Robin Hood Coloring Pages
Welcome to my Robin Hood coloring pages section.
Robin Hood started out as a song. People in England were singing rhymes about him back in the 1370s, and the Robin in those old songs was just an outlaw with a very good bow, no castle and no title to lose. Storytellers kept adding to him over the next few hundred years until he was a nobleman with a sweetheart and a forest full of friends, and honestly, I think they improved him.
Jump to: Robin Hood | Maid Marian | Merry Men | Sheriff of Nottingham | Prince John | King Richard | The Story
Robin Hood coloring pages
Robin's weapon was the longbow, and it wasn't a small thing to pull. A good one stood about as tall as the archer and took years of practice before the arrows went anywhere useful, so the bowmen in these stories had been at it since they were children. The songs say Robin could put an arrow straight into the back of an arrow that was already sitting in the bullseye, which sounds like exactly the sort of thing a song would say. Archers today still call that shot a Robin Hood when it happens, and it does happen, usually by accident, and usually to the great annoyance of whoever paid for the arrows.
Maid Marian coloring pages
Maid Marian wasn't in the earliest Robin Hood songs at all. She seems to have wandered in from English May Day games, where villagers spent the spring holiday acting out Robin's adventures in the village green and somebody had to play his sweetheart. Once she was in the story she wouldn't leave, and later tellers kept making her braver. In some versions she's waiting in the castle for news of him, and in others she's picking up a bow and heading into the forest herself, which is the version most storytellers have settled on now.
Merry Men coloring pages
The Merry Men wore Lincoln green, which was a real cloth woven in the town of Lincoln and a real color you could buy. It's the soft grey green of oak leaves on a dull day, and the stories say it hid them so well in Sherwood that the Sheriff's soldiers walked right under them without ever looking up.
Friar Tuck
Friars were travelling holy men who owned almost nothing, not even the roof over their heads, and lived on whatever food people handed them at the door. That's why Tuck is nearly always drawn hanging onto a loaf of bread. He's also the only one of them with any schooling, and in the stories he swings a quarterstaff like a champion, which is a good deal more than a friar was ever supposed to be doing with his afternoon.
Little John
His real name was John Little, and the Merry Men turned it around and called him Little John because he towered over every one of them. The story of how he and Robin met is at the bottom of this page, and it's the one where Robin comes off worst.
Will Scarlet
In the oldest songs he's called Will Scathelock, and nobody really knows when or why he turned into Will Scarlet. Storytellers took the new name at its word and put him in bright red from his hat to his boots, which makes him the flashiest man in a forest full of people trying very hard not to be seen. It's never quite explained how he manages to hide.
Sheriff of Nottingham coloring pages
Sheriff was a real job in medieval England, and not a popular one. He collected the king's taxes, ran the county court and kept the peace, which makes him the perfect enemy for a man whose whole career is handing tax money back to hungry villagers. He never does catch Robin for more than an afternoon.
Prince John coloring pages
Prince John was a real person, King Richard's younger brother, and the stories didn't have to work very hard to make him the villain. When Richard died John became king himself, and he managed his barons so badly that in 1215 they cornered him in a meadow and made him sign the Magna Carta, a promise that even a king has to follow the law. The Robin Hood stories just borrowed his bad behaviour and moved it back a few years.
King Richard the Lionheart coloring pages
King Richard the Lionheart was king of England for ten years and spent less than one of them actually in England. He was away on the Crusades for most of it, and on the long way home he was recognised, arrested and held prisoner by a duke who'd taken a dislike to him. The ransom was so enormous that back in England nearly everybody had to be taxed to raise it, which is one reason the countryside in these stories is so poor and so fed up. It also explains why the villagers keep waiting and hoping for him to come back.
King Richard the Lionheart coloring pages
The Story of Robin Hood and Little John
People have been telling Robin Hood stories for six hundred years, and there are hundreds of them. This is the one where he meets his best friend.
Robin Hood had been living in Sherwood Forest for most of a year when he came down to the stream one spring morning, meaning to cross and see whether the Sheriff's men had been on the north road. The water was running high and brown with rain, and the only way over was an old oak log that somebody had dropped across the narrowest part years before. Moss had grown thick along the top of it. Robin knew the stream was deeper in the middle than it looked, so he took his time.
He was halfway out when a man stepped onto the far end. He was the tallest man Robin had ever seen, a head and shoulders above him at least, with a quarterstaff on his back that would have made a decent roof beam.
"Stand aside," Robin said, "and let me come over."
"You stand aside," said the tall man, "and let me."
Neither of them moved. Robin reached back for his bow, and the tall man laughed at him for it and said there was no honour in shooting a man who carried nothing but a stick. That stung because it was true, so Robin went back to the bank and cut himself a staff from a young oak, and the two of them met again in the middle of the log with the brown water sliding past underneath.
It didn't last long. The tall man had reach on him and knew exactly what to do with it, and after a handful of swings he caught Robin under the ribs and tipped him off the log into the stream. The water was colder than Robin expected and deeper than he remembered, and it carried him a fair way downstream before he got his feet under him and came up dripping with weed in his hair.
Then he started laughing, and he laughed so hard that he had to hold onto the bank. He'd never been beaten at anything in the forest, and here he was soaked through on account of a stranger and a slippery log. He called up that any man who could do that was wasted walking the roads alone, and would he come and live in the greenwood instead.
The stranger said his name was John Little, and he came. The others in the camp heard the name, looked up at the size of him, and called him Little John before the first evening was out. The name stuck for six hundred years, which is longer than most jokes last.
They were friends from then on, and nearly every Robin Hood story after that one has Little John somewhere in it, usually standing just behind Robin's shoulder. Of all the tales people tell about Robin Hood, this is the one where he loses. He'd have been the first to tell it, too.
