Song of Robin Hood. Selected & edited by Anne Malcolmson; music arranged by Grace Castagnetta; designed & illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton. Houghton Mifflin, c1947.
Child, Francis James. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vol. III. First published 1888-89.
Holt, J. C. Robin Hood. London, N.Y., Thames and Hudson, c1982.
Stevenson, Jocelyn. Robin Hood: A High-Spirited Tale of Adventure starring Jim Henson’s Muppets. Illus. by Bruce McNally. Muppet Press/Random House, c1980. I append this title to show that the colorfully romantic Robin Hood mythos with which I grew up (as opposed to the sort of ashcan “realism” that seems to be taking over nowadays and is, in its own way, equally untrue to life) was still alive enough at least to provide the basis for popular parody, as late as 1980.
The present tale, offered in the freewheeling, not overly scholarly spirit of the Robin Hood ballads, aims not at realism, but at a tapestry suggesting the Medieval era as I conceive its own people may have wanted to think of it. I have striven to strike a balance—for example, trying to make the dialogue sound authentic without seeming stilted.