Wikipedia has basically become the path of least resistance these days, and if I want to find information on anything, it tends to become my first stop. Which is sometimes unfortunate, because sometimes the primary sources aren’t exactly transparent. There are very few well-documented Wikipedia articles, and the ones that are well-documented have way too many references, leaving me with no idea how to stratify the authoritativeness of each reference. I can understand the reluctance to perform this stratification: it’s a lot of work, and the tendency is to leave the burden—perhaps quite rightly—on the reader, but failing to do this makes Wikipedia far less useful than it could be.

But in any case, I stumbled upon this blog post from Corielle about the “Robin Hood” series produced by the BBC. Naturally, this led me to look up Robin Hood, whom I did not realize may have been actually based on the lives of real outlaws such as Hereward the Wake who was an English Dane that rebelled against Edward the Confessor, whom he saw as aligned with the Norman French; Fulk FitzWarin who had an emnity with Prince John ever since they were children, and who ended getting his land stripped away from him; and Eustace the Monk, a pirate who was employed both by England and France against each other (and who actually reminds me more of the Dread Pirate Roberts, although apparently this is another guy entirely, in an entirely different century.)

Of note, Sherwood Forest and Nottinghamshire were originally part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, with which J.R.R. Tolkien had a great interest in. In particular, Rohan (also known as the Mark) was based on the kingdom of Mercia. (In particular, “the Mark” is thought to be how the Mercians may have referred to their kingdom.)

And of no account, I am suddenly reminded of a scene from “The Last Unicorn” where Schmendrick the Magician gets captured by a bunch of outlaws. In a bid to impress them, he accidentally summons Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the Merry Men.

And then I think of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli meeting the Riders of the Mark.