Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham

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Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham is Child ballad 139, a Robin Hood ballad, and in fact an origin story.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A fifteen-year-old Robin Hood set out to Nottingham to compete in a shooting contest. The king's forresters make fun of him, offering a bet that he could not kill a deer. When he does so, they refuse to pay. Robin shoots fourteen of them and flees to the forest.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Adaptions

Although this tale never became as definitive as many origin stories for the Merry Men, Howard Pyle used it in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, modifying it slightly: the foresters also threaten to arrest him for poaching, one tries to shoot him, and that one is the only one he kills.