Sacred England: Heroic Outlaws
We’ve reached the magic seventh instalment of ‘Sacred England’, our series that seeks out mythology in English places – but what even is mythology, anyway?
Quite simply, it’s a collection of a certain culture’s establishing stories: how did X or Y become what they are today? This process sounds like history, really, but more usually involves folklore, myths, and legends.
There’s always some overlap between these different categories – but they are different. To be clear, myths are the most fantastical tales in the group, dealing with gods, heroes, and the origin stories of various living things. History tries to record events as they actually happened.
Legends and folklore, however, are somewhere in the middle. Half-fantasy, half-true, they’re often rooted in real places, taking the form of beliefs and stories about certain things, animals, and individuals. The last is what we’re looking at this month: legends of heroic outlaws, and the truth behind them. Over the centuries, most tales converge roughly in the eastern half of England.
The Fens
Here we find Hereward the Wake, who lived through the Norman Conquest. We generally think that William I’s takeover was completely sorted out in 1066. This is untrue. Many people rebelled – in pockets – after the Battle of Hastings, led by the remaining Anglo-Saxon nobles like Earls Edwin and Morcar, Harold Godwinson’s brothers-in-law.
This is where Hereward the Wake comes in. He was a real person, too. He’s mentioned in both the Domesday Book and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example, as well as having a separate contemporary document, the Gesta Her(e)wardi, named after him.
Even before the Normans invaded, he was a troublemaker. Exiled to mainland Europe early in life, he kept an eye on what was going on here – ‘wake’, of course, is an old word for a watch or a vigil – and returned after 1066, possibly with Vikings in tow.
Because it was so long ago, the facts are unclear. It seems that Hereward’s rebellious nature culminated in the Siege of Ely in 1071. William the Conqueror overcame him in the end, possibly with the help of a witch, but what happened to our English hero afterwards? Nobody precisely knows.
Essex and Yorkshire
A more certain fate belongs to Dick Turpin, the infamous eighteenth-century highwayman. Born in Essex in 1705, he was hanged at York in 1739 for his many crimes: housebreaking robberies with the notorious Gregory Gang, sheep- and cattle-rustling, and at least one murder. Between his lives in these two counties, he also operated around Whitechapel and Epping Forest, in the London area, as well as Lincolnshire.
Legend, however, tells of his most well-known exploit. Technically, the achievement isn’t fully Turpin’s. Although he was in the saddle at the time, it was his horse, Black Bess, who made the journey between Essex and Yorkshire in a single night.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter anyway. This particular tale was never supposed to be true. It first featured in Rookwood, an 1834 gothic novel by William Harrison Ainsworth. The book and its author have been generally forgotten among the writer-heavy Victorian period. Its content, however, has not. Even today, Black Bess is generally thought of as a historical horse; the truly real Dick Turpin has become a romantic hero.
Not in Nottingham?
This brings us to another difference between the written and oral traditions: a fiction shared in the latter form is less likely to get mistaken for fact. The best example of this is Robin Hood. England first got to know its most famous – and truly heroic – outlaw through ballads. His earliest written tales only appear in the 1300s and 1400s.
Even if we haven’t heard or read the originals, most people today know something of Robin Hood: a medieval lord, returning from the Crusades to find his people oppressed by home-grown usurpers. Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Sir Hiss – ahem, Sir Guy of Gisbourne – exile Robin, who teamed up with other outlaws loyal to the true king, Richard I. They stole from the rich in order to give to the poor.
The most well-known Robin Hood stories are confined to the real-life Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire. Yet Robin Hood's Bay sits further north, on the Yorkshire coast between Whitby and an old friend to this 'Sacred England' series, Scarborough. According to tradition, England's most famous outlaw kept fishing boats there – both to actually go fishing in, as well as using them to escape from soldiers.
If Robin Hood ever existed in real life, it seems that Yorkshire was his more permanent – and final – home. They say he was bled to death by the Prioress of Kirklees, who may or may not have been a relation. The story goes that he insisted on firing one last arrow out of the window. Where it fell, he would be buried. In real life, the site of his apparent grave is marked out in the grounds of Kirklees Hall.
