ABSTRACT
A robin hood who played his part on the stage of real life eludes the historians' pursuit. The quest seems fruitless, for there are woven into his myth too many strands of traditional story which are far older than the world from whose circumstances the ballad makers took their cue. But this does not mean that the ballad makers' world of the ‘fair forest’ where the out-law king is master is a pure figment of popular imagination. Robin Hood is not just a Fulk Fitzwarin whose castle and whose noble ancestry have been forgotten because they do not suit the story of a yeoman; he stands a good deal nearer to life. If modern research has failed to unearth a man of flesh and blood from dusty medieval records, it has shown that the outlaw's legendary career does not lack verisimilitude.
