"And what of Peter the Ploughman? He was a good friend of mine."

"Alack, Peter the Ploughman hath been hanged and his wife and little ones turned out of their home to beg."

The father of young Robin Hood with his little son at his side, had met a man from his old home and was eagerly questioning him about the welfare of his old neighbors. But much of the news was sad, for the times were evil in England. The Normans had conquered the country and were the lords and officials in the land, and they cruelly oppressed the common people, who were Saxons. The father said not a word although his face grew very sad, but the boy beside him burst out indignantly.

"But why should such a thing be done? Peter the Ploughman was one of the best men I ever knew and his wife was as good and kind as an angel. Why should such a dreadful thing be done to them?"

"Because he shot deer in the king's forest. But indeed he had an excuse for breaking the law if ever a man did. His crops had been destroyed by the huntsmen riding through them. The tax collector had taken all that he had, and his children were crying for hunger. He shot the deer that they might have food to eat; but the sheriff caught him and hung him for it. As to the reason why his wife was turned out from her home with her orphan children, the abbot wanted that bit of ground for an extension to his garden, so out the poor folks must go."

"It's a shame," cried the boy with flashing eyes. "Such laws as that are wicked laws and ought to be broken. The greedy lords and rich, ease-loving churchmen strip the people bare and go rolling in wealth while the rest of the people are starving."

"Hush, boy, hush," said the news-teller warningly. "Our England is indeed cruelly misgoverned, but it is not safe to say so, for the very walls have ears and many have been hanged because their tongues wagged too freely, as well as for shooting the king's deer."

"But the king,—the king is good," faltered the boy. He had been taught to love and reverence the king.

"The king would be a good king if he would stay at home and govern his people. But he is off at war all the time, and the nobles and officers he appoints grind the people as a miller grinds the wheat between his great millstones. They rob them continually, and the rich are growing richer and more greedy and the poor growing poorer and more miserable all the time."

"When I am a man," said the boy, Robin Hood, "I will make the rich give up a portion of their wealth to the poor, and then all will be provided for."

It was not strange, perhaps, considering the evils of the times, that this boy, Robin Hood, when he became a man, did do just what he said, and gathered a band of men about him in the forest whose pledged purpose was to despoil the rich of ill-gotten wealth and lend a helping hand to the poor. The Normans called them "highway robbers," but the common people called them "the merry men of greenwood" and loved them, for they were often helped out of trouble by them. Their robbing was certainly wrong according to our standards, but Robin Hood did not think it was wrong. He took from the rich what they had wrung unjustly from the poor to give it back to the poor, and he thought that it was right. Outlaw though he was, he stood ever for justice and fairness as he saw it. He was loyal to the king, though he resisted the unjust exactions made in the king's name. He was loyal to the church and prayed most reverently for himself and his band. It was his pride that he and his men had never harmed a woman, or burned a haystack, or robbed a husbandman, or hurt a parish priest. The Normans did all these things. Compared with their actions, Robin Hood's standards were wonderfully high.

He was trying to be a reformer; and though he went about his work in a wrong way, still he did much good. As the quaint old ballad says about him—in queer spelling which I revise,

He was brave and kind and merry always, and all the English people—except England's oppressors—loved him with all their hearts and delighted in his adventures. The story of what he did was put into songs and sung at every fireside; and no man was better loved than this outlaw with a price upon his head.

Here are a few stories of Robin Hood and his men, and a great many more may be found which are well worth your reading.