want to sell books. So there's right,
there's like they're like Robin Hood case closed stamp. There's
like a whole spectrum that you can just walk right
up and say, I believe this, and you're as right

(05:32):
as anybody on the Robin Hood train. Yeah. So if
we go back in time, um, you know, I think
everyone knows that early historians had a lot of blanks, uh,
and they weren't the most reliable narrators because they would
just fill them in with stuff they made up. Yeah,
because I think they didn't. I don't know if they
realized that early on. I'm speculating here that they were

(05:55):
really historians, 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 be taking this as is written history. They're
spinning yarn in this case. I don't think that's correct.
I think that they were They considered themselves actual historians

(06:17):
who were getting to the bottom of history, but they
had a worldview, and specifically with robin Hood, it was
I think fifteenth century or sixteenth century Scottish historians who
were the ones who really kind of gave us the
image of robin Hood that was drunk, the robbing from
the rich to give to the poor, the chivalry, um,

(06:37):
a lot of that stuff. Anti establishment. 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 hundred's the fourteenth century, and um, we think
they're historical, so we're gonna try to put this in context.

(07:00):
And the stuff we don't understand, we're just gonna make up,
but we're gonna 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 Fasure Tales, and
you remember we did those those episodes on it. Those
are good, but if you strip away the stuff that's
been added over the years and get to the bare bones,
it's way darker. It's just child abuse. A lot different yeah,
and a lot different, um than than what we know

(07:22):
and love, as you know, for in this case the
robin Hood legend. Right, So if you want to look
at literature, like you mentioned these ballads, the actual canon
for robin Hood, the very first mentioned is uh one
called Piers Plowman p I E. R s like Piers
Morgan exactly from William Langland about thirteen seventy seven. Uh,

(07:48):
And then there were a host of other ballads, um,
and this is all what it was, this Middle English,
I think. So is that what you call it? I
don't know, maybe even old with like wise for for
vowels and things like that like Cannonbury Tales stuff. I
really don't know if that's Middle or Old English. Anyway,
it's barely legible. It is a little and that is

(08:09):
spelled l y T y l L, which is great
a little just of robin Hood. That was was that
like Sean Connery and maybe dope, Uh, just of robin Hood.
That's straight up says Robin Hood. And then a few
more robin Hood in the Monk, Robin Hood in the

(08:30):
Potter robin Hood, and Guy of Gisborne, and Robin Hood
in the Temple of Doom. That one was super dark.
It was very dark. The author had just broken up
with his girlfriend, and I think that's what brought us
the PG. Thirteen rating. It was not mistaken. Um. So
whether or not you believe this stuff basically has to

(08:53):
do with whether or not these early songs you think
are just songs or a matter of history historical record. Yeah,
And like that's how before people commonly wrote stuff down.
Like at this time when this stuff was being written,
the people who are writing it were monks. Those are
the only people educated enough to write. UM. But people

(09:15):
still pass stories down and they did it through oral histories.
So it's entirely possible that these early ballads were meant
to We're created to um commemorate a person or people
or events or something like that, and then just over
time we lost weight a minute. Are these fiction or nonfiction?
But you're right, like that's the divide when it comes

(09:37):
to approaching UM. Robin Hood from an historical advantage, like
are these just totally fiction or are they meant to
commemorate something that actually happened. 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 than to set it to Uh? Come on, Eileen?

(10:01):
Why that man? Why did you just do that? That's
a great song. It was the first thousand times I
heard it. Oh, you don't like anywhere, you know. 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 Burning
down the house. It was once a great song as well.
I'm going to see David burndon Knight. Oh cool. So

(10:26):
you won't listen to come On, Aileen, but you'll regurgitate
the what's up Budweiser guys from the nineties, I've heard
that less frequently. Um, what connection did I hear recently
from the guy who directed those I think he's directing
movies now or something. The guy who directed those commercials.
They're like, you may like, you've never heard of this
movie director. But you ever, right, remember these guys Like

(10:49):
that was the gist of it. I'm surprised those ads
never got like a full movie themselves. It was that
that definitely that era, Oh for sure. Remember the Caveman
from the Guy co Eds. They had their own TV
show for yeah, like for like three episodes see that. Yeah,
this totally could have been a TV show. Call it.

