Was There A Real Robin Hood?

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. 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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? 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 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 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. 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

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

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

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. 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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

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 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, 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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, 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? 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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

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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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,

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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 of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.