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Robin Hood's House
Jun. 20th, 2006 10:13 amhttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17253068&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=is-this-robin-hood-s-house--in-sheffield---name_page.html
ABC in Australia rang me last night to ask about this. We ended up playing phone tag and so I never got to share my thoughts with audiences down under. Unless, of course, there are some Australians reading my blog, but I kind of doubt that.
Anyway, Robin Hood's home. The big tabloid grabbing story - but in a bizarre bit of honesty, the Mirror gives the game away. I mean it's not Robin Hood's house if he's "mythical", is it?
It's a bit weird for me, because the person who I know strongly pushed for a Robin Hood with Waltheof connections once threatened to put a curse on me. Still, I can see how stories of Waltheof may have influenced the choice of earldom when writers in the 16th century made Robin Hood an earl. (Waltheof was the Earl of Huntingdon - a title shared by Robin Hood.) And I also wonder if that influenced the choice of Loxley (now in modern Sheffield) as Robin's birthplace (first noted as such around the time the Huntingdon plays first appeared.) Also, the name "Fitzwalter" (or as it's spelled there, Fitzwater) appears as Marian's surname in the same play that first gives Robin Hood the Huntingdon title.
But ultimately, it looks like a house connected with another guy who might have influenced the Robin Hood. There are many such people. That's not very sensationalistic though, and it's not surprising that the skepticism of archaeologist is at the bottom of the inverted pyramid (the classic way to structure a news article).
A few years ago, Robin Hood's tunnel was supposedly discovered in Nottingham. His grave at Kirklees in Yorkshire has appeared in guidebooks for centuries. All that is nothing compared to all the sites connected with King Arthur.
In 1999, I interviewed the archaeologists digging around Tintagel. The previous year, the papers claimed that they'd found a stone proving that Arthur was king. That was, not surprisingly, an exaggeration.
Oh well, I wouldn't be surprised if the folks in Nottinghamshire rush out a discovery of their own. There's long been a rivalry over the outlaw legend. http://www.boldoutlaw.com/robint/localpoli.html
Allen
P.S.: I still find it weird that a blog's spell check doesn't recognize the word "blog".
ABC in Australia rang me last night to ask about this. We ended up playing phone tag and so I never got to share my thoughts with audiences down under. Unless, of course, there are some Australians reading my blog, but I kind of doubt that.
Anyway, Robin Hood's home. The big tabloid grabbing story - but in a bizarre bit of honesty, the Mirror gives the game away. I mean it's not Robin Hood's house if he's "mythical", is it?
It's a bit weird for me, because the person who I know strongly pushed for a Robin Hood with Waltheof connections once threatened to put a curse on me. Still, I can see how stories of Waltheof may have influenced the choice of earldom when writers in the 16th century made Robin Hood an earl. (Waltheof was the Earl of Huntingdon - a title shared by Robin Hood.) And I also wonder if that influenced the choice of Loxley (now in modern Sheffield) as Robin's birthplace (first noted as such around the time the Huntingdon plays first appeared.) Also, the name "Fitzwalter" (or as it's spelled there, Fitzwater) appears as Marian's surname in the same play that first gives Robin Hood the Huntingdon title.
But ultimately, it looks like a house connected with another guy who might have influenced the Robin Hood. There are many such people. That's not very sensationalistic though, and it's not surprising that the skepticism of archaeologist is at the bottom of the inverted pyramid (the classic way to structure a news article).
A few years ago, Robin Hood's tunnel was supposedly discovered in Nottingham. His grave at Kirklees in Yorkshire has appeared in guidebooks for centuries. All that is nothing compared to all the sites connected with King Arthur.
In 1999, I interviewed the archaeologists digging around Tintagel. The previous year, the papers claimed that they'd found a stone proving that Arthur was king. That was, not surprisingly, an exaggeration.
Oh well, I wouldn't be surprised if the folks in Nottinghamshire rush out a discovery of their own. There's long been a rivalry over the outlaw legend. http://www.boldoutlaw.com/robint/localpoli.html
Allen
P.S.: I still find it weird that a blog's spell check doesn't recognize the word "blog".