(11:09):
What's up? Guys? Right, what's happening? Was taken? All right?
So where were we we were talking about the talking heads.
Let's talk about the forest. Well, the reason we're talking
about the forest is because while a character may or
may not have existed, the stuff in the ballads definitely

(11:33):
bears a strong resemblance actual historical events. Yeah right, Yeah,
the forest is significant here because at the time in
the Middle Ages, um how much it had a percentage
of two thirds of the land in England were was
forest land And it was sort of a It was
a place where the king, it was a place where

(11:56):
people could go hide out. So that's where it gets
this sort of outlaw uh lore is it was a
legit place for outlaws to go do their business, right,
but it was also an outlaw hide out because just
by hanging out in the forest, you were by definition
and outlaw because of those forest laws that were super
unpopular among people. You know, forest law means what. I

(12:19):
don't know what. I'll tell you what days, what happens
in the forest days in the forest, Yeah, unless 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.
I grew up in on two acres in the woods,
so I was always in the woods its own place.

(12:39):
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 camp fire every night,
eating roast pig that you find wandering around. Yeah, but
it was weird because the king could like that was
his land where he could go have you know, go

(13:00):
hunting and have his his dudes hunting. But it was
also lawless in a place to hide. It was weird.
There's a lot going on in the forest, right. So
the reason why you were just by definition and outlaw
if you were hanging out in the forces, because the
king had these forest laws that said all this forest,
this is mine, this is for my hunting, my friends hunting,

(13:21):
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 were serious punishments for so just being
in the forest made you an outlaw. 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

(13:43):
where like just some schmoke like you or me could
like wage war directly with the King of England and
gave him to come fight us, basically, And that's kind
of what happened. And that's why the forest was a
backdrop for um all of the robin Hood legends from
the beginning of the ballads up to the Um the
robin Hood men and Tights, they were all set in

(14:06):
the forest. And because this happened, the forest laws were
passed and everyone was really upset about it. So, whether
it's a 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. Yeah,
and there's there's a new Robin Hood movie coming out.

(14:27):
You know. It's crazy, Like it seems like every couple
of years this this just won't die. They're gonna do
a new version of it. And there's a new one
with the kid from Kidn't Play with kids from Kidn't Play.
He's awesome. He does that like jump through is remember
held his foot and then jump through the used to that. No,

(14:47):
I never could, Yeah, I would just fall flat on
my face. Young Chuck was a little more fleet of foot. Uh.
It's got the kid from the Kingsman, you know that guy.
He plays Robin Hood and Jamie Uh, Jamie Fox is
a little John I guess, but it's you know, of
course this one he's he's shooting like literally like five

(15:10):
arrows at once and they all managed to go in
different directions somehow. Oh is it a comedy? No, No,
it's real Okay, Like there's guys coming at him from
different 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. Shotgun and
for some weird reason, he's going he yeah, every every shot.

(15:31):
And then I was looking at movies today just while
we're on that, and I totally forgot there was a
Russell Crowe version that I didn't even see. I think
that was just Robin Hood, right, Robin Hood from like
two thousand and ten Scott, 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. Well, I looked

(15:54):
up on the Russell crow 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, uh that you know, robson and gives to
the poor. I would go check that one out. The
one that I was thinking of was from It was

(16:14):
directed by John Irvin Um starring Patrick Bergen, remember him,
Oh yeah, and Uma Thurman. That's the one. The historians
are like, this this really the best out of all
of them. As I like that movie when it came out,
I'll admit it. I saw JFK on the plane to

(16:35):
Australia and I gotta tell you, as it came up,
a Costner fan with that one guy is a great actor.
You fell in love all over again. Yeah, well, I
specifically avoid a draft day so I could leave the
door open to be a fan again. Yeah yeah, that's funny.
I don't remember. I'll remember was that preview for draft day.
That's all I saw, too. But I just remember that

(16:56):
they built up in that previews it's about the NFL drafts,
something so big, Like I can't believe that happened. It's
gonna I was like, what did they like kill somebody
in the draft room? Now they drafted calling Kaepernick Kaepernick,
that's so you Kaepernick. Whatever, Let's take a break. I
feel like we're off the rails and we're lost in

