The early compilation, A Gest of Robyn Hode, names the king as " Edward ", and while it does show Robin Hood as accepting the King's pardon he later repudiates it and returns to the greenwood.

The first printed version is A Gest of Robyn Hode ( c. 1475 ), a collection of separate stories which attempts to unite the episodes into a single continuous narrative.

No extant ballad actually shows Robin Hood " giving to the poor ", although in a " A Gest of Robyn Hode " Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate knight which he does not in the end require to be repaid ; and later in the same ballad Robin Hood states his intention of giving money to the next traveller to come down the road if he happens to be poor.

In the early ballads Robin's men usually kneel before him in strict obedience: in A Gest of Robyn Hode the king even observes that " His men are more at his byddynge / Then my men be at myn.

Some appear only once or twice in a ballad: Will Stutely in Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly and Robin Hood and Little John ; David of Doncaster in Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow ; Gilbert with the White Hand in A Gest of Robyn Hode ; and Arthur a Bland in Robin Hood and the Tanner.

For example, the plot of Robin Hood's Death, found in the Percy Folio, is summarised in the 15th-century A Gest of Robyn Hode, and it also appears in an 18th-century version.

In A Gest of Robyn Hode, he captures the sorrowful knight and, when Robin Hood decides to pay the knight's mortgage for him, accompanies him as a servant.

The ballads vary in age ; for instance, the manuscript of " Judas " dates to the thirteenth century and a version of " A Gest of Robyn Hode " was printed in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.

Again, in the original " A Gest of Robyn Hode ", the life of an anonymous wrestler, who had won a bout but was likely to be murdered because he was a stranger, is saved.

Ballads from the High Middle Ages published in the Child Ballads such as A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, and Robin Hood and the Potter, as well as Sir Walter Scott's 1820 novel Ivanhoe all point to a possible South Yorkshire birth for the legend.

He appears in some of the oldest ballads, A Gest of Robyn Hode and Robin Hood and the Monk, as one of the company.

In A Gest of Robyn Hode, he helps capture Richard at the Lee and when Robin lends that knight money to pay off his debts, he is one of the Merry Men who insists on giving him a horse and clothing appropriate to his station.

Both are variants of the episode in the much older " Gest of Robyn Hode " in which Robin robs a monk.

The first appearance of Will Scarlet was in one of the oldest surviving Robin Hood ballads, A Gest of Robyn Hode.

Francis Child indexed those tales: A Gest of Robyn Hode as Child Ballad 117, Robin Hood's Death as Child ballad 120, and Robin Hood Newly Revived as Child ballad 128.

In the earliest medieval ballads of Robin Hood, the ' bold outlaw ' is stated as having made Barnsdale Forest his abode and base of operations ( as an example, see A Gest of Robyn Hode ).

Hunter identified the outlaw with a " Robyn Hode " recorded as employed by Edward II in 1323 during the king's progress through Lancashire.

This Robyn Hode was identified with ( one or more people called ) Robert Hood living in Wakefield before and after that time.