Transcendental Tales
As I researched for this article, a pattern emerged. Each English outlaw’s story as we know it today was popularised through nineteenth-century fiction. Robin Hood pops up in Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. Later, Charles Kingsley gave Hereward the Wake his own novel, just as Ainsworth did with Dick Turpin.
Each novel fed the contemporary trend for dashing historical adventures – escapism in the face of uneasy changes in society. It was thought that people needed someone to look up to. The outlaw figures themselves, however, are not always heroic – especially, I think, in Turpin’s case. It seems that fact becomes fiction, then enters the cultural zeitgeist of certain eras, certain collective identities. From them, we learn who we are.
Sometimes, this process is difficult. If we engage with problematic stories in some way, we may worry that it means we’re just as problematic – wrong, even. It’s important, however, to remember that nobody is, or can ever be, completely good or completely bad. Only the future is ahead, where we can only try to do better than we did before.
Good can come of this. It might be world-changing, or something as simple as making people laugh: the Monty Python team, for example, once parodied both Robin Hood and Dick Turpin with their own highwayman, Dennis Moore. He steals lupin(e) flowers – which, according to Victorian floriography, another part of folklore, symbolise imagination and voraciousness.
In terms of the mythology we look to for guidance, maybe this is why there are so many retellings. The large amount of outlaw fiction shows us this – hey, even the biggest story in fantasy fiction, as I’m writing this, is one of the Jedi in exile. Perhaps it’s because such figures live on the margins: there’s always something unknown about them, so they turn into anything we want them to be – anything, even, that we would like to be ourselves. At the end of the day, it’s always up to us to decide.
Sources Consulted:
· William Harrison Ainsworth, Rookwood.
· Art That Made Us, BBC Two, 7/4/2022-26/5/2022.
· BBC News, ‘“Robin Hood grave” petition attracts thousands of signatures’, BBC < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-44161708 > [accessed: 18/5/2022].
· Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Brewer’s Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
· E.A. Colquitt, The Everyday Magazine [all accessed: 18/5/2022]:
o ‘Five English Witch-Haunts: Witches & English Mythology’ < https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/five-english-witch-haunts >;
o ‘King Arthur – the Cumbrian Connection?’ < https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/late-night-snacks-king-arthur-the-cumbrian-connection >;
o ‘Sacred England: A Written Wood of Celtic Trees’ < https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/sacred-england-a-written-wood-of-celtic-trees >;
o ‘Sacred England: Fabulous Beings of the English Counties’ < https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/fabulous-beings-of-the-english-counties >;
o ‘Scarborough Fair and the Oral Tradition’ < https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/scarborough-fair-oral-traditions >;
o ‘Yuletide Folklore: The Folklore Behind Some of Our Favourite Traditions’ < https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/yuletide-folklore >.
· Hereward the Wake Ltd, ‘Hereward Story’, WakeHereward Project < https://www.herewardthewake.co.uk/hereward-story > [accessed: 18/5/2022].
· Kathryn Hughes, 'Daylight robbery', The Guardian < https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview > [accessed: 18/5/2022].
· IMDb.com, Inc., IMDb [all accessed: 18/5/2022]:
o 'Horrible Histories: Episode #4.10' < https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2158788/?ref_=m_ttep_ep_ep10 >;
o 'Monty Python's Flying Circus: Dennis Moore' < https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0650970/?ref_=vp_close >;
o ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ < https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8466564/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 >;
o ‘Robin Hood (1973)’ < https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070608/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_7 >.
· Charles Kingsley, Hereward the Wake.
· Carolyne Larrington, 'Where do myths, legends and folktales come from?', English Heritage < https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/articles/where-do-myths-legends-and-folktales-come-from/ > [accessed: 18/5/2022].
· Walter Scott, Ivanhoe.
· Victorian Era, ‘Meaning of Flowers’, Victorian Era < https://victorian-era.org/meaning-of-flowers.html > [accessed: 18/5/2022].
Written by E. A. Colquitt
E.A Colquitt is based in the north of England. Currently working on her first novel, she is a graduate of Lancaster University and her favourite thing is being happy.
You can check out her blog HERE.
