The Wizard of Notts Recommends: Robin Hood was from Nottingham NOT Sheffield! And Friar Tuck was NOT fat!

Ten facts about Robin Hood you might never get to know without The Wizard's help.

1) Robin Hood was real and he lived with his mob of communist outlaws in a big tree called The Major Oak. It still exists. I enclose a photo. Like Stonehenge, it is fenced off from the public and it is approximately 1500 years old.

Major Oak, Sherwood Forest

2) Burghers from Sheffield continually try to claim Robin Hood as their own, but Robin Hood is from Nottingham. Proof? The Major Oak - his house - is in Sherwood Forest, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE, not Yorkshire. Decuctive reasoning at its finest.

3) Friar Tuck, as befitting a monk, was skinnier than Kate Moss after a month on the Ryvita. Maid Marian could make an acorn, two dot leaves and a bag of grasshoppers into a feast for ten outlaws. Little John played the lute.

4) Other countries have Robin Hood legends, including Spain, Norway, Germany, Chile, Vietnam and New Zealand. There is a Welsh Robin Hood called Owen Hood, from just outside Llandudno, but really, there was only one Robin Hood and he was real and from Nottinghamshire.

5) Carl Jung once described Robin Hood as an emergent symbol of the cllective unconscious. Freud disagreed with him, as he did about most things. 

6) Nottingham was once known as Snotingham after a Dane called Snot. It was changed some years ago because the name is a bit like bogeys.

7) There is still a Sheriff of Nottingham. Her name is Merlita Jones.

 

Sheriff of Nottingham, Merlita Jones

8).Boadicea defeated the Roman sixth legion just outside Sherwood Forest in AD6. At that time, the whole of the centre of the country was covered in trees. Henry VIII chopped most of them down for his navy some three hundred years after the death of Robin Hood. 

9) Here is a photograph of Robin Hood just outside the walls of Nottingham Castle. Further proof he was a real bloke and not just a myth, like.

 

10) Robin Hood was a Notts County supporter, as was Little John, the good Friar, Maid Marian and some of the other lesser known outlaws. Will Scarlett was a Forest fan, as the name - an ironic nickname - suggests.

 

More information can be found at robinhoodthemanthemyththelegend.com