Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires or Robin Hood and the Widow's Three Sons is a traditional ballad about
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depic ...
, listed as
Child ballad
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...
140 and
Roud
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
70.
Synopsis
Robin meets an old woman lamenting that her sons will hang for poaching the king's deer. He persuades an old man to trade his ragged clothing for Robin's fine clothes, and in this disguise, offers to be the
sheriff's hangman. He blows on his horn, and his men arrive. In some variants, they hang the sheriff instead of the three young men; in all, they all escape back to the greenwood.
Influences
Francis James Child
Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of r ...
believed this to be the source of
Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly
Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly is Child ballad 141, about Robin Hood.
Synopsis
Robin Hood is brought news that the Sheriff of Nottingham surprised Will Stutely, and though he killed two of the Sheriff's men, he was captured. They set out to re ...
.
Adaptations
Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.
In 1894, he began ...
retold this story in ''
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
''The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire'' is an 1883 novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. Pyle compiled the traditional Robin Hood ballads as a series of episodes of a coherent narrative. For ...
'' with the hero as
Little John
Little John is a companion of Robin Hood who serves as his chief lieutenant and second-in-command of the Merry Men. He is one of only a handful of consistently named characters who relate to Robin Hood and one of the two oldest Merry Men, alo ...
; he used trickery to get the three young men away, and his bow broke, resulting in his own capture.
ROBIN HOOD RESCUING THREE SQUIRES No. 140, VERSION B
/ref> Robin Hood, having just killed Guy of Gisbourne
Sir Guy of Gisbourne (also spelled Gisburne, Gisborne, Gysborne, or Gisborn) is a character from the Robin Hood legends of English folklore. He first appears in "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (Child Ballad 118), where he is an assassin who atte ...
, disguises himself as Guy to carry out the rescue.
See also
*Robin Hood and the Beggar, I
"Robin Hood and the Beggar" is a story in the Robin Hood canon which has survived as, among other forms, a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad, and is a pair out of several ballads about the medieval folk hero that form part of the C ...
References
External links
''Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires''
Child Ballads
Robin Hood ballads
{{Folk-song-stub