How the Heather Looks

by Joan Bodger

  The drive to Nottingham was a long one. Lucy dozed and we kept Ian’s spirits buoyed by visions of sunlit glades in Sherwood Forest, the ghosts of men in Lincoln green flitting through the greenwood. At home we owned a first edition of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood. Even before he could properly comprehend Pyle’s version of the old stories, Ian had pored over the marvelously detailed black and white prints and incorporated some of the details into his own drawings and block-building.

  Everything in Pyle’s illustrations is meticulously observed. He had a great feeling for clothes and armor and must have collected a great wardrobe in which to dress the knights and peasants and pirates he liked to draw. Some of the same clothes may be seen in the illustrations of his disciple and pupil, N. C. Wyeth, and to this day the rag-tag ends of that wardrobe sometimes reappear and may be recognized in Andrew Wyeth’s paintings. There is no doubt that the clothes were well made in the first place. No one ever detailed a thonged sandal more lovingly than Howard Pyle. Hose and jerkin, kirtle and petticoat are all limned with the respect that one good craftsman pays another. The miracle is that he was able to suffuse his work with light and movement and the grace of humor.

  There is something so solid in Howard Pyle’s work. He obviously loved cobblestones and tiles and dressed stone and thatched roofs, although he never left his native shore to see Europe until the last year of his life. Much has been made of his “authenticity,” but if you look at his drawings carefully you can catch him out – in his American love for shingles, for example. Such curious anomalies could have been corrected if he had gone to “see for himself.” His castles and his landscapes have the qualities of a particularly vivid dream. Like Stanford White’s architectural creations, they are an American dream.

  Ian had fallen in love with Robin Hood. As soon as he was old enough (or perhaps a little before) to understand the gist of the tales, he went about the house with a mouthful of “Methinks” and “Forsooths” to chew on. Then someone gave him a set of records for his birthday – a jolly, swashbuckling version put out by Young People’s Records. Some of the songs were in the pleasantly spoofing spirit of Gilbert and Sullivan. It was one of these songs that we tried to remember now, driving along the road to Nottingham. John was especially good in one of the choruses: “Venison and hot bread and nut brown ale….” He put his heart and soul into it.

  We came to Nottingham in the late afternoon and took an instant dislike to the place. It was grimy and gray and clogged with traffic and seemed to have all the disadvantages of modern industrialism without the compensations of law and order. I have never seen such miserable driving. What that town needs is a good sheriff! High above the town, on a bluff, stands the Castle of Nottingham. Remembering how Robin Hood had been clapped into the dungeons there and, later, how he had been rescued by his Merry Men, we stopped to explore. The site, overlooking the Valley of the Trent, gave us a sweeping view and some idea of the power held by the renowned Sheriff of Nottingham. The castle itself is more Georgian than medieval. Later we found that it is but one of a series of fortifications built on the hill. The hill itself is honeycombed with caves, in which the remains of Stone Age men have been found. Even more exciting (we thought), the caves give access to medieval dungeons. It seems incredible that a handful of men could have stormed the castle, but if there was a secret way into the deepest and darkest dungeons, all sorts of possibilities are opened up, and the story gains validity. If not Robin Hood himself, then at least someone at some time may have been rescued from that formidable rock. It is a matter of historical record that in the fourteenth century a band of murderers hired, it is believed, by the young Edward III, entered the castle through a secret passage in order to slay Roger Mortimer, the Queen Mother’s favorite. The Castle of Nottingham is not a hospitable place. The rightful dukes have chosen not to live there since the previous structure was burned by the Luddites in the eighteenth century.

