Sources

Everything on this site rests on public sources. The ballad texts are public domain; the scholarship is cited by name so you can check every claim.

The ballad texts (public domain)

The quotations on this site come from the public-domain texts of Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1898). The standard free online editions:

• Sacred Texts Archive — Child 117 (Gest): https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch117.htm
• Sacred Texts Archive — Child 118 (Guy of Gisborne): https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch118.htm
• Sacred Texts Archive — Child 119 (Monk): https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch119.htm
• Sacred Texts Archive — Child 120 (Death): https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch120.htm
• Sacred Texts Archive — Child 125 (Little John): https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch125.htm
• Sacred Texts Archive — Child 152 (Golden Arrow): https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch152.htm
• METS / Robbins Library — a modern-spelling scholarly edition of the Gest: https://metseditions.org/read/976AKyAFRDDQFWvztV5Meuxbpld4M6V

Ballad texts vary between manuscripts and prints; where Child gives multiple versions, this site cites the version used (A, B, C...). Spelling in quotations is the ballads' own and has not been modernized.

The chronicles and early texts

• William Langland, Piers Plowman, B-text (c. 1377) — the Sloth passage; standard editions (Skeat).
• Andrew of Wyntoun, Orygynale Cronikyl (c. 1420) — the "Waythmen" passage.
• Walter Bower, Scotichronicon continuation (c. 1440s) — the sicarius passage.
• John Major, Historia Majoris Britanniae (Paris, 1521) — Robin under Richard I.
• Richard Grafton, Chronicle at Large (1569) — the Earl of Huntingdon.
• The Sloane Life (c. 1600; British Library, Sloane MS) — the early prose life.
• The Percy Folio (c. 1650; British Library, Additional MS 27879) — Guy of Gisborne, Robin's Death.
• Martin Parker, A True Tale of Robin Hood (1632; Child 154).

Key scholarship

• J. C. Holt, Robin Hood (1982; revised edition) — the modern foundation: the Gest, the records, the debunking of the Wakefield theory's 1323 evidence.
• R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood (1976; revised 1997) — the great anthology of texts with commentary; the standard scholarly collection.
• David Crook — archival work on the "Robinhood" bynames and the York candidate; papers on the early records.
• Joseph Hunter (1852) — the Wakefield theory's original statement; historically important, now largely superseded.
• David Baldwin — the Roger Godberd proposal.
• John Maddicott — on Godberd as "that prototype Robin Hood."
• Stephen Knight — the legend's afterlife and cultural history (Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, 2003).
• Thomas Ohlgren — bibliographic and textual scholarship on the early tradition.

History and context

• Forest law, the sheriff's office, and the archery statutes: standard medieval English administrative and military history (see the site's methodology for how general history is used).
• The May games and pastourelle background: standard accounts of late-medieval popular festivity.

Adaptations

• Publication and release facts for plays, novels, and films are standard bibliographic data; interpretive characterizations on the adaptations page are this site's.

How to verify a claim

1. Find the claim's source note at the foot of its page.
2. Check the ballad quotation against the Sacred Texts or METS edition (Child number and stanza given).
3. Check chronicle quotations against the editions named above.
4. For scholarly positions (Holt, Crook, Knight), the author's name and work are given; university libraries hold them.

Limitations

• This is a source guide, not a bibliography; dozens of relevant articles and books are omitted.
• URLs were verified at the time of writing; archives reorganize — search the title if a link fails.