The Song of Robin Hood

Dear Reader Who Comes To This Book Having Been Exposed Only to Pop Accounts of Robin Hood:

Let's be clear: The stories of Robin Hood are folktales, but they are not nursery tales. The three oldest known stories of Robin Hood -- "The Gest of Robyn Hode," "Robin Hood and the Monk," and "Robin Hood and the Potter" -- are metrical romances, probably designed to be sung, and are aimed squarely at adults. The "Gest" and the "Monk" both involve multiple deaths, and in the "Monk" at least one death is pure and simple murder.

So we shouldn't expect Robin Hood tales to be pretty. But we should expect them to be musical.

Unfortunately, very few of the tunes of the Robin Hood ballads survive. The fact that the best versions are old means that they show more were taken down before it became habitual to take down the tunes of folk songs.

Yet this is a book of texts and tunes. Where do the tunes come from? A few are genuinely traditional (although often from versions of the songs much later than the earliest texts). Others are, frankly, guesses and reconstructions. So be warned: These are not true traditional Robin Hood songs.

And there are no background notes. For that, you need Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, or some other scholarly Robin Hood work. On the other hand, those books won't get you the ornate woodcut-type artwork you see here.

So if you want pretty versions of Robin Hood songs, this may be the book for you. If you want real songs of Robin Hood... get Child, or Dobson and Taylor's Rhymes of Robin Hood, or some other serious book. show less

Heard about this, I think, from Jon Klassen & Mac Barnett's newsletter Looking At Picture Books - or maybe it was Betsy Bird? Anyway just a phenomenal amount of illustrations here - one for each verse of each of the 15 songs, plus a full page illustration for each. Preface, illustrator's note, a list of the flora and fauna used in each ballad (from illustrator), ToC, glossary. Caldecott Honor 1948.

Remarkable research has been done in the creation of this book. The ballads add much to the verse and story.

this book is really long and the pictures are too busy. There is a small illustration for every verse of every song and there is too much on the pages. This is not a book that most children will sit down and read.

Amazing just amazing.