  Down below the castle, in a little park on Castle Road, we found a memorial to Robin Hood which was placed there in 1952 by a private philanthropist. Around the walls of the little park were four bronze plaques in low relief depicting incidents from the Robin Hood legend: Robin Hood and Little John fighting on a bridge; Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck fighting Guy of Gisbourne’s men; Richard Lionheart joining the hands of Robin Hood and Maid Marian; and Robin Hood shooting his last arrow. There were also two statuary groups, about half life-size. In one of them was Allan-a-Dale “playing the harp to Will Scarlet while watching Robin Hood shooting,” the other showed Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will Stuteley during “an idle moment in Sherwood Forest.” In the center was a larger-than-life-size figure of Robin Hood, his bow bent but curiously empty. We discovered later that the town fathers of Nottingham had been much upset by the theft of Robin Hood’s arrow some months before. No amount of detective work or public pleading had been able to restore it. How embarrassing! The bronzes had been given to commemorate the visit to Nottingham of the Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) during the city’s quincentenary celebrations. No less than the Duchess of Portland had presided at the unveiling. But to our family, at least, the sight of that foolishly empty bow was proof that the mischievous spirit of Sherwood Forest is not yet dead.

  We left Nottingham behind us and drove into open countryside again. Our way wound now through a copse of young fir trees, now through a waste of sand and shale interspersed with mine machinery. So this was Sherwood? I had expected something comparable to the parklike New Forest or, at least, the lush greens of Kent. I had read that once Sherwood and Barnsdale Forests stretched all the way from the Midlands to the sea – more than fifty miles – and that a squirrel could cover the entire distance without touching the ground. Except that we passed a sign declaring Thieves Wood School for Boys there was nothing to reassure us that we were indeed in Robin Hood’s old haunts. I had not expected to find virgin woodland, but neither had I expected this mottled scenery. What had happened?

  According to the little guidebook I purchased next day, there have always been stretches of sand and gravel in the forest – “forest” originally denoting land uncultivated or uncultivatable. In the thirteenth century the king’s writ dispossessed lesser lords in order to extend the royal hunting preserve and even more land reverted to the wilderness. At the same time, coinciding with the rise of the home weaving trade, there occurred an agricultural revolution. Much land was deliberately reduced to sheep pasture, so serfs and villeins were driven from their homes. The dispossessed, both lords and peasants, preferred to take their chances in the free life of the forest to the alternatives of starvation or ignoble town life. According to legend, one of these, the Earl of Huntington, became a forest outlaw, known to us as Robin Hood.

  The pasturing of sheep seems to have had a two-fold effect on the forest. On the one hand, the sharp hoofs and close-grazing habits of the sheep caused erosion of the soil, so that nothing would grow, hence the sandy wastes. On the other hand, when the thickly wooded parts of the forest were cropped close and the land fertilized by sheep droppings, even more of the land was cleared for cultivation. However, the Black Death further depopulated the region and the forest was little broken into until the enclosures of the last two hundred years. The wooden walls of generations of ships originated in Sherwood. Not only were there the famous oaks, but the soil was particularly suited to the ash, and there were groves of birch. Eventually, however, the splendid trees died. In the nineteenth century the growth of cities and towns drained off the water table, and oaks which had stood for hundreds of years withered at the roots. Vast tracts of virgin land were put to the plow and then, with the advent of the collieries came final violation. The greenwood of Robin Hood and his Merry Men became the dreary country side of the D. H. Lawrence novels. Lady Chatterley replaced Maid Marian.

  We spent the night at Forest House, Ollerton, the sort of small family hotel I had been longing for. The beds were comfortable, the atmosphere blessedly warm and homelike. While I busied myself with
giving Lucy her bath, I listened with half an ear while John and Ian talked of Robin Hood. It is always a delicate business to explain why Robin Hood – lawbreaker and a robber – is a good man. But John was undaunted. Carefully he explained to Ian the peasant’s complete lack of rights before the law. A villein had even fewer rights against his lord. If he were so foolish as to lodge a complaint there was no place to plead his cause except in the manorial court, where cases were decided by the lord himself – or his bailiff.

  “Why didn’t he go someplace else?” asked Ian.

  “Because the law wouldn’t let him. And if he tried to get another source of income – say he knew a little carpentry or blacksmithing – the Statute of Labourers forbade employers to pay him very much, so he was condemned to be poor all his life. It was even worse if he lived in a royal forest. He lost even his ordinary rights under common law, and he had to pay protection money to the keepers of the forest. He could be imprisoned for crimes against vert (timber) and against venison. In fact he could be thrown into a dungeon just for looking a little greedy.”

