The importance given to the episode in the Gest where the Sheriff, having
been captured, is made to put on the dress of an outlaw, is evidence that
the colour was regarded as important even then. Certainly all the references
to the clothing bought for those taking the role of Robin Hood in the May-Day
Games, or in the Robin Hood plays of the 16th to 18th centuries refer to
this colour. Until recent times 'to wear the green' was another way of saying
that one followed the old religion of this land.
Another aspect of all this is the association between Robin Hood and fairs
and between Faery folk and fairs. According to the Elizabethan writer Henry
Fuller, wherever Robin went 'he carried a fair along with him, chapmen crowding
to buy his stolen goods', and there are frequent references to fairs in
the ballads. In Ireland, of course, there was the Puck Fair, held at Killorglin
in County Kerry every August, where there was a general disposition towards
wild behaviour and unbridled licence.
Puck, in this instance, comes from the Gaelic poc meaning a he-goat. (Though,
as we shall see, there is reason to connect Puck with Robin Hood.) Every
year a goat is chosen, decorated, and paraded through the town to the accompaniment
of music and song. It is regarded as the King of the Fair, and is ceremonially
crowned and placed on a platform, where it remains through out the duration
of the fair. Despite the derivation of the name, there are echoes of Puckish
goings on at the fair, with possible factional combats of the kind already
described in the previous chapter, and there are a number of stories about
people unlawfully trying to steal the goat and finding that their hands
were mysteriously stuck to its shaggy coat.
Several fairs of this kind - popularly known as 'Faery Fairs' were held
in Ireland up until at least the end of the 19th century. Another such,
at Ballycotton, revolved around a figure known as 'Muck Olla', who seems
to have been represented by a horse's skull on a pole (also called the Lir
Bhan or the 'White Mare', which was paraded between Ballycotton and Trabolgan
on the eve of Samhain (October 31st). The followers of this famous spirit
went from house to house demanding money in return for a good crop and were
seldom refused. An almost identical ceremony, enacted in Kent, was called
'Hoodening', the horse here known as 'The Hoden Horse'. The connection between
these fairs, the Puck, Muck Olla, and the 'Hooded' Horse may be circumstantial,
but cannot be entirely dismissed.
There is also the matter of the 'Robin Hood's Bowers', constructed as part
of the May Day celebrations. In tandem with the May-Pole these seem to have
had a deeper significance than is at first apparent. They were certainly
the scenes of amorous trysts between the participants of the fairs, and
are also described as faery bowers, supposedly in imitation of such magical
shelters believed to be constructed by the Fair Folk themselves.
Even Robin's skill in archery is a faery trait, since the discharging of
'elf-shot', flint-tipped arrows, at both human and beast, is among the most
prominent features of it in the faery tradition. (Significantly so, if the
theory which relates the faery race to the earliest inhabitants of these
islands, who would have carried bows and used flint arrowheads). Aside from
these factors, we must look elsewhere, to the faery tradition itself, in
order to understand why we should perceive Robin as one of the personnel
of Faery, as at least one particular member of the Faery race - the outlaw
of Sherwood's namesake, Robin Goodfellow - helps to make clear.