(17:17):
the forest. Yeah, and we'll come back right utter this
watch why Ska. But you should know that hyk you
should know y ska that you should know knows. But

(17:43):
Josh Clark, by the way, I want to say, I
admire calling Kaepernick or Kaepernick, and I meant no disrespect
by saying his name. You're right, that is just so me.
Of course I knew you're kneeling right now. In fact,
I know that you knew, but I just wanted to
sure you know um all right, so they're in the forest.
The forest makes historical sense, like we pointed out, that's

(18:06):
where outlaws did their bidding. Um. 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 could have been the King of note. Yeah,
but what's what's weird is if you read those original

(18:26):
ballads that are spelled all crazy, they mentioned the king once.
Out of all of them, there's just one mention of
the king, and they they refer to him as Edward
are comely King, Yeah, which I think is Edward three. Right,
that's what some historians say, Uh, if you take the
ballads that face value and that they were written contemporaneously

(18:46):
to Robin Hood's exploits, right, But a lot of people,
and even in the popular um 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.
He's always sniveling and weney in the mo and so
in the in the robin Hood legends, Robin Hood frequently

(19:08):
helped Richard the Lionheart 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. Um. But they
they think that it's possible, and some of the best
candidates for who Robin Hoo was based on. Actually we're

(19:29):
running around and interacting with the real life King John,
if not also King Richard too. 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 a hundred years before the first Robin
Hood ballad started appearing, right, which, in my opinion, lends

(19:51):
credence to the idea that the ballads are folklore based
on actual events, because that time span is just about
not enough for things to be kind of changed and
compressed and added to and um for a folklore to develop.
Like think about if you're describing like an outlaw, Like
if you or I like wrote something about Billy the

(20:12):
Kid based on stuff we'd heard, what will we come
up with? It'd be close, but it wouldn't be like accurate,
right right, Yeah, that's a good point. Uh. Richard though,
had a pretty interesting story um when he died and
this is something that is not lower but is uh
is close to recorded fact as we can get. He

(20:33):
was walking around the perimeter of a chateau in France,
um where he that was just there was a battle
going on, basically didn't have I get the feeling that
it was sort of winding down. So he may have
d chainmailed and was like just airing out his armpits
or something. And he was shot with a crossbow in

(20:54):
the shoulder. Ordinarily might not have been a big deal,
but it turned gangrenous. Uh. And some people say as
he was dying, he said, bring me the man who
shot me, 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, is it. It's not. The guy's

(21:15):
named Peter Basil. And after the king died, Uh, everybody
turned to Peter Basil and it was like, you're know
you're dead, right, He's like, I probably figured it's yeah.
It's like I was really hoping that wasn't the case.
But but didn't. 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, and then

(21:36):
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,
adding insult to injuries what it is? Yeah, So it
was custom at the time that you bury um the
king in different places, which sounds really horrific now, but

(22:00):
he was. He was cut up in buried different places,
heart in Normandy, his entrails and shallows and apparently the
rest of his remains in anjou. Right. So that was
a good brother. Yeah, that was Richard the lion Heart.
So he wasn't like deposed by his brother John. Um,

(22:21):
he actually died. He he was king for two years
after their father. Um what was his name, Henry, I
believe Henry the second? Yeah, Henry the second? Right? Yeah, Okay,
So um, after Henry the Second died, Richard took over
for two years. Then he dies and then John uh
ascends to the throne terror and John was like he's

(22:44):
known among historians is the worst king England's ever had. Yeah,
he was like you said he was paranoid, he was
had no scruples, he was humorless. Um, he was just
not a good guy. 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 gave it to himself. I actually wrote that, did

(23:06):
you write that? Very well done, thank you, Thank you everybody.
It sounded like a Josh Clark line. And in the movies,
like John's always just sort of a just that he's
sort of a whiny baby. He is, but he's also
very powerful and very evil and deadly, yes and vindictive,
right yeah, so um, this is in real life. That's
how he's remembered and described. He was very well known

