The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

The Epilogue adds a serious and tragic note to a book that has been predominantly lighthearted in tone. In fact, Pyle tells the reader (“dear friend”) that he may stop here if he wishes, because the Epilogue will be about “the breaking up of things” and will deliver the moral that “joy and pleasures that are dead and gone can never be set upon their feet to walk again” (319). Pyle gives his young readers the option of not reading the Epilogue so as to retain their happy memories of the book.

A melancholy tone pervades the Epilogue. King Richard has died on the battlefield of the Crusades, and Robin, who as the Earl of Huntingdon had fought beside him, has returned to England. It is springtime again, thus bringing a sense of cyclical closure to the book. Robin and Allan a Dale return to Sherwood Forest, and in seeing the old sights many memories flood back to them. The memories are “old and yet new,” because the friends find “more in them than they had ever thought of before” (320). Here, Pyle recaps several incidents from the book, thus adding to the sense of coming full circle. But Robin and Allan are different now; the memories are bittersweet and produce a sense of “yearning” and nostalgia.

Robin sounds his bugle, and Little John, who is nearby, hears it with mixed emotions of yearning, joy, and grief (321). He rushes to the glade to meet Robin and Allan. More of the Merry Men (royal rangers) arrive, and all have an intensely emotional reunion. For Robin, it is a reunion not only with his friends but also with the land, which has awakened his nostalgia: “Now, I swear that never again will I leave these dear woodlands. I have been away from them and from you too long” (322). He vows to renounce his royal title and become “Robin Hood, the Yeoman” (322) again.

Any hopes that the past can be rekindled are dashed. The new king, John, is more in the mold of King Henry than of King Richard. He makes a “solemn vow” to capture Robin Hood “dead or alive” (322). Now, we learn that Robin Hood’s experiences in the Crusades have changed him. He is now less “peaceful” and easygoing. Instead of hiding or fleeing, he meets the Sheriff and his men head-on in the forest, and a “bloody fight” ensues.

The rest of the book is marked by death. The Sheriff dies in the fight, which troubles Robin’s conscience and throws him into a depression and fever. Here, too, Pyle brings the book full circle, because the book had commenced in the Prologue with Robin’s killing of the forester. Robin then dies at the hands of his “treacherous” cousin, the prioress. We sense that Robin’s world is now unraveling. The Epilogue delivers the message that things change, and we cannot recapture the past.

Yet, Robin’s last moments are sweetened by the steadfast presence of Little John, who helps Robin perform the symbolic act of shooting one last arrow before he dies, and by the mercy that Robin himself shows to those who caused his death. Although filled with pathos, Robin’s death is also noble because he “showed mercy for the erring and pity for the weak through all the time of his living” (237).

Pyle maintains this funeral mood and biblical cadence to the end as he quotes the inscription on Robin Hood’s tombstone and bids the readers to depart, as if we have been visiting the gravesite. The inscription adds a new sense of historical verisimilitude to the legend Pyle has been telling. Yet in his final adieu, Pyle leaves us with a reminder of the “merry journeyings” we have experienced, and which were the whole point of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. There is a sense that Robin’s life and exploits will live on forever in the hearts of readers.