Robin Hood.  The natural refuge and stronghold of the outlaw was the woods.  Hence he is termed by Latin writers silvatious, by the Normans forestier.  The Anglo-Saxon robber or highwayman is called a woodrover wealdgenga, and the Norse word for outlaw is exactly equivalent.[11] It has often been suggested that Robin Hood is a corruption, or dialectic form, of Robin of the Wood; and when we remember that wood is pronounced hood in some parts of England,[12] (as whoop is pronounced hoop everywhere,) and that the outlaw bears in so many languages a name descriptive of his habitation, this notion will not seem an idle fancy.

Various circumstances, however, have disposed writers of learning to look farther for a solution of the question before us.  Mr. Wright propounds an hypothesis that Robin Hood “one among the personages of the early mythology of the Teutonic peoples”; and a German scholar,[13] in an exceedingly interesting article which throws much light on the history of English sports, has endeavored to show specifically that he is in name and substance one with the god Woden.  The arguments by which these views are supported, though in their present shape very far from convincing, are entitled to a respectful consideration.

The most important of these arguments are those which are based on the peculiar connection between Robin Hood and the month of May.  Mr. Wright has justly remarked, that either an express mention of this month, or a vivid description of the season, in the older ballads, shows that the feats of the hero were generally performed during this part of the year.  Thus, the adventure of “Robin Hood and the Monk” befell on “a morning of May.”  “Robin Hood and the Potter” and “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne” begin, like “Robin Hood and the Monk,” with a description of the season when leaves are long, blossoms are shooting, and the small birds are singing; and this season, though called summer, is at the same time spoken of as May in “Robin Hood and the Monk,” which, from the description there given, it needs must be.  The liberation of Cloudesly by Adam Bel and Clym of the Clough is also achieved “on a merry morning of May.”

Robin Hood is, moreover, intimately associated with the month of May through the games which were celebrated at that time of the year.  The history of these games is unfortunately very defective, and hardly extends farther back than the beginning of the sixteenth century.  By that time their primitive character seems to have been corrupted, or at least their significance was so far forgotten, that distinct pastimes and ceremonials were capriciously intermixed.  At the beginning of the sixteenth century the May sports in vogue were, besides a contest of archery, four pageants,—­the Kingham, or election of a Lord and Lady of the May, otherwise called Summer King and Queen, the Morris-Dance, the Hobby-Horse, and the “Robin Hood.”