Robin Hood is one of the great English heroes. For generations we have been told about this lovable bandit who famously stole from the rich and gave to the poor and who lived with his Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, near Nottingham.

Over the years he has been the subject of songs and ballads, radio and TV programmes, novels, films, paintings and poems. He has been portrayed as a farmer, archer, nobleman, hero, traitor and common thief, but what do we really know about him? The earliest written reference to Robin appears in William Langland's Piers Plowman (c.1360-87). In it, a character called Sloth admits that while he can't always remember his prayers, he can recite all the ballads of popular heroes, including those of Robin Hood.

The allegorical story of an ordinary man's path to enlightenment, Piers Plowman is a poem of protest against the contemporary corruption and inadequacy of the Church and state. Rather like a Private Eye of its time, it poked a satirical finger at the establishment, and in so doing is believed to have influenced the Peasants' Revolt (see JACK STRAW'S CASTLE).

The ballads of Robin Hood, not written down until the fifteenth century, are jollier and lighter than Piers Plowman but they also tell the story of one man who manages to trick the rich and powerful and gives their wealth to the people who need it, the poor.

Unlike King Arthur, Robin Hood is a hero for ordinary people who constantly gets away with tweaking the nose of the overly privileged, and consequently the ballads became incredibly popular. But just because he was a much needed figure for yesterday's peasants and today's tourist industry, it doesn't mean that he wasn't a real person.

Many people believe that Robin Hood actually existed, living around the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century. In Sherwood Forest the tree he supposedly lived in, the Major Oak, has been carbon-dated at 800-1,000 years old, meaning that it would have been old even in Robin's day, which correlates with the legend.

The problem is that different ballads tell different stories and a lot of the evidence is doubled up as both Yorkshire and Nottingham claim him as their own. Among the sites associated with his name is Kirklees Priory, in west Yorkshire, which claims to have his tombstone, dated 1247 and apparently fitting with the account of Robin's death in which he is killed by his cousin, the Prioress of Kirklees, when he travels to visit her at the priory.

Equally, he could be buried at Loxley, near Stratford-up-Avon (possibly the Lockersley cited in the ballads as his birthplace?), in which the churchyard has a grave with the name of Robert Fitz Odo (another of Robin's pseudonyms) and dating to the thirteenth century. So could it be that there was more than one Robin Hood? Or that every tale about outlaws was rounded up under the name of the most popular one? (It's what happened to Dick Turpin in the eighteenth century, when all stories about highwaymen were attributed to him. See THE CROOKED BILLET for more on him.)

That would certainly explain some of the known discrepancies in the information that we have. After all, the stories were in the form of ballads and in the constant retelling all kinds of extra details and contemporary touches would have been added to suit the times and changing tastes of their listeners. It's easy to see why so many pubs are named after him. If Robin Hood was a real man, he would have been a great person to spend a long evening in the pub with. Not to mention the fact that the Merry Men would have made the perfect medieval pub quiz team.

I'm thinking about a time when the sport round would have just covered wrestling (Little John's favourite subject) and archery, Friar Tuck would have tackled food- and drink-related questions, Alan a Dale contemporary music and Maid Marian etiquette and embroidery. No wonder there are also pubs named after all of them.