(23:28):
for being a heavy taxer. He would take your state
and he would use these funds to like enrich himself
basically like you're saying, Um, But he was the the
noble or he was the king that the nobles rebelled
against and forced to sign the Magna Carta. That was John.
That means that he was such a bad king that

(23:49):
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 cart As
signed in twelve fifteen, So John was forced to sign that,
and this rebellion is kind of um part of the

(24:10):
robin Hood legend as well. Yeah, he wasn't cool, no,
but just everything going on around him was cool. And
I think that the point of John, and the reason
why I think that that 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

(24:31):
a respect for the rule of law and things 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 flaunted it. So when his father was around,
the idea of an outlaw and al law was a villain.
By the time John took over, um or after John

(24:54):
took over, that had reversed. The outlaw was in 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. Yeah, it
was prime time for something like this to take hold.

(25:14):
So as far as who Robin Hood may have been, um,
historians have tossed a lot of people into the into
the pot over the years, uh, and most of them
have some variation of that name. Um, there was a
Robin with a y hod h o d um. A
Robert Hood or robertis not bad. That was Gilbert Robin Hood? Sure,

(25:41):
why not with a y n um. So all these
historians are like, oh, it's got to be these three guys, right, yeah,
Robin Hood with a you. 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 uh for an outlaw. So it was created and

(26:02):
there's a little bit to back that up. Yeah, there
really is. They Actually this is like as clever as
an historian can get pretty good stuff, clever and lucky. Um.
Some historians I didn't find out who it was or when,
but they came upon a um, I guess, like a
civic proclamation about prior, which is a church official being

(26:25):
pardoned for seizing somebody's assets and the person and he
sees him without a warrant, which is what he was
being pardoned for. But the person whose assets he sees
was an outlaw named William rober Hood. Okay, a Robin
Hood right r O B E H O D. So
they were like, okay, this is a robin Hood right here.

(26:47):
They managed to find the years um court record before
for the same area, but that there was only one
prior in the area, and that that noted that the
prior had seized the assets of a guy in named
Robert Son or no Williams Son William Son of Robert Lefever.
So what they figured out was that the clerk in

(27:09):
the pardnering proclamation wrote down that the guy was a robohad,
which meant a fugitive, an outlaw, And um, 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 a generic term for an outlaw,

(27:32):
was so widespread that a clerk could write that down
denote somebody as a robohad and people would know what
they were talking about, which means that that legend of
Robin Hood had to have been around prior to this
and in circulation for long enough that it had spread. Yeah,
So in effect, Williams son of Robert Lefever is the

(27:52):
same person as William Robohad and this dude in twelve
sixty two. Uh, this clerk just took it upon himself
to give him that name, and no one thought he
was crazy, right. It almost like he had written down
William the bank robber or William the bandit rather than
writing his last name, which frankly didn't have a last name.

(28:13):
He was son of Robert Lefever because they didn't have
last names very much back then. So it was very
much like the clerk wrote William the outlaw Bandit. But
what what he used Robohad or Robin Hood instead of
outlaw Bandit's just somewhere over the ages we lost that
knowledge that Robohod or Robin Hood meant that and wasn't

(28:35):
an actual person. So there's this other guy, folk fits Warren.
I love this guy. He is a bad dude. 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 a little folk Fitz
Warren and young John, who I bet young John was

(28:55):
a not fun to be around. He's probably not a
fun playmate mine. Uh. And here's one story. They were
playing chess one day, John got mad, broke his chessboard
over folks head. Uh. 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,

(29:17):
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, and they think they found that's right. So, uh,
this John, as he was younger, went crying to daddy
and said he kicked me in the stomach, expecting to
get some sort of backup. And apparently that would have
been Henry the second. Um. I don't know if he

(29:38):
beat him, but he was beaten for complaining about being
kicked in the stomach. Yeah, so no wonder John grew
up to be a jerk. His dad did never have
his back. It sounds like, yeah, that's part of it,
I'm sure. So flash forward a bit. Uh, folks father
passes away, he inherits his ancestral holding at Whittington. John

