robin hood

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

any one know anything about him?

[Tower of Bebel]

you mean the fictional character?

[hajduk]

he is the ancient god of woods called Rob of tha wood and after the paors suffered under english royality he become a legend and paors cal him Robin Hood... actualy he never exist

[Tower of Bebel]

The legend is not quite far fetched. In Europe of the middle ages many forests sruvived deforestation because of the king who kept many forests as personal domain. They were called hunting forests as the king went hunting there. Especially in England and less in the Low Countries were the French King or German emperor had no foodhold.
Farmers, villagers and townsmen tried to fence off these small pockets of forests to keep wild animals in and thiefs out. This was not an easy task and it is illustrated by the numerous stories of outlaws hiding in the forests. One of these stories or songs is the narative of Robin Hood and his merry men in Sherwood forest.
Robin Hood might be the product of imagination, but characters like him really excisted. In the year 1280 the king was after Geoffrey du Park, who frightened the townsmen who came near Feckham Forest in Worcestershire. He had a gang of over one hundred outlaws. One of them, yes, was their own priest.

[Dr Mindbender]

hes a load of BS the local council uses to sucker in the tourists... <_<

[CornetJoyce]

Robin may have been a composite of numerous figures, but we do know that he and his merry men were much admired by the peasants. May Day was Robin Hood&#39;s day and the peasants became Merry Men and elected a Robin Hood. Henry the Eighth was said to have been seized by the Merry Men while riding through the wood on May Day, tied to the sacred tamarack tree and questioned. The Merry Men, being satisfied with his answers, declared him a good king and shared with him venison taken from the royal forest. The Day was suppressed over the course of the 16th century but in one of the last of the old May Days in Scotland, the Merry Men broke open the prisons and freed the prisoners.

[Tatarin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_hood

:)

[Prairie Fire]

Robin hood... Bourgie fairy tale. <_<

He "robbed from the rich, gave to the poor&#39;, never mobilizing the poor to overthrow the rich (with the exception of some of the Robin hood movies.).

He overthrows the sheriff of Naughtingham, and occasionally Prince John in some versions, in favour of instating another king.

Wow, Robin hood gave charity to the poor from the rich (rather than mobilizing them to take power and the means of production for themselves), and fought one feudalist in favour of another feudalist, all the while masquerading as a peasnt rebel.

He must have been the worlds first social democrat :lol: .

In some versions he is even nobility himself, or former nobility; great the concept of "the landowner who fights for his people". Brilliant

[Luís Henrique]

And besides he never read Marx or Bakunin... <_<

Luís Henrique

[Alf]

Or, an even greater omission, Enver Hoxha.

Problem with the maoists is that they don&#39;t understand why the feudal peasantry wasn&#39;t a revolutionary class. That&#39;s not to say that they didn&#39;t struggle bitterly against exploitation, but it was hard for them to develop a concept of self-emancipation. Hence the strength of ideas like "our King is OK, he just has bad advisers", or the tendency to look towards other saviours from on high - like semi-mythical outlaw figures or dissident nobles. The phenemenon of peasant rebellions led by such &#39;gentry&#39; was quite common - for example Ket&#39;s rebellion in Tudor times in England. Hence also their tendency to see the overthrow of the existing order through millenial and mythological glasses. It&#39;s ridiculous to blame the peasants for this. Robin Hood, whether he existed specifically or as a kind of composite, is therefore an authentic expression of peasant revolt.

Whereas Hoxha and Mao, sometimes presented as peasant revolutionaries, are the monstrous offspring of a decrepit capitalist order. Just thought I&#39;d mention that.

[CornetJoyce]

The Ketts were not nobles but a prosperous tanner and a butcher. They didn&#39;t initiate the revolt but joined it as vanguardists. Robert Ketts told the peasants

“I am ready to do whatever not only to repress, but to subdue the power of great men, and I hope to bring it to pass ere long that as ye repent your painful labour, so shall these the great ones of their pride. Moreover, I promise that the hurt done unto the public weal and the common pasture by the importunate lords thereof shall be righted.

Whatever lands I have enclosed shall again be made common unto ye and all men, and my own hand shall first perform it. Never shall I be wanting where your good is concerned. You shall have me if you will, not only as a companion, but as a captain, and in the doing of so great a work before us, not only as a fellow, but for a general standard bearer and chief. Not only will I be present at your councils but, if you will have it so, henceforth I will preside at them.”

Nor were the Ketts less faithful to their followers than other vanguardists. Robert said

"I refuse not to sacrifice my substance, yea my very life itself, so highly do I esteem the cause in which we are engaged."

And he and his brother did just that. They were both hanged.

[Oswy]

I don&#39;t think the Robin Hood myth casts him as a bourgeois figure entirely. Yes, one stream of stories centres on his noble status and how his lands have been confiscated (i.e. he is, ordinarily, part of the elite and landowning class). But in other streams the mythos of Robin is very radical in his intervening in material injustices on behalf of the poor by redistribution of the ill-gotten gains of the rich.

I suspect that the kind of Robin Hood story you told and liked to listen to in medieval England depended on your socio-economic condition. As ever, people take from (and read into) whatever elements in a story appeal most.

[Alf]

Cornet, you are right: a monograph on Ket&#39;s Rebellion by ST Bindoff, published in 1949, describes the Kets as "well-to-do tradesmen". However my basic point still stands: peasant movements were often led by members of other classes. On the other hand, they did on occasion show an extraordinary capacity for self-organisation. I have often wondered for example how the peasants of Kent and Essex succeeded in mobilising themselves into a huge army in a very brief space of time in 1381. On the other hand, they paid very heavily for their illusions in &#39;good king Richard&#39;, who no sooner had promised to get rid of serfdom than he reneged on all his promises and unleashed a terrible repression against them.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17, 2007 05:40 pm
peasant movements were often led by members of other classes. On the other hand, they did on occasion show an extraordinary capacity for self-organisation. I have often wondered for example how the peasants of Kent and Essex succeeded in mobilising themselves into a huge army in a very brief space of time in 1381. On the other hand, they paid very heavily for their illusions in &#39;good king Richard&#39;, who no sooner had promised to get rid of serfdom than he reneged on all his promises and unleashed a terrible repression against them.
Movements in general are often led by member of other classes. The Great Peasant Revolt of 1381 was an exception and maybe that was the key to its remarkable cohesion, although it didn&#39;t prevent them from being duped by the king in that moment of shock and confusion after his officials had murdered Tyler.

The exclamation Shakespeare attributes to Jack Cade, "First, kill all the lawyers." was a commonplace among rebellious peasants, who blamed the lawyers for screwing them out of ancient rights. Tradesmen and of course Lollard priests such as Mad John were the likely leaders.

Later Risings have mostly been led by lawyers rather than tradesmen, making revolution more logocentric if nothing else.

[bootleg42]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 01:12 am
He must have been the worlds first social democrat :lol: .


LMAO, I was really laughing at that one. Good one. :lol:

[spartan]

he was a upper class guy who after losing his lands decides to form britains first communist rural guerrilla army which stole from the rich and then redistributed it to the poor. :D

[Led Zeppelin]

He was cool:

http://pbfcomics.com/archive/PBF205-Robin_Hood.jpg