#amazing #robinhood #thief Through retellings, additions, and variations, a body of familiar characters associated with Robin Hood has been created. These include his lover, Maid Marian, his band of outlaws, the Merry Men, and his chief opponent, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The Sheriff is often depicted as assisting Prince John in usurping the rightful but absent King Richard, to whom Robin Hood remains loyal. His partisanship of the common people and his hostility to the Sheriff of Nottingham are early recorded features of the legend, but his interest in the rightfulness of the king is not, and neither is his setting in the reign of Richard I. He became a popular folk figure in the Late Middle Ages. The earliest known ballads featuring him are from the 15th century. There have been numerous variations and adaptations of the story over the subsequent years, and the story continues to be widely represented in literature, film, and television. Robin Hood is considered one of the best-known tales of English folklore. In popular culture, the term "Robin Hood" is often used to describe a heroic outlaw or rebel against tyranny. The historicity of Robin Hood has been debated for centuries. There are numerous references to historical figures with similar names that have been proposed as possible evidence of his existence, some dating back to the late 13th century. At least eight plausible origins to the story have been mooted by historians and folklorists, including suggestions that "Robin Hood" was a stock alias used by or in reference to bandits. The historicity of Robin Hood has been debated for centuries. A difficulty with any such historical research is that Robert was a very common given name in medieval England, and 'Robin' (or Robyn) was its very common diminutive, especially in the 13th century;[94] it is a French hypocorism,[95] already mentioned in the Roman de Renart in the 12th century. The surname Hood (by any spelling) was also fairly common because it referred either to a hooder, who was a maker of hoods, or alternatively to somebody who wore a hood as a head-covering. It is therefore unsurprising that medieval records mention a number of people called "Robert Hood" or "Robin Hood", some of whom are known criminals. Another view on the origin of the name is expressed in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica which remarks that "hood" was a common dialectical form of "wood" (compare Dutch hout, pronounced /hʌut/, also meaning "wood"), and that the outlaw's name has been given as "Robin Wood".[96] There are a number of references to Robin Hood as Robin Wood, or Whood, or Whod, from the 16th and 17th centuries. The earliest recorded example, in connection with May games in Somerset, dates from 1518.
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