The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
Narrated by Andrew Bond
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle's classic retelling of the outlaw of Sherwood Forest, is slowed here to a bedtime pace.
Robin Hood is a young yeoman who falls afoul of the king's foresters after a dispute over a killed deer. Outlawed and hunted, he flees into Sherwood Forest and slowly gathers a band of fellow outcasts around him. Together they live by their own rough code: rob from the rich, especially proud abbots and greedy landowners, and share what they take with the poor.
The book unfolds as a string of easy, connected episodes rather than one tight plot, which makes it especially good bedtime listening. Robin meets Little John on a narrow footbridge and loses a quarterstaff duel before the two become fast friends. He wins over the hearty, ale-loving Friar Tuck, takes in Will Scarlet, and matches wits again and again with the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is forever scheming to catch him at archery contests and country fairs. Disguises, trick shots, and narrow escapes carry the story along, all wrapped in Pyle's warm, old-fashioned telling of English forest life.
This is a swashbuckling greenwood adventure built on folk-hero tropes: the trickster outlaw, the corrupt sheriff, the loyal band of companions, and a running thread of fairness for the common man against the powerful. It sits alongside other beloved English legends, a match for anyone who remembers these stories from childhood or has a soft spot for medieval adventure.
Andrew Bond takes his time, and the long stretches of forest and the easy back-and-forth of Robin's band give the mind somewhere calm to settle. The quiet of Sherwood does the rest, and you'll be under before the next arrow is loosed.
