Maid Marian

Maid Marian (or Marion) is the love interest of the legendary outlaw Robin Hood in English folklore. Maid Marian was in origin a "shepherdess" figure associated with May Day. Her role as the love interest of Robin Hood dates to at least the 16th century.

History

Maid Marian was originally a character in May Games festivities (held during May and early June, most commonly around Whitsun) and is sometimes associated with the Queen or Lady of May of May Day. Jim Lees in The Quest for Robin Hood (p.81) suggests that Maid Marian was originally a personification of the Virgin Mary. Both a "Robin" and a "Marian" character were associated with May Day by the 15th century, but these figures were apparently part of separate traditions; the Marian of the May Games is likely derived from the French tradition of a shepherdess named Marion and her shepherd lover Robin, recorded in Adam de la Halle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, circa 1283. It isn't clear if there was an association of the early "outlaw" character of Robin Hood and the early "May Day" character Robin, but they did become identified, and associated with the "Marian" character, by the 16th century. Alexander Barclay, writing in c. 1500, refers to "some merry fytte of Maid Marian or else of Robin Hood". Marian remained associated with May Day celebrations even after the association of Robin Hood with May Day had again faded. The early Robin Hood is also given a "shepherdess" love interest, in Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, Valor, and Marriage (Child Ballad 149), his sweetheart is "Clorinda the Queen of the Shepherdesses". Clorinda survives in some later stories as an alias of Marian.

Maid Marian (novella)

Maid Marian is a novella by Thomas Love Peacock, his fourth long work of fiction, published in 1822.

Peacock wrote all but the last three chapters of Maid Marian at Marlow in 1818. He wrote to Percy Bysshe Shelley that he did not find "this brilliant summer," of 1818, "very favourable to intellectual exertion" but before it was quite over "rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, maids, kings, and banditti were all dancing before me like a masked ball." However, in 1819 Peacock was recruited to the East India Company where his official duties delayed the completion and publication of the novella until 1822. As a result of the delay, it was taken for an imitation of Ivanhoe although its composition had, in fact, preceded Scott's novel. It was soon dramatised with great success by Planché, and was translated into French and German.

References

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Maid Marian (disambiguation)

Maid Marian is Robin Hood's love interest in the standard form of the legend as it emerged in the 16th century.

Maid Marian can also refer to: