Stephen Lawhead - Hood

"How very formal," remarked the bishop. He received the parcel, untied the leather binding, and unfolded it. "Excuse me; my eyes are not what they were," he said, stepping back into the light of the yard so that he could see what was written there.

He scanned the letter quickly and then looked up sharply. "Do you know what this letter contains?" The rider nodded his assent, and the bishop read the message again, saying, "… and a sum of money to be used for the building of a new monastery on lands which have been purchased for this purpose the better to serve the people of Elfael should you accept this condition." Raising his face to the stranger, he asked, "Do you have the money with you?"

"I do," replied the rider.

"And the condition-what is it?"

"It is this," the messenger informed him. "That you are to preside over a daily Mass and pray for the souls of the people of Elfael in their struggle and for their rightful king and his court, each day without fail, and twice on high holy days." The rider regarded the bishop impassively. "Do you accept the condition?"

"Gladly and with all my heart," answered the bishop. "God knows, nothing would please me more than to undertake this mission."

"So be it." Reaching into his pouch, the messenger brought out a leather bag and passed it to the senior churchman. "This is for you."

With trembling hands the bishop opened the curiously heavy bag and peered in. The yellow gleam of gold byzants met his wondering gaze.

"Two hundred marks," the rider informed him.

"Two hundred, did you say?" gasped the bishop, stunned by the amount.

"Begin with that. There is more if you need it."

"But how?" asked Asaph, shaking his head in amazement. "Who has sent this?"

"It has not been given for me to say," answered the rider. He stepped to the bench and retrieved his hat. "It may please my lord to reveal himself to you in due time." He moved past the bishop into the yard. "For now, it is his pleasure that you use the money in the service of God's kingdom for the relief of the folk of Elfael."

The bishop, holding the bag of money in one hand and the sealed parchment in the other, watched the mysterious messenger depart. "What is your name?" asked Asaph as the rider took up the reins and climbed into the saddle.

"Call me Silidons, for such I am," replied the rider. "I give you good day, bishop."

"God with you, my son!" he called after him. "And God with your master, whoever he may be!"

Later, as the monks of Saint Dyfrig's gathered at vespers for evening prayers, Bishop Asaph recalled the condition the messenger had made: that he perform a Mass each day for the people of Elfael and the king. Lord Brychan of Elfael was dead, sadly enough. If any soul ever needed prayer, his surely did-but who amongst the living cared enough to build an entire monastery where prayers could be offered for the relief of that suffering soul?

But no… no, the messenger did not name Brychan. He had said "the people in their struggle and for their rightful king and his court…" Sadly, the king and heir were dead-so who was the rightful ruler of Elfael?

Bishop Asaph could not say.

Later that night, the faithful priest led the remnant of Elfael's monks, the handful of loyal brothers who had entered exile with him, in the first of many prayers for the cantref, its people, and his mysterious benefactor. "And if it please you, heavenly Father," he whispered privately as the prayers of the monks swirled around him on clouds of incense, "may I live to see the day a true king takes the throne in Elfael once more.

it will seem strange to many readers, and perhaps even perverse, to take Robin Hood out of Sherwood Forest and relocate him in Wales; worse still to remove all trace of Englishness, set his story in the eleventh century, and recast the honourable outlaw as an early British freedom fighter. My contention is that although in Nottingham, the Robin Hood legends found good soil in which to grow, they must surely have originated elsewhere.

The first written references to the character we now know as Robin Hood can be traced as far back as the early 1260s. By 1350, the Robin Hood legends were well-known, if somewhat various, consisting of a loose aggregation of poems and songs plied by the troubadours and minstrels of the day. These poems and songs bore little relation to one another and carried titles such as "Robin Hood and the Potter," "Robin Hood's Chase," "Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford," "The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield," "The Noble Fisherman," "Robin Whood Turned Hermit," "Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires," and "Little John a'Begging."

As the minstrels wandered around Britain with their lutes and lyres, crooning to high and low alike, they spread the fame of the beloved rogue far and wide, often supplying local place-names to foster a closer identification with their subject and give their stories more immediacy. Thus, the songs do not agree on a single setting, nor do they agree on the protagonist's name. Some will have it Robert Hood, or Whoode, and others Robin Hod, Robyn Hode, Robinet, or even Roger. Other contenders include Robynhod, Rabunhod, Robehod, and, interestingly, Hobbehod. And although these popular tales were committed to paper, or parchment, by about 1400, still no attempt was made to stitch the stories together to form a whole cloth.

In the earliest stories, Robin was no honourable Errol Flynn-esque hero. He was a coarse and vulgar oaf much given to crudeness and violence. He was a thief from the beginning, to be sure, but the nowfamous creed of "robbing from the rich to give to the poor" was a few hundred years removed from his rough highwayman origins. The early Robin robbed from the rich, to be sure-and kept every silver English penny for himself.

As time went on, the threadbare tales acquired new and better clothes-until they possessed a whole wardrobe full of rich, colourful, sumptuous medieval regalia in the form of characters, places, incidents, and adventures. Characters such as Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, and Sir Guy of Gisbourne joined the ranks one by one in various times and places as different composers and writers spun out the old tales and made up new ones. The Sheriff of Nottingham was an early addition and, contrary to popular opinion, was not always the villain of the piece. The beautiful, plucky Maid Marian was actually one of the last characters to arrive on the scene, making her debut sometime around the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Others are notable by their absence. In the early tales there is no evil King John and no good King Richard-no king at all. And the only monarch who receives so much as a mention is "Edward, our comely king," though which of the many Edwards this might be is never made clear.

So we have an amorphous body of popular songs and poems about a lovable rascal whose name was uncertain and who lived someplace on the island of Britain at some unknown time in the past. Of all the possibilities to choose from in locating the legend in place and time, why choose Wales?

Several small but telling clues serve to locate the original source of the legend in the area of Britain now called Wales in the generation following the Norman invasion and conquest of 1066. First and foremost is the general character of the people themselves, the Welsh (from the Saxon wealas, or "foreigners"), or as they would have thought of themselves, the Britons.

In AD 1100, Gerald of Wales, a highborn nobleman whose mother was a Welsh princess, wrote of his people: "The Welsh are extreme in all they do, so that if you never meet anyone worse than a bad Welshman, you will never meet anyone better than a good one." He went on to describe them as extremely hardy, extremely generous, and extremely witty. They were also, he cautioned, extremely treacherous, extremely vengeful, and extremely greedy for land. "Above all," he writes, "they are passionately devoted to liberty, and almost excessively warlike."