page_title: Robin Hood and Little John
hierarchical_section_title: Robin Hood and Little John
caption_attribution_description: English: Robin Hood and Little John. From the cover and frontispiece of a 1921 edition (source) of the 1912 novel Bold Robin Hood and His Outlaw Band: Their Famous Exploits in Sherwood Forest, written and illustrated by Louis Rhead.Link to digitized edition of the 1921 book.
context_page_description: Robin Hood and Little John is Child ballad 125. It is a story in the Robin Hood canon which has survived as, among other forms, a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad, and is one of several ballads about the medieval folk hero that form part of the Child ballad collection, which is one of the most comprehensive collections of traditional English ballads.
  When Robin Hood is twenty years old he meets another brisk and fit young man named Little John. Although called "little", John is seven feet tall, large-limbed, and fearsome to behold. This is the story of how they met: Robin is out and about with his men and leaves them on call to rove the forest on his own in search of "[s]port". In his roving, Robin meets a stranger on a bridge over a brook who won't give way. They challenge each other with their respective weapons, and the stranger remarks it's unfair that Robin has a bow and arrows while he has only a staff, so Robin agrees to take up a staff for the fight. He goes to a thicket and chooses a thick oaken staff, then runs back to the bridge where they agree to fight with their staffs until one of them falls off.
context_section_description: Robin Hood and Little John is Child ballad 125. It is a story in the Robin Hood canon which has survived as, among other forms, a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad, and is one of several ballads about the medieval folk hero that form part of the Child ballad collection, which is one of the most comprehensive collections of traditional English ballads.
  When Robin Hood is twenty years old he meets another brisk and fit young man named Little John. Although called "little", John is seven feet tall, large-limbed, and fearsome to behold. This is the story of how they met: Robin is out and about with his men and leaves them on call to rove the forest on his own in search of "[s]port" (5.1). In his roving, Robin meets a stranger on a bridge over a brook who won't give way. They challenge each other with their respective weapons, and the stranger remarks it's unfair that Robin has a bow and arrows while he has only a staff, so Robin agrees to take up a staff for the fight. He goes to a thicket and chooses a thick oaken staff, then runs back to the bridge where they agree to fight with their staffs until one of them falls off. They fight as viciously as if they were thrashing corn, neither willing to give in and Robin becoming especially incensed when the stranger cracks him on the crown hard enough to draw blood. The stranger responds to Robin's ire even more powerfully and sends him into the brook, whereupon Robin agrees to call a truce.
  As soon as Robin is out of the brook, he blows on his horn to summon his men. The men come and one of them named William Stutely asks why Robin is all wet and he says it is because he has been thrown into the brook by the stranger on the bridge. The men want to punish the stranger, but Robin holds them back, saying he can join his band and learn how to shoot a bow and arrow. The stranger agrees and reveals himself as John Little. William Stutely decides to be Little John's "Godfather", and the men celebrate their new comrade by shooting some fat doe for their meat, changing John Little's name by switching his Christian name and surname in a "Baptismal" ceremony, and then gorging on meat and drink (30.2). Little John is also dressed in green like the other merry men and given a long bow. Robin says he will learn to shoot with the best and will roam the forest with him and his men, owning no land or money, because whatever they need they can steal from the clergy passing through. The men finish the day with music and dancing and then retreat to their caves, Little John now among them.
caption: Robin Hood and Little John, by Louis Rhead 1912
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