 | Unmistakable sign you are at the Olympic Games: A man walking through downtown holding a handwritten sign reading: "Need Two Tickets to Archery."
Joan Ryan,columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle |
| I am a baby boomer and a member of the first television generation. And so, if you give me "archery" in a word-association test, I say "Robin Hood." If you say "bow and arrow," I say ''Indians." |
| Although as a kid I thought shooting flaming arrows from a galloping pony looked like great fun, TV painted American Indians in black hues, too evil to root for. Robin Hood, on the other hand, could really set my heart aflutter, and it was he that I imitated when I was in the backyard shooting arrows at cardboard boxes. |
| Robin Hood, the legendary hero of medieval England, was the subject of nearly forty English and Scottish ballads and numerous plays, tales, and films. Although constantly at odds with the sheriff of Nottingham, he was always loyal to the king, sometimes identified as Edward IV (fifteenth century), sometimes as Richard I (twelfth century). |
| Robin and his bandLittle John, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and the other men in tightslived in Sherwood Forest in the English North Midlands, where they outwitted, robbed, and occasionally killed the wealthy. The Robin Hood legend may have sprung from the popular discontent that led to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. |
| Growing up watching the Robin Hood TV series, I cheered on the Merry Men as I did the local football team. All I really knew, or cared about, was that they robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, and that Robin was the embodiment of excellence with a bow and arrow. That man could shoot like Mickey Mantle could hit. Taking almost no time to aim, he could hit an eye of a potatoor the black heart of an enemyfrom 200 yards. Even as a kid I |
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