The Gest of Robyn Hode is the closest thing we have to Robin Hood's original story: 456 verses, written down in the 1400s and printed around 1500, long before the green tights, Maid Marian and the Earl of Huntingdon. It opens with the outlaw leaning on a tree in Barnsdale, Yorkshire, and Little John asking him a simple question: where do we rob, and who do we spare?
Robin's answer is the whole song. Leave the farmer alone. Leave the honest yeoman alone, and even the knight, if he's a decent sort. The bishops and archbishops you can beat and tie up. And the High Sheriff of Nottingham: "him hold ye in your mind." Keep him in mind. He's the one we're really after.
It needed a tune now because that is still the right list. Not "rob the rich," which can mean anybody, but: spare the people who work, and remember who holds the keys.
Paul Buhle's graphic history of Robin, the main source behind this song, argues that no other medieval hero has lasted so long because Robin carries several fights at once: something close to class conflict, the first ideas of citizens' rights, and the defense of the forest itself (Buhle, pp. 5–6). The song keeps to the list. The Roots post follows the rest.
Lyrics
Listen, listen, gentlemen,
that be of freeborn blood,
I shall you tell of a good yeoman,
his name was Robin Hood.
Oh, he was a proud outlaw
while he walked on ground,
so courteous an outlaw as he was one
was never none found.
Robin stood in Barnsdale
and leaned him to a tree,
and by him stood Little John,
a good yeoman was he.
"Master," then said Little John,
"and we our board shall spread,
tell us whither we shall go
and what life we shall lead.
Where we shall take, where we shall leave,
where we shall abide behind,
where we shall rob, where we shall reave,
where we shall beat and bind,
where we shall beat and bind,
where we shall beat and bind."
"Thereof no force," then said Robin,
"we shall do well enow,
but look ye do no peasant harm
that tilleth with their plow.
No more ye shall harm no good yeoman
that walketh by greenwood shaw,
nor yet no knight nor no squire
that will be a good fellow."
"Master," then said Little John,
"and we our board shall spread,
tell us whither we shall go
and what life we shall live.
Where we shall take, where we shall leave,
where we shall abide behind,
where we shall rob, where we shall reave,
where we shall beat and bind,
where we shall beat and bind."
"These bishops and these archbishops,
them ye shall beat and bind,
the high sheriff of Nottingham,
him hold ye in your mind.
These bishops and these archbishops,
them ye shall beat and bind,
the high sheriff of Nottingham,
him hold ye in your mind.
Him hold ye in your mind,
him hold ye in your mind,
him hold ye in your fucking mind."
The text
- Words by: Anonymous, A Gest of Robyn Hode, stanzas 1–3 and 11–15 (Child ballad 117)
- Year: composed about 1450–1500; first printed in London by Wynkyn de Worde and in Antwerp by Jan van Doesborch, around 1500–1515
- Source edition: Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, vol. 3 (1888), ballad 117A; modern edition by Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (TEAMS, 1997)
- Main source for the song and its roots: Paul Buhle, Robin Hood: People's Outlaw and Forest Hero; A Graphic Guide (PM Press, 2011). Its reading of Robin as a commoner of the forest, the hero the powerful kept trying to tame, is the one this page follows.
- Status: public domain (medieval text). The sung words stay close to the medieval Gest ("Thereof no force," "greenwood shaw," "him hold ye in your mind").
Changes to the text
- The Middle English is modernized ("lythe and listin" becomes "listen, listen"; "husbonde," a small farmer, becomes "peasant").
- Little John's question is sung twice.
- "Beat and bind" and the last line repeat.
- The final line carries an added expletive.