  “Why didn’t he run away and hide?” Ian asked. “That’s what I’d do!”

  “Some of them did do that. They went deep into the forest and they found other men there who had been outlawed. Some of them were really bad men, but most of them were probably just poor peasants who did not think of themselves as being bad. They were still loyal to the king and thought of themselves as being good men on the side of justice. Like Robin Hood and his men.”

  The next morning, after breakfast, we repacked our suitcases and put them in the car, bought a guidebook from the tobacco shop across the way, and set out to explore. We decided to walk to the Major Oak. We came to a sort of park at the end of the village street. Other families were strolling ahead of us on the well-trodden path, so that there was no fear of losing our way. As we walked we gazed curiously at the view on either side of us. There was a great deal of underbrush and second growth, with here and there the silhouette of some old forest giant looming through the mist. For the most part the oaks seemed but battered ghosts of their former selves, some of them not able to put forth one green leaf. “Mouldering towers noble and picturesque in their decay,” is how Washington Irving described them. That was more than one hundred years ago. They’ve mouldered considerably since.

  At last we came to the Major Oak (sometimes called the “Queen”), the oldest and largest in the forest. An enormous old man sat in front of it, collecting sixpences a look, although this was ridiculous. Even his bulk could not hide what we had come to see. The tree was tremendous – and very much alive! The broad trunk was split near the roots, but the great sinewy branches stretching parallel to the ground supported other branches and their tributaries and twigs and leaves in a miraculous green canopy. The tree was so old that the acorn from which it grew might have been shaken from the parent tree on a day when Robin Hood himself climbed its branches, yet so new that the buds for next year’s growth were forming beneath the leaves.

  Being native Californians, we had seen the giant redwoods, but they are architectural in effect, more like pillars of some great cathedral than living, growing trees. The oak tree flourishes outward rather than up and seems almost to welcome the companionship of humankind. The branches are broad and stairlike. A man could live in one of those old oaks; with small precaution he could sleep there. What a wonderful place for a lookout or an ambush! It was easy to imagine with what trepidation a convoy of merchants or monk-landlords would ride through those woods on the way to Nottingham or Southwell Minster. They would be too frightened, no doubt, to appreciate the beauty of the endless sun-dappled glades. Each giant oak must have loomed like a monster, waiting to pounce.

  It is generally agreed that whoever the historical Robin Hood might have been (and there is probably no end to argument on this point), the name affixed to him was not his own. Robin Hood (or Wood, or ’ood, or Goodfellow – have it your own way) was the self or spirit or half-remembered god of the greenwood. Robin Hood’s day came on May Day or Whitsuntide. Often the church was decorated with green branches and the floor strewn with fresh rushes. In many parishes the king and queen of the May became Robin Hood and Maid Marian and there was an actual enactment of some of the ballads from the Lytel Geste. Christina Hole, in English Folk Heroes, suggests that the wide geographical diversity of place names related to Robin Hood is probably related to these rites. Similarly, the several graves attributed to Little John might be confused with various local giants who played the role in the May Day revels.

  Robin Hood may have been any one of several outlaws who fled to the greenwood, and who took unto himself (or was given) the name of its spirit. Perhaps he was a veteran of Agincourt, where he learned to use the bow with a skill that became legendary. He is far more likely to have been a yeoman than a knight. The early ballads make no mention of his being of noble blood. Maurice Kean, in History Today, has written an excellent article on “Robin Hood and His Merry Men” in which he shows the limits of the peasant’s outlook. The peasant was not truly a revolutionary. His faith in his sovereign was unshakable. Robin Hood’s role was not to destroy, but to right the wrongs of, the old system. This is probably why so many of the stories end with Robin’s going to the king to make his peace. It is also why later tradition invested him with nobility. A peasant could never lead peasants.

