71 Tolkien, the Medieval Robin Hood, and the Matter of the Greenwood Perry Neil Harrison S ave for perhaps King Arthur and his knights, no legendary fgure has had a larger or longer-lasting infuence on the British liter- ary tradition than Robin Hood. Yet, despite the ubiquitous power England’s legendary fgures have held over the country’s writings, J.R.R. Tolkien was infamously ambivalent about these national stories. In a letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien laments, “I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own . . . nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English” (Letters 144). Nonetheless, despite Tolkien’s reti- cence to endorse England’s legendary fgures, recent publications in- dicate that the author’s dissatisfaction with the legends of England did not prevent him from drawing upon these stories while forming his Legendarium; in particular, the 2014 publication of his alliterative poem The Fall of Arthur and the subsequent 2017 publication of the collection The Inklings and King Arthur , edited by Sørina Higgins, have helped bring to light the role that Arthur and the “Matter of Britain” played in shaping the author’s thought and fction. Despite the tremendous strides that scholars of Tolkien’s works have made in identifying and discussing the role that the Arthurian legend played in shaping Tolkien’s literary corpus, they have dedi- cated very little attention to the ways that Robin Hood and the “Matter of the Greenwood” also infuenced the author’s works. This absence of scholarly attention is especially notable given the prevalence of several prominent of what might be called heroic outlaws in the legendarium. Numerous times throughout his stories of Middle-earth, Tolkien pres- ents his readers with fgures who have been pushed to the margins of civilization by corrupted or misused authority. Although fgures such as Aragorn, Barahir, Faramir, and Éomer’s éored of Riders of Rohan certainly ft this description, perhaps no character embodies the outlaw spirit as thoroughly as Túrin Turambar. In particular, Tolkien draws upon the earliest Robin Hood rhymes when depicting Túrin’s frst encounter with the outlaw band and the methods he eventually adopts as the leader of the outlaws. The parallels between Túrin’s time