What is the best Robin Hood story?
You’re absolutely right: there is no definitive version of Robin Hood. The earliest tales come to us in written ballad form, the earliest of those being composed around the 15th century. However, we know that before then there was a ‘lost’ tradition of ‘rymes of Robyn Hood’: in 1377 they were mentioned in a work called ‘Piers Plowman’ (not about Robin Hood itself, but the ‘rymes’ are mentioned). So we know that there are very early lost tales, probably orally transmitted (i.e. by word of mouth rather than written), and we can only guess at what was in them. They may have been wholly different to the ballad tradition… or not. Who knows? It’s unknown whether Robin was a real person or a creation of myth and minstrel, but if he did exist, then it would have likely been late 12th-early 13th centuries (his name is recorded in 1262 as a nickname for a presumably different outlaw, so we have to assume it was proverbial even by then). So there was a good couple of hundred years between his lif