(30:02):
comes to power and says, I remember when you kicked
me in the stomach, What a little bastard. I am
going to take your holdings, take your family estate basically,
and then give it to your enemy, Old Moriy fits Roger. Yeah, sorry,
Maury's there's a name as an s at the end.
These names are great. So Folk ends up murdering Morey's. Uh,

(30:28):
it might even be Morris Morris maybe yeah, probably today
it would be Morris fitz Roger's. Uh. Folk kills Morris
flees and basically wages a robin Hood like war against
John and his men for about three years, so this

(30:50):
could be him. Yeah, it could be because not just
the fact that he was battling um King John and
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 um that robin Hood was a fallen nobleman, somebody

(31:14):
of noble birth who either lost or renounced their title
and became an outlaw and then regained it. That's the
story of Folk fits Warren. Like he 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. Right, pretty good candidate. That was one. There's

(31:35):
another one, um where folk Um was was known to
while he was a forest bandit. He would hijack like
the King's people who were carrying the King's money problem
and Um he would say what do you have on you?
And the ones who told the truth about what they

(31:56):
actually had, the amount of currency they had on him,
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, is using disguises. Yeah, Folk fitz
Warren was not above disguising himself. Yeah. There was another guy,

(32:19):
historical outlaw name used to the Monk, who also had
the disguised thing down, very much like Robin in fact exactly,
he would disguise himself as a potter Um. And that
even goes to the Disney cartoon. Yeah, these disguises very
much a Robin Hood thing. I haven't I don't know,
used to the monk doesn't seem as um enticing to me?

(32:41):
Is his old fitz Warren no fits fits um or
folk is he's my guy too? Speaking of fits, that
we should tell everyone that that little tag at the
beginning of the name means that you're, uh, you're a
bastard child right in illegitimate son. I look that up
because it sounded too good to be true. But um,
the there was definitely a kid named fitz Roy, which

(33:05):
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 was widespread at the time, that
necessarily Folk fitz Warren was an illegitimate son, or that
um any of the other Fitzes were. Oh yeah, I
wonder today if like Fitzpatrick and Fitzgibbins and like Fitzgerald,

(33:29):
fitz Gerald is all or does that all mean illegitimate
son of Gerald or Fadrick. I don't know. I don't
know it's the truth anymore. Child, very interesting fits. Should
we take another break? Yeah, We'll let everybody stew on
that one for a little while. We'll be back right
after this skamember. That's why he should know, should know.

(34:07):
But Josh Clark, alright, so we've covered folk and we
covered Eustace fulk by the way, we gotta tell that
one story real quick about him. The beginning. Yeah, he
found out that another um, another bandit was using his name,

(34:29):
Pierce Morgan. What was his name? Pierce? What Pierce to Breuville. Okay,
that sounds like the sounds like romance novel names. Um.
But he found out Pierce was using his name robbing
somewhere else. And he captured Pierce and his men, and
he made pierced ties men up and then go around
in behead every single one of them with with his

(34:49):
own hands, with I guess, with the assumption that he
would be let 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 Gin 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 they're weight, you're waiting

(35:12):
in line as the guy next he's getting his head
cut off, and your turns next there's heads everywhere. 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. It's so disturbing. Disturbing, Yeah, like
losing your head. That's that's I think that's probably like
the first mortal fear any humans ever experienced. Like we're

(35:38):
we just 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. Yeah,
like your your death. 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? I think
that's what they found in rats after you were beheaded. Yeah.

(36:00):
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 would be like what, Oh, could
you imagine the horror of potentially looking up for four
seconds and seeing your headless body. No, No, my mind
just rails against going there. Yeah, it should, it's it's

(36:21):
replacing it with the with up. Yeah. Alright, so uh
there was a guy who wrote a book. A lot
of people are still trying to pieces together. Um. This
is not something that historians, uh put to bed years
and years ago. Definitely not um, only fourteen years ago
in two thousand and four, and probably since then. But
there was a dude named Brian Benison who wrote a

(36:44):
book called Robin Hood colin case closed, always a culd
the real story. That's pretty close to case close, Yeah,
pretty much. Uh. And he says he's a lot he's
in the in the camp. That Robin Hood is a
name like a tide uh. Similar, he says to Billy
the Kid. I thought Billy Kidd was a real dude though, right, Yeah.

