Robin Hood,
who was born at Woolley near Wakefield,
who fought with Thomas at Boroughbridge in thirteen-twenty-two,
who was outlawed afterwards having witnessed the execution of Thomas in his
castle at Pontefract,
who lived for two years in the forest of Barnsdale,
who was the hero of ballads,
who received a pardon from Edward, our comely king,
who served as 'porteur' to the king before returning to his chapel at Norton,
who died at Kirklees,
could have been proud of this place!
Losing one's way in the forest is easily done,
treading through the undergrowth now scarcely half as thick six and a half
centuries on.
Most of the trees have gone,
been thinned,
giving way to farms and collieries.
Sufficient remains still to lure the ardent forester
and trap the unwary in its maze of pathways.
All this is true on a winter Wednesday evening,
but on a summer Sunday afternoon
the children, and adults too, often outnumber the trees -
people mostly who know not the true facts of history
but who can be led to believe in the Sherwood myth of Nottinghamshire
with the trappings of a Maid Marion brought over from France two and
a half centuries too late for her English lover,
and a friar of a disputed order.
Tourists may believe in a figure
distorted from roguish reality
into a fun-loving freedom-fighter hiding from incompetent sheriffs in
the largest tree in Sherwood.
This tree,
surrounded by ice-cream wrappers, cigarette-cartons and other discarded
paraphernalia of the masses,
propped up with ropes and metal sheeting and four poles (telegraph type),
is a Mecca for the naive led by tourist-gleaning southerners spinning
their fabrications over a solid foundation conveniently buried and
overlooked.
Robin would have retched at the thought of all this
for the Sherwood that he knew
was a tiny, barely significant place in Eggborough
where stands now a massive power station feeding Yorkshire with electricity.
In a modern car the journey takes an hour between the two.
In Robin's day, on foot, it took a day.
He may, on his way to Nottingham to receive his pardon from the king,
have passed this very spot,
for the forests were his domain and through these his route would lie.
Then might he have been proud of this southern tree,
but of latter-day misplaced hero-worship he would only have despaired.
© GERALD ENGLAND
Composed: Sheffield, 7th July 1970
Publications
1989 Yorkshire Robin Hood Review (UK)
1991 Legend (Canada)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)
1992 Yorkshire Robin Hood Society Newsheet (UK)