  Robin Hood was not the only outlaw hero who fled to the forest to live on the king’s venison. As old as any of the ballads of Robin Hood is the ballad of the three outlaws of “merry Carlisle”: Adam Bell, Clum of the Clough, and William of Cloudslee. A good version of their escapades may be found in Barbara Picard’s Tales of the British People. But even older is Coke’s Tale of Gamelyn, a manuscript of which was owned by Chaucer. The ancient ballad describes Gamelyn’s life and adventures as an outlaw leader in the forest. Later Gamelyn appears as one of Robin Hood’s men in Sherwood Forest. Christina Hole writes that Much, the Miller’s son, was probably an earlier hero too, whose legends (rather than himself) attached themselves “for rations and quarters” to Robin Hood’s band. She also advances the theory that the original of Maid Marian is probably Maud Fitzwalter, who on refusing the proposals of King John, was poisoned by him and forthwith became a sort of Anglo-Saxon resistance heroine. King John was not a good man – he “had his little ways!”

  Christina Hole puts the place names of Nottingham and Yorkshire in a special category as being connected with the historical Robin Hood, rather than the ritualized Robin Goodfellow. Both she and the little guidebook we had bought at the tobacconist’s mention “Robin Hood’s Larder,” an old tree not far from the Major Oak. We dutifully went in search of it, but I cannot swear which of the leafless trunks that we saw that day was the one where Robin hid his venison. It might have been wise to drive over to Cresswell Crags to see the caves where Robin and his men are said to have hidden (caves and small boys being such a successful combination), or perhaps we could have sought out Kirklee Priory farm in order to see Robin’s grave. Instead, we went to look for Friar Tuck’s Well.

  The children, having had a good run through forest glades, were quite cheerful about wedging themselves back into the car. Ian, especially, was eager to see the place where Friar Tuck had spilled Robin into the river. According to our guidebook, the Friar’s well was at Fountain Dale, not far from Mansfield. We set off, chatting all the while of Friar Tuck and how the location of his cell was described in Howard Pyle’s version of Robin Hood:

  “Now, good uncle,” quoth Will Scarlet at last, when they had walked for a time beside this sweet bright river, “just beyond yon bend ahead of us is a shallow ford which in no place is deeper than thy mid-thigh, and upon the other side of the stream is a certain little hermitage hidden amidst the bosky tangle of the thickets wherein dwelleth the Friar of Fountain Dale!”

  Robin Hood goes ahead to look for the Friar, but as he creeps through the undergrowth to the ford he discovers “a stout, Brawny fellow” seated with hi
s back against a willow tree eating a meat pasty, drinking Malmsey from a pottle, and carrying on an intermittent dialogue with himself. When this lusty fellow at length bursts into song, Robin joins him in the chorus and is forthwith challenged to a duel as penalty for eavesdropping. There follows a battle of wits in which Robin thinks to persuade the man to carry him across the river, but ends with a ducking instead. It is only when the man discovers the true identity of Robin that he reveals himself as Friar of Fountain Dale, and asks to join Robin’s band.

  A man walking his collie along the road gave us directions to the gate. We entered and drove along a drive that ran through a rough meadow toward the house. Several metal caravans were standing in the deep grass under the trees. A woman hanging clothes on a line strung from one of the caravans to a tree gave us directions. She took it quite for granted that we wanted to see the well.

  Following directions, we set off through a veritable forest of rhododendron. The path led along the margin of a dark, still pond that lay depressingly motionless beneath the shadows of overhanging willows. The name Fountain Dale would suggest a valley of gushing springs, but the water seemed just to seep up from the ground in rather a messy way. Christina Hole writes that Friar Tuck’s cells stand at Copmanhurst in the woods of Fountain Dale, on the banks of the little River Rain in “a remote spot” in the Nottinghamshire woods. The spot was remote enough, an appropriate place for a hermit monk, but for the life of us we could not reconcile it with Howard Pyle’s “sweet bright river.” We came at last to the well, choked with brush and stones. Farther on we came to some stone steps which led up to a little iron gate and the ruins of a little chapel. We were rather disillusioned by the time we got back to the car. It had all been rather anticlimactic.