Robin Hood's Mary Men

Our post-Enlightenment North Atlantic culture draws a bright red line separating fact and fiction. Where the line is drawn and by whom is another matter entirely. We believe there is such a line IRL, even if we can’t say exactly where it is.

Most other cultures, however, are a bit more flexible. They understand that history and mythology represent theoretical poles of a fuzzy continuum. George Washington, for example, is certainly an historical figure but many legends (e.g. a certain cherry tree) traditionally attach to him as well.

Rarely, but occasionally, a character appears for whom the overlap of history and legend is essential, not just accidental. Think King Arthur or Jean d’Arc. Robin Hood is one of those who explicitly bridge history and legend. 

It is highly likely that the story of Robin Hood began as the story of a flesh and blood individual. We just can’t say which individual. Several potential ‘Robins’ have been identified in the historical record, but we don’t know which of them, if any, was actually ‘the Hood’. 

Here’s what we can claim to know about Robin with a reasonable degree of confidence: 

• He lived in a forest near Nottingham with a man called ‘Little John’ and assorted other Merry Men.

• He was fiercely religious, a ‘daily communicant’, and specially devoted to the cult of the Virgin Mary.

• He strenuously opposed both the rapacious secular authority (King John) and the  opulent church hierarchy.

• He advocated for a fundamental redistribution of wealth. His signature meme could double as a 21^st century political slogan: Rob the Rich to Give to the Poor. 2500 years earlier, it would have simply been: Jubilee! 

• He was an early practitioner of what’s now called Propaganda of the Deed, defined by Wikipedia as “direct action intended to influence public opinion…(and) meant to serve as an example for others to follow, acting as a catalyst for social revolution.”

  
  

  • The lives of Jesus and the Apostles are paradigms of Direct Action, i.e. communicating the Gospel message by living it.

  • Likewise, the early church (Acts of the Apostles).

  • Others associated with Propaganda of the Deed include monastic orders, various utopian communities, the Black Panther Party, the Fruit of Islam, Hippies, Yippies (vs. Yuppies) and the Weather Underground. Today, Propaganda of the Deed is associated with the Anarchist Movement.

• He subscribed to a cosmology and an ethics grounded in the concept of Natural Law:

  • Nature’s Processes x(Oral Torah) instantiate, reveal (Aletheia), and communicate God’s laws (Written Torah).

  • The moral quality of a society is reflected in the fecundity of its land and the health of its monarch. (Grail Legend)  

Based on the near unanimous testimony of the earliest source material, these aspects of Robin’s story would seem to meet the standard criteria for ‘unambiguous historical truth’. Nonetheless, for our purposes, it matters not whether these things are true as history just so long as they ring true as mythology. 

Accordingly, the character of Robin Hood, as reported and/or imagined, can be understood as the intersection of disparate cultural and intellectual threads:

• Popular opposition to King John in favor of his brother Richard Coeur de Lion.

• Revolt of the nobles leading to the Magna Carta.

• The Virgin Mary as the Christian cognate of various pagan Earth goddesses - Mother Nature, Gaia, Easter, et al.

• The Magnificat (Luke 1: 46 – 52) – militant Mary’s prescription for socioeconomic justice: “He (YHWH) has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted-up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things but the rich he has sent away empty.” 

• May Day - the date traditionally set aside to celebrate fertility (human & agricultural) and to promote economic justice. Also, the first day of the month chosen by the Church for special Marian devotions and the date most often set aside for the secular celebration of labor.

• The Maypole, symbol traditionally associated with Robin Hood – a single, vertical tree, Yggdrasil, the axis mundi, Joyce’s omphalos, the umbilical cord of the universe. The maypole symbolizes the connection between heaven and earth, the transcendent and the immanent. Today, a Maypole is decorated every May in honor of the Blessed Virgin. 

But how does Robin’s sparse biography allow us to connect him to the cult of the Virgin Mary?

• The forest location is the first clue. Forests and even individual trees were divine according to the Celtic Druids, early disciples of Natural Law. 

• Robin attended Mass several times each day, all while hiding to avoid the Sheriff's posse. With Robin, the grove has its altar! (Ezra Pound)

• Robin ignores the contingent laws of church and state and instead follows the necessary precepts of Natural Law. 

• A slightly later tradition introduces a ‘love interest’ for Robin, the beautiful Maid Marian. In traditional May Day lore (late 13^th century France), Maid Marian was a shepherdess who was also “Queen of the May” (a title now reserved for Mary, the Mother of God). 

So, who is Robin’s Marian, really? Texts suggest an alternate spelling of her name: ‘Marion’, a derivative of ‘Mary’. Is it possible that ‘Maid Marian’ and ‘Mary, the mother of Jesus’, are one and the same person? Is it possible that Robin’s storied love affair is a metaphor for his mystical attachment to Mary? 

This may also shed light on another mystery, Robin’s Merry Men. What makes a bunch of outlaws, hiding in Sherwood Forest for fear of the Sherriff, living off the land and facing almost certain torture and execution if caught, so darn merry? 

Could it be that Robin’s Merry Men are really Mary Men, devoted, like their leader, to the cult of the Blessed Virgin? In that case, can we understand Robin’s ‘movement’ as the manifestation of Mary’s eschatological vision (Magnificat) as concrete social action? Is the phenomenon we call ‘Robin Hood’ a translation of Mary’s Magnificat into a political Manifesto, communicated broadly via the language of Direct Action (above)?

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Daniel Maclise’s Robin Hood and His Merry Men (1839) presents the outlaw band as noble, theatrical figures gathered in a lush, idealized Sherwood Forest. The painting captures the Victorian fascination with medieval heroism, turning Robin Hood into a symbol of camaraderie, justice, and romantic rebellion.