ABSTRACT
Once the ballads are set in their historical context of the widespread popular unrest of the later middle ages, a great many of the problems which they pose disappear. We can see now why it is that they remained the literary property of the popular audience; it was impossible to adapt to the demands of aristocratic readers stories which were so directly inspired by contentious social thinking. This was not the case with, for instance, the stories of Fulk Fitzwarin who was the ideal of an independent baronage, and for that reason his tale is full of that kind of chivalrous adventure which appealed to an upper class public. We can also now account for the violent mood of the outlaw legends in terms of the very real bitterness of common people against the corruptions of the system, and for the presentation of that bitterness through the medium of stories centring about the deeds of a hero who was agin the law, because the law appeared as the corrupt instrument of aristocratic tyranny. Certain questions, however, still remain for the historian. Firstly, can he track down the mysterious personality of the hero of the ballads? Is the legend of Robin Hood based ultimately, if remotely, on the life of some historical person, or is he an ideal creation, a figure of the popular imagination, about whom traditional stories once credited to older heroes have collected, 175adapted by singers of a new generation to the changed attitudes of a later period? And secondly, what verisimilitude is there in the story of Robin Hood? Is the type-cast outlaw chief of the ballads a projection of the wishful thinking of the common man, or is he drawn, with some excusable romantic distortion, from the life?
