Maid Marian

The story of Robin Hood is a tale often told and centres around Robin of Loxley and his band of Merry Men, who roamed Sherwood Forest in Nottingham while they stole from the rich and gave the money to the poor. While Robin Hood is a figure popular in English legend, there were some men in real history who it is claimed the tales of Robin were based on. However, they were not nice men who gave their spoils to the poor.

 

But this post is not about Robin. This post is about Maid Marian, a woman whose story is generally left out of retellings of the legend of Robin Hood as she is used as a mere love interest.

 

The first thing to note about Maid Marian is that while Robin was (very loosely) based on some real brutes in English history, Marian’s tale was actually taken from that of real women in history. The women in question were Matilda Fitzwalter, who came to be a victim of King John, and Matilda of Huntingdon.

 

As with all female legends, Marian was said to have been a great beauty. She was also noted for her courage and independence. In addition, Maid Marian is celebrated as one of the earliest strong, female characters in English literature.

 

Marian was not actually mentioned in the early ballads of Robin Hood’s legend, but she was firmly in the “history” books by the late 16th century, as Robin’s lover. In the earliest stories in which she featured, Marian was a shepherdess, but by the 16th century it was clear that Marian was a woman of noble birth in the tale.

It has been suggested that Marian, in her earliest appearance, was supposed to personify the Virgin Mary, as she featured as a character in Whitsun festivities as the Lady of May. However, this Marian derives from a separate source to Robin Hood and was often used in French May Day celebrations. In the French retellings, Marian was a shepherdess and her lover was named Robin, though he was not Robin Hood of Loxley and in some sources, Marian was known as Clorinda.

 

By 1500, Robin Hood and Maid Marian were paired together. It was within this century that the tale of Robin as an outlaw fully took hold of the English population and both Robin and Marian were now known to be members of the nobility. Strangely enough, a play written in 1598, The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, followed the tale of Robin and Matilda, who later changed her name to Marian, as they were thrown into exile in the early 14th century. In reality, there is evidence of this very event occurring, even down to the cousin of Marian, Elizabeth de Staynton, being a prioress at Kirklees Priory. So by the late 16th century, another real life woman had lent her story to that of the legendary Maid Marian.

 

In the Elizabethan era another play linked the character of Maid Marian to that of Matilda Fitzwalter. From this point, most retellings give Marian the name of Fitzwalter.

 

In more modern versions of the tale, Marian is still an elegant noblewoman, sometimes a ward of the court of King Richard, but is now depicted as a more rebellious and headstrong character.

 

At any rate, Maid Marian has always been a loyal and kind character with an independent mind. She is viewed favourably as a feminist character in literature and I can’t imagine that the tale of Robin Hood and Maid Marian will be going away anytime soon.