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Nottingham is home to the legend that is Robin Hood

Robin Hood is a hero in English folklore, a highly skilled archer and outlaw. In particular, he is known for "stealing from the rich and giving to the poor," assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Robin and many of his men wore Lincoln green clothes. In the earliest sources Robin Hood is a commoner, but he was often later portrayed as an aristocrat, wrongfully dispossessed of his lands and made into an outlaw.

In popular culture, Robin Hood and his band of merry men are usually portrayed as living in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire. Much of the action in the early ballads takes place in Nottinghamshire, and the earliest known ballad shows the outlaws fighting in Sherwood Forest. So does the very first recorded Robin Hood rhyme, four lines from the early 15th century, beginning: "Robyn hode in scherewode stod." However, the overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references suggest that Robin Hood may have been based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire (which borders Nottinghamshire). Other traditions point to a variety of locations as Robin's "true" home both inside Yorkshire and elsewhere, with the abundance of places named for Robin causing further confusion. A tradition dating back at least to the end of the 16th century gives his birthplace as Loxley, Sheffield in South Yorkshire, while the site of Robin Hood's Well in Yorkshire has been associated with Robin Hood at least since 1422. His grave has been claimed to be at Kirklees Priory, Mirfield in West Yorkshire, as implied by the 18th-century version of Robin Hood's Death, and there is a headstone there of dubious authenticity. The first clear reference to "rhymes of Robin Hood" is from the late 14th-century poem Piers Plowman, but the earliest surviving copies of the narrative ballads which tell his story have been dated to the 15th century or the first decade of the 16th century. In these early accounts Robin Hood's partisanship of the lower classes, his Marianism and associated special regard for women, his outstanding skill as an archer, his anti-clericalism, and his particular animus towards the Sheriff of Nottingham are already clear!