No one knows for sure if Robin Hood and his Merry Men really existed, but there isn’t much evidence that he did.
All we know is that he should have existed as a heroic outlaw, archer and swordsman in English folklore, along with his Merry Men.
Whether fact or fiction, the first mention of him was in 1378, or thereabouts.
William Langland’s “Piers Plowman” contains a priest character who’s so drunk he can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer, but the “rhymes of Robin Hood” flow freely from his lips.
Over the years, the oral traditions of Robin Hood were put into writing and passed on as literature.
With each retelling, the story was changed a little to fit the audience, and we’ve ended up today with the “robbing the rich to give to the poor” rendition that we know and love.
