Robin Hood History of Robin Hood ballads

Grave at Kirklees

At Kirklees Priory in West Yorkshire stands an alleged grave with a spurious inscription, which relates to Robin Hood. The fifteenth-century ballads relate that before he died, Robin told Little John where to bury him. He shot an arrow from the Priory window, and where the arrow landed was to be the site of his grave. The Gest states that the Prioress was a relative of Robin's. Robin was ill and staying at the Priory where the Prioress was supposedly caring for him. However, she betrayed him, his health worsened, and he eventually died there. The inscription on the grave reads,
Hear underneath dis laitl stean
Laz robert earl of Huntingtun
Ne’er arcir ver as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im robin heud
Sick [such] utlawz as he an iz men
Vil england nivr si agen
Obiit 24 kal: Dekembris, 1247
Despite the unconventional spelling, the verse is in Modern English, not the Middle English of the 13th century. The date is also incorrectly formatted – using the Roman calendar, "24 kal Decembris" would be the twenty-third day before the beginning of December, that is, 8 November. The tomb probably dates from the late eighteenth century.
The grave with the inscription is within sight of the ruins of the Kirklees Priory, behind the Three Nuns pub in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. Though local folklore suggests that Robin is buried in the grounds of Kirklees Priory, this theory has now largely been abandoned by professional historians.

All Saints' Church at Pontefract

Another theory is that Robin Hood died at Kirkby, Pontefract. Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion Song 28 (67–70), published in 1622, speaks of Robin Hood's death and clearly states that the outlaw died at 'Kirkby'. This is consistent with the view that Robin Hood operated in the Went Valley, located three miles to the southeast of the town of Pontefract. The location is approximately three miles from the site of Robin's robberies at the now famous Saylis. In the Anglo-Saxon period, Kirkby was home to All Saints' Church, Pontefract. All Saints' Church had a priory hospital attached to it. The Tudor historian Richard Grafton stated that the prioress who murdered Robin Hood buried the outlaw beside the road,
Where he had used to rob and spoyle those that passed that way ... and the cause why she buryed him there was, for that common strangers and travailers, knowing and seeing him there buryed, might more safely and without feare take their journeys that way, which they durst not do in the life of the sayd outlaes.
All Saints' Church at Kirkby, modern Pontefract, which was located approximately three miles from the site of Robin Hood's robberies at the Saylis, is consistent with Richard Grafton's description because a road ran directly from Wentbridge to the hospital at Kirkby.
The new church within the old. After All Saints' Church, Pontefract was damaged during the English Civil War, a new brick chapel was built within its ruins in 1967