The curious cases of Robin & Nero

URBAN MYTHS } As flies to wanton boys are we to History. It kills you for sport. Or as in the case of Robin Hood, it also waxes lyrical about. 

A 550-year-old Latin note hidden in the library at Eton debunks the myth of the ‘good robber’. I’d begun to love the brat all the more after he got the face of Kevin Costner. 

“Around this time,” say the words of an unknown monk in the margins of a medieval history book, “according to popular opinion, a certain outlaw named Robin Hood with his accomplices infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies.” 

The comments dated to 1460 are unusual in their negativity. Dr Julian Luxford, of St Andrews University, who made the discovery, said Robin may have benefited from later rewriting of history. “Rather than depicting the traditionally well-liked hero, the article suggests that Robin Hood and his merry men may not have been ‘loved by the good’,” he says. 

The note, makes no mention of giving his loot to the poor. 

History and urban myths often get weaved into immortal facts. Because we gulp them down. Because our universities want us to gulp them all down just like that. Look at the poor Nero. He’s forever tagged to the adage that he fiddled while Rome was burning. 

Hearing on the fire, some accounts say, the extravagant emperor had actually rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds. Besides, there were no fiddles in 1st-century Rome. 

History now looks like the curious case of somebody’s butt, in which it keeps swelling and shrinking without any reason.