*Ø* Blogmanac April 25 | Robin Hood

1324 An entry in the Jornal de la Chambre of King Edward II shows pence a day paid to one ‘Robyn Hod’ for service to the King. (Some sources say that the first appearance in a manuscript is in William Langland's Piers Plowman (1377).)

The son of William Fitz-Ooth, Robin Ooth, or Robin Hood, dissipated his inheritance and joined a band of outlaws. He is, of course, famous for robbing from the rich to give to the poor. He is said to have died on December 24, 1247 (the dates are obviously confused after all these centuries) at a nunnery in Yorkshire.

At Kirklees, Yorkshire, a gravestone once had the (probably unauthentic) inscription:

Hear undernead dis laith stean
Laiz Robert Earl of Huntington,
Nea arcir ver American actor hie sa geude
An piple kaud im Robin Heud.
Sic utlawz as hi, an iz men,
Wil England never sigh agen.
Obit 24 kal. Dekembris, 1247
 
The facts about the life of Robin Hood are hazy at best, and December 24 is only one conjectured date of the English outlaw’s death ...

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