(37:05):
I think his name is William Bonnie. Yeah, but I
mean he knew at the time that he was called
Billy the Kid r right. That. Yeah, that's a it's
a terrible analogy. I think so too, because it would
be like Robin son of La Fever. Right, but you
call him Robin Hood not even close. Um, But at
any rate, he claims it's a nickname and that of
a man named Roger Godbird or go Baird. Uh. And

(37:29):
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. That's pretty significant, and
we should point out to 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. Um, and that's not a person's name,

(37:50):
that's a that's a title. No, but there is such
a thing as the Sheriff of Nottingham. There was then.
But there were many of them, right exactly, just one
after the other. So that doesn't help out much, but
it does zero in on the area. But yeah, it
doesn't help get a time period down. No, but he
claims that it was specifically Reginald Degray that Sheriff of Nottingham,

(38:11):
and Um, after what four years as an outlaw, the
dude was captured, went to jail, pardoned, and then farmed
peacefully for the rest of his life. Yeah, And I
mean that guy is a pretty good candidate. He is
because one of the things about the robin Hood themes,
despite in some in some of the I think the ballads, No,

(38:34):
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 he was rebelling
against him fighting were like local authorities, like the sheriff
of Nottingham. Yeah, so he was kind of a working
class hero in among like the first working class the

(38:58):
West has ever seen. The awman farmers of the era
or of the area. They were like the first like
middle class that ever developed. Because either you 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

(39:19):
lord and you had a peasantry and you had, you know,
a bunch of land, you're friends with the king. But
in between there were yeoman's. I think that's how you
say it, y e o m a n yeoman. 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 robin Hood was. So

(39:39):
it sounds like that this was what this Roger Gobert is.
He was the same thing. And um, the idea that
he was battling the sheriff of Nottingham, that would 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 or in the

(40:00):
original ballads it was he was battling the sheriff of Doningham,
where he's battling local church officials. He hated the church officials,
but he loved God, he did so much so that
he would get arrested to come out to go to church, right.
He just hated the clergy which has been trying. Those
were the people who were taking your land or telling
you and jail are taking your stuff without a warrant. Yeah.

(40:22):
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 Robin Hood became to us in
like contemporary fiction. Apparently that the Jest Ballad only had
a couple of things that he did that we're even
close to, like these big altruistic acts that he's really

(40:44):
really most known for now. I think one of them
was he agreed to lend money to a night that
was one of those two there's five bucks just pay
it back with a two percent big right, But that
right that that whole um steal from the rich and
give to the poor thing. Yeah, that came thinks of
the Scottish historians. Yeah, all these authors sort of littered

(41:04):
it with that stuff because they had found a champion
of the underling basically in the common man, and ran
with it just from standing up to the king or
to the authority who were acting unjustly and above the
law themselves. Yeah. There's also no mention in those early
tales of a made Marian, who um seems to have
come along later and is actually one of a great

(41:25):
example of one of the first examples in literature of
female empowerment of a character, because made Marian was no
one's chump in any of these stories, and and he was.
She was like a sort of an equal to Robin,
partially because of her spunk and partially because Robin and
the stories at least uh was kind of down with equality. Right. Yeah,

(41:49):
that was one thing. That and basically being in in
um 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 um. He was a feminist and made Marian. From

(42:10):
what 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 here. It is huge. Um.

(42:31):
Whether or not any of that happened, it's kind of
irrelevant as far as literature is concerned. There was one
historian 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 of mention of

(42:54):
that kind of stuff, except for one that just had
one comment that Robin did poor men much good. It's okay,
I guess it's better than like he was the scourge
of the poor. 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, but they
didn't make a lot of hay out of it, or
at least this that one author didn't. Yeah, not at

(43:16):
the very beginning. In the ballads, Yeah there, it was
also like way more violent, Like there was um one
of the characters much the miller's son, much was his name,
and just loved that guy's name much. Um was. I
think in the ballots he lops off the head of
a page boy, a child to keep him from like
blabbing from what he saw, you know, the location of

