I Have a Copy of the Book: Why do Editions Matter?
Those who edited books once prided themselves on accuracy. Sure, some editors may have worked from a corrupt copy of the book without realizing it, they might even have been hasty (especially if they were pirating a book written in one country to rush it out in another), or the printer and typesetter may have been sheerly careless. But overall, they tried. Those were the days.
By the mid-1800s, with the fad of pouring out school books in its infancy, even serious authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne or Charles Lamb were making editions that conveyed mainly the plot of ancient mythological stories or Shakespearean plays. The only problem was that, in the interest of capturing young minds, they edited out the complex moral and religious questions those works contained. Such dumbing down became the norm. It no longer mattered what the original author wrote or meant, only what the editor for the textbook wanted to present. Most of the time this distortion was done in the name of making the works “accessible” as public education became ever-more hostile to genuine education. Under John Dewey, religion and philosophy were banned from the curriculum so that nothing made any real sense to students anymore, but they were being trained to be good factory workers.
That is the brighter side of the picture. Just as important was the need to be sure literature written by Catholics (or those influenced by the Faith, i.e. most Western writers for the first 1900 years after Christ) was bleached out so that it could flatter the Protestant ascendancy that once ruled the English-speaking world. (Now, of course, agnosticism and atheism have inherited that educational system.) But I am speaking to well-intentioned Catholics and Protestants who still want a real education for their children, an education that reveals the heritage of wisdom and faith that is their birthright. It is important for both groups to know the true nature of monuments of Western thought. At that point we need to take great care in deciding which editions of great stories we expose to our children.
Two examples that come easily to mind are the contrasting versions of Robin Hood and of King Arthur and His Knights. The easiest edition of Robin Hood to find is one of the many prints by Howard Pyle. They are often beautifully illustrated by Pyle himself, who did a great service by that. But his Robin goes to the woods because he quarreled at being laughed at as a youth in an archery contest and was hasty to kill the man who laughed at him and then tried to shoot him. Little John is given a fake “baptism” by a fake priest using brown ale. But most of the time we only occasionally hear of fat priests who should be robbed. The adventures of Robin and his men are largely secular and abstract, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor who are largely nameless and unknown. When Friar Tuck appears, about half-way through the book, his is a good portrait, even if he is introduced mainly to wed Allan a Dale and fair Ellen. The robbing of the Bishop of Hereford, for the sake of Sir Richard of the Lea whose land was being stolen by the Prior of Emmet, is fair and decently done. Later, Little John pretends to be a friar and uses his rosary to carry a basket on his back so he can go arm in arm with two pretty girls. Later he offers mock prayers to St. Dunstan. Robin once cries upon “Holy Mary” for aid, but never the Mother of God. Tuck never takes the job of praying for the souls of Robin’s band with any seriousness, making a mockery of it to King Richard, disguised as a Blackfriar. Whenever Pyle refers to Richard the Lionheart and his men, it is only that they were “in Palestine.” Never a word about being on Crusade for Holy Church, a task to which he gave most of the years of his Kingship. Pyle describes their rich robes with not a word of the Crusader’s Cross which Richard and his men proudly wore. Robin’s cousin, made the Prioress of Kirklees by King Richard the Lionheart, under the guise of doctoring him, bleeds him to death because she fears she will be disgraced with the reinstated King John for being his relation.
Henry Gilbert’s Robin kneels at the very mention of the “Gentle Virgin” and he goes to the woods because he defends Marian, his beloved, from kidnap and assault by a group of “nobles” who preside over the “Evil Hold” of Wrangby. He is accompanied by serfs who suffered much theft and cruelty before they made such a drastic decision. Guy of Gisborne and Robert the Abbot of St. Mary’s are joined as persecutors, since Gilbert does not hesitate to name evil where he wishes it would not be. As with American farmers, the outlaws learn manhood and confidence of a new sort in bearing arms, whether staff, sword or longbow. Robin protects the brownies–dwarfish figures–Ket the Trow and Hob his brother—who most would slay as demonic figures, but who are good to all who treat them well. But however badly treated his men were, Robin swears them to hurt no woman because “I remember the Sweet Virgin.” They are enjoined not to harm peasants nor honest knights, but the whole of the upper clergy is declared corrupted and, as such, are fair game. But simple parish priests are exempt and he takes all of his men to Holy Mass. While there, Ket warns him they are being surrounded by knights and followers of the Evil Hold. Robin refuses to take any action until Mass is completed. There he also meets Alan a Dale as they destroy the party attacking them. At times Gilbert waxes poetic at the beauty of the forest: for him it is a sacred space where justice can be done. When John Little is baptized into the band, it is with simple drinking, not a parody of the sacrament. The Friar has no part in it. Hob o’ the Hill, Ket’s brother, and one of the last survivors of a vanished race that were once Lords, makes peace with all of Robin’s band and gives, “to you, my brothers, equal part and share in the earth, the wood, the water, and the air of the greenwood.” This Tolkienish moment conveys some of the sense of the brotherhood of different beings who love the good and the noble.
But much of the tone is far darker as Isenbart de Belame and his vicious allies terrorize the country from Wrangby, the Evil Hold, only to be remorselessly executed by Robin and his men, for their lives of depredation, after Isenbart shoots Marian. Gilbert goes far beyond comic justice to a deeper sense of Divine Justice for abusing the poor and weak. Robin takes vengeance as well upon Richard Malbete, or Ill-beast, for persecuting the Jews of York to destroy their legal claims to legitimate loans they had made. Most of them slew themselves in hopelessness. The Justicer of the King is in full accord as Robin hangs the man who harmed the king’s loyal Jewish citizens. When Abbot Robert of St. Mary’s Abbey, a greedy prelate, falls into Robin’s hands, he makes him deliver up a ransom of eight hundred pounds, but demands that the Abbot fulfill his canonical role and say Holy Mass for his men, which they attended “reverently.” The Sheriff of Nottingham he executes straightforwardly when he imprisons Sir Richard of Lee for helping Robin and his men. It is Ket the Trow, the despised brownie, who rescues Maid Marian for Robin from the evil Barons. Half of what Robin takes from the rich goes to the ransom of King Richard the Lionhearted, captured by a “Christian” on his way home from the Holy Land. Robin also serves as a collector for the taxes that should have been paid to ransom the King, forcing them from the well-to-do and sending them off to the Lord Mayor of London. When Richard returns, he makes Robin his loyal ally, and Robin eventually leads a small army against King John in 1215 to aid in establishing the Magna Carta. He then fights against the foreign mercenaries that John imports to terrorize his own people. As with Pyle’s, the Abbess of Kirklees, here his aunt, bleeds him to death under pretense of healing, but only from her greed to gain thirty acres of land from his enemy Roger of Doncaster. Here the echo of thirty pieces of silver is no coincidence.
Which version is closer to an “original” Robin Hood? The question is a bit difficult to answer since we have scattered historical records of such a man as early as the 1200’s. Our earliest preserved Robin Hood literature is, however, somewhat bitter poems that passed orally as a protest against the world of King John. What is not debatable is that the stories emerged in a thoroughly Catholic culture, where the Church set the standards by which evil men were judged, even if they were clerics. In the earliest poems we have, there is no Maid Marian, but there is the Virgin Mary, and Robin risks his life to go to a church to pray to her. By the 1400s Robin Hood plays become part of the May Day celebrations in honor of Our Lady. Fairness thus suggests that Robin is an orthodox Catholic figure who is made into a poor man’s King Arthur, and his adventures should be kept in that context.
Next month: Consideration of King Arthur versions
