ABSTRACT
Among early Robin Hood stories, one in particular stands out as “out of place.” The seventeenth-century ballad Robin Hood's Fishing principally takes place not in the greenwood but at sea, featuring the outlaw hero as an incompetent fisherman. The oddity of this scenario, however, affords the unique perspective of seeing the outlaw's interaction with the early modern fishing community of Scarborough in Yorkshire. Robin Hood's Fishing, shunned by some scholars as being too bizarre, ultimately adapts and reinforces many established conventions and characteristics of the Robin Hood tradition, including its liminal qualities: in this tale, Robin sails along the border of a mythic past and a mercantile future. Comparing the ballad with contemporaneous pamphlets that advocated for increased national fishing efforts, I argue that Robin Hood's opening remarks in the ballad echo the mercantilist rhetoric of the pamphlets; on the other hand, the events that transpire during Robin's tenure on board the fishing ship suggest that Robin Hood's Fishing actually critiques this nationalist rhetoric by representing Robin as a clumsy counterpoint to the competence of the Yorkshire fishers, thus affirming the value of local and regional fishing industries and seafood economies.
