Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 136, The Real Robinhood.

In this episode we're going to look at the legend of Robinhood, and the oldest ballads

that survived to tell the story of the famous outlaw.

These ballads were written down in the mid-1400s, but Robinhood was already a well-known

figure by then.

There are passing references to Robinhood extending all the way back to the 1300s, and some scholars

believe that the legend goes back even further than that.

But in the mid-1400s, the ballads and stories were finally preserved in writing for the first

time.

So this time we'll explore this early medieval version of Robinhood, and we'll examine

those earliest ballads.

We'll also look at the language of the poems, which includes evidence pointing to the early

stages of the great vowel shift.

So we have a lot to cover, but before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the

podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com, and you can sign up to support the podcast and

get bonus episodes and transcripts at patreon.com slash historyofenglish.

And a quick note about those transcripts.

I started posting a transcript of each new episode at patreon shortly after I set up

the patreon feature a few years ago.

So those transcripts go back to around episode 85.

And for a while, I've been including citations to sources in those transcripts.

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