Who's who in Sherwood Forest

The original four

The earliest ballads have a small cast. Four names carry almost everything.

Robin himself: a yeoman, devout, fond of disguises, and a worse fighter than his reputation suggests.

Little John, who is the most important of the others by a wide margin. He is not a sidekick in the old songs. He argues with Robin, outshoots him, goes off on his own adventures and is sometimes the one who rescues everybody. The joke in the name — an enormous man called Little — is there from early on.

Much the Miller's son, who is in the oldest surviving ballad and has been quietly dropped from most modern retellings.

Will Scarlet, under various spellings, who is also early and also tends to get flattened into "one of the others".

Friar Tuck arrived later, and arrived fighting

Tuck is not in the earliest ballads. He appears later, and when he does he is not the comic drunk of the films — he is a genuinely formidable fighting cleric who gives Robin a serious problem.

His usual entrance is the recruitment pattern again: Robin picks a fight with him, does not win, and gains a friend. The fat, jolly, permanently tipsy Tuck is a much later softening.

Maid Marian came from somewhere else entirely

Marian is the clearest case of a character joining from outside. She has roots in French pastoral tradition — a shepherdess called Marion, paired with a Robin, in songs that have nothing to do with English outlaws — and she becomes attached to Robin Hood through May Games and folk plays rather than through the ballads.

For a long stretch of the legend's life there is simply no love interest. The old Robin Hood is about loyalty between men in a forest and a quarrel with authority. The romance is a later addition, and almost every modern version treats it as central.

The Sheriff, who barely changes

Robin varies enormously between versions. The Sheriff of Nottingham hardly varies at all, which is the most interesting thing about him.

A medieval sheriff ran the county court, collected debts and enforced forest law — the rules that made the king's deer the king's and a hungry commoner a criminal. He is not a cartoon villain in the ballads. He is a man with real power used badly, which is why the songs lasted: everyone listening knew one.

This is also why he is the right antagonist for a children's version. His weapon is unfairness rather than violence, and unfairness is something a four-year-old already has strong opinions about.

King Richard, and the trouble with him

The returning king who sets everything right is a late addition and, honestly, the weakest part of the legend.

The early Robin has no interest in waiting for a monarch to vindicate him. The "good king restores order" ending ties the story to a particular reign, converts Robin from an outlaw into a loyalist, and quietly removes the sting — which may be exactly why it was added.

Most retellings for children keep it, because it is a tidy ending. It is worth knowing it is not the original one.

Who to keep when you are retelling it

If you are reading or telling this to a small child, the cast that works is smaller than you would think: Robin, Little John, the Sheriff, and one person who has been wronged.

That last one does the heavy lifting. The whole legend turns on somebody being squeezed by a system, and a child needs to meet them to care. Everything else — Tuck, Marian, the archery contest, the disguises — is decoration on that, however much fun it is.