(43:38):
where the merry Men were, right, Um there. It was
way more violent than the than the the later ones
depicted Robin Hood. Yeah, they were though all uh Robin
and his merry Men archery was always a big deal.
They're all very skilled archers, um and one of the swordsmen.
But they were all super skilled horseman and that's not

(44:01):
something that you see as much, although I think in
this new movie there he's pretty good horsemen. 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, shooting arrows like a
Mongol exactly. And that was who was so good, the Mongols,
the Mongol hordes who made their um thigh steaks. Remember

(44:27):
they sat on raw meat on their saddles to cure it.
Steaks tartar steak, tartar Uh. What else you got anything? Um? Oh?
He was killed by a treacherous prioris, a female church
official kind of like a middle manager. None, a middle
manager none. Yeah, he went to go see none for

(44:49):
right he was. Was he hurt healthcare? I'm not sure
what it was, but he went to go get bled
and she purposefully over bled him. And then when he
asked to be buried somewhere and she's like, no, I'm
gonna bar you on the side of the road. And
she supposedly erected a um this is in Kirklees. She
erected a stone that that said here lies Robin Hood

(45:12):
or something. I don't remember exactly what variation of robin
Hood it was, um Robert hood h u d e
um And supposedly she erected it. And this was written
hundreds of years later to to basically let travelers through
the woods know that they didn't have to fear being
held up any longer. Apparently, if your name had the

(45:33):
initials r H, it was fair game. Yeah. They really
have a lot of leeway here with with things like
hoo'd holde hod. Yeah. Well, everybody was illiterate, so it
didn't matter. Robin Robert robertas come on, maybe I'm on
you Middle English dumb dumuh. And supposedly after as he

(45:55):
was dying, he used his last bit of energy to
shoot it, to fire an arrow and say that's I
want to be buried. And that's what she was like.
It was nice for the movies, but it's not happening.
She's like, yeah, sure, sure you can die knowing that
I'll bury you just there over bled. Man, can you imagine,
because I guess you just get so weak that I
can't imagine. You're probably like I think I'm good, but

(46:16):
I'm not feeling so hot. She's like, just a little more.
I'm not dead yet. Yeah, uh, you got anything else? Nothing?
So that was Robin Hood. I love history. Uh And
if you love history too, we'll go look up some
Robin Hood stuff on the internet. Since I said that
it's time for this an, I'm gonna call this one

(46:37):
of the many, many, many roundabouts emails that we got.
We got a lot. Everyone loves the roundabouts. I know.
It was really surprising, like everyone wanted to talk about
their hometown roundabout. Everybody's very proud of their roundabout. Apologies
to the people of Carmel. Carmel, I didn't say it
was Carmel. I don't remember any more. I think it's

(46:57):
supposed to be Carmel. Let's go with Carmel. Hey, guys,
just finished roundabouts. I thought i'd pitch a little info
on our local one. In Alexandria, Louisiana, the es 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 in the area

(47:19):
for traffic accidents, especially during heavy traffic and bad weather.
It's a two lane circle with a large forested area
in the very center that is probably the size of
the city block. Like other roundabouts, you must yield the
traffic already on the circle. There are two lanes the
funnel traffic onto the circle and only one lane for
getting off. This means that if you're in the UH
if you enter in the left lane, you have to

(47:40):
merge to the right lane before you can exit because
the circle is so big. Though the speed limit is
fort within this circle, people inevitable 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.

(48:04):
No definitive planet it's replacement has been settled on, and
some locals are concerned about disrupting wildlife in the forest
as well, which has delayed any definitive action on whether
the circle will continue to exist. May the Circle be unbroken,
warmest regards. I love that Marshall wells from Colfax, Louisiana.
Thanks a lot, Marshall, appreciate that great story. UM let

(48:27):
us know how it pans out because we worry about
the wildlife too. Yeah, and thanks for everyone who wrote
in about the roundabouts. I love the enthusiasm. Yeah, it's nice,
especially from Carmela. If you want to get in touch
with Let's do that, you can go to stuff you
Show dot com, find our social media links, and you
can also send us an email to stuff podcast how
stuff works dot Com for more on this and thousands

(48:55):
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.