The Last Arrow [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Whether Robin Hood was ever a real person no one knows today. The old ballads about the famous outlaw say that he lived in the reign of King Richard the Lion--Hearted (1157-1199). When King Richard, a strong and just man, went off to the crusades, he left England in charge of his bad and weak brother John (1189—1216). Society in those feudal days was mainly divided into lords and peasants. The peasants were treated as part of the soil. Since the battle of Hastings (1066)' Saxon families had hated the Normans as conquerors and oppressors. The Norman barons built great castles all over the country and oppressed the poor. They were not only allowed to put the villeins into prison but punished them with the whip or the brand iron and even put them to death. Most unjust of all, in the eyes of the Saxons, were the game laws^ by which the Normans kept all the game to themselves. All deer belonged to the King. A poor man was cruelly punished for killing one of these royal animals. This was the England of Robin Hood, about whom we have some fifty or more ballads. Robin Hood was a bold outlaw, who had fled to freedom of the forest 2 — The Last Arrow 3