the robin hood principle_folklore, history, and the social bandit_seal

Graham Seal

The Robin Hood Principle: Folklore, History, and the Social Bandit

Abstract: The debate over the social bandit’s existence has raged ever

since the original publication of Eric Hobsawm’s Social Bandits in 1969.

Hobsbawm’s argument that a few individuals in the history of crime and

politics transcend the status of the criminal to become truly representative

of an oppressed group’s struggle has been reinforced or attacked by his-

torians, anthropologists, and political scientists. Given folklorists’ interest

in the origins, roles, and meanings of heroes, it is odd that folklorists have

only marginally participated in these debates. This study of outlaws offers

a mediation between the conlicting poles of the debate. By investigating

both the history and folklore surrounding outlaw heroes, the mythologies

that produce and sustain them can be understood as a series of identii-

able cultural processes. These processes can be expressed in a general

principle—the Robin Hood principle—and modeled as an iterated cycle

of cause and effect that is profoundly implicated in folklore. As well as

providing a broad understanding of the production and perpetuation of

outlaw hero igures, the model also has a predictive dimension.

Polarization has char acterized the ield of bandit and

outlaw hero studies since it was sparked into life in 1969 by Eric Hob-

sbawm’s initial formulation. Hobsbawm argued that the social bandit is

a reality that motivates certain forms of political resistance to oppressive

regimes within peasant societies (1969, 1981, 2000). On the other hand,

a large number of historians and anthropologists, armed with detailed

case studies of various peasant and other economies, argue that ban-

dits—“noble” or otherwise—ultimately support rather than subvert the

status quo through networks of interdependence and collusion with

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68 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 46, No. 1

ruling wealth and power elites (Rafael 1999; Blok 1972, 2001).1 Hob-

sbawm has progressively reined and modiied his original thesis and

directly responded to his critics.2 However, debate continues.3

This essay proposes an alternative interpretation, drawing from

both sides while also concentrating on the cultural processes that cre-

ate social bandits, both real and ictional. This middle way takes into

account the variable elements that have produced and perpetuated

outlaw hero igures even after their deaths. The similarities and con-

tinuities found in outlaw hero traditions around the world are here

named the Robin Hood principle. The model posed has a predictive

dimension that could prove useful for understanding—and perhaps

ameliorating—the economic and social circumstances that have

produced—and continue to produce—outlaw hero igures.

The Robin Hood principle and its explanatory model are derived

from a comparative study of the folklore and history of outlaw hero

igures, actual and ictional, in many different cultures and across two

millennia. The geographic coverage includes China, Japan, India,

Malaysia, the Roman Empire, Cyprus, Corsica, Sardinia, Australia, the

United States, Canada, Brazil, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy,

Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia, France, Germany, Africa, Iceland,

the Ottoman Empire, Mexico, Sicily, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland,

Cuba and Greece. Cultures surveyed include pre-Christian, Christian,

Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Tamil as well as indigenous outlaw heroes in

New Zealand, Australia, Java, North America, South Africa, Zimbabwe/

Rhodesia, Ethiopia, Zambia, and the Philippines.

It is important to note that this argument does not address the

conditions that give rise to speciic examples of banditry, heroic or

otherwise, although it is based on many such case studies. Instead this

essay will focus on the cultural imperatives involved in the remarkably

similar representation of outlaw heroes in very different cultures,

times, and places. In songs, legends, ilms, literature, art, touristic

spectacles, and the like, these representations are compelling human

expressions. But they also have the ability to inluence, shape, and even

impel actions by outlaws themselves, their supporting and sympathiz-

ing communities, and their antagonists: communities that threaten

a status quo. This supra-processual model, which operates regardless

of the extent to which individual outbreaks of banditry are collusive

or oppositional, ties legend—that which is believed by many to be

true—to history—those events that veriiably occurred.

Graham Seal The Robin Hood Principle 69

The Production and Perpetuation of Outlaw Heroes

The social, cultural, political, and economic processes involved in the

production of outlaw heroes are long lasting, widespread, and complex.

The outlaw hero tradition is so broadly diffused in time and space that,

without positing any universalized essentialism, it can be understood

as an international and perennial product of human experience. The

need to generate and perpetuate the noble robber, the good thief,

or the social bandit is found in cultures around the world, from the

shadowy igures of Dark Age myth (Bellamy 1973; Crosland 1959; de

Lange 1935) to the modern machinations of Osama bin Laden. De-

spite many local adaptations and inlections, at the core of the facts

and ictions surrounding outlaw heroes remains the belief that he, or

very occasionally she, robs the rich to give to the poor. The hope for

a better world—however deined—continues to play a signiicant role

in global politics, economy, and culture.

The construction of outlaw heroes involves a number of elements

that operate together to provide a recurring framework that effectively

sustains and reinforces itself. The hero is a usually charismatic individual

who is spurred into deiance by an often relatively minor incident. By

making use of an existing narrative framework, within which is embed-

ded a crude but often effective moral code, the celebrated outlaw, his

sympathizers, and his oppressors appear to act out a cultural script with

their roles pre-determined by the tradition. This script almost inevitably

leads to a bloody denouement. The dead hero then develops an afterlife

that feeds back into the tradition, both keeping the legend alive and

providing the basis for the heroization of the next individual to raise a

sword, bow, or gun against an oppressive power.

Tradition and Circumstances

Robin Hood characters are found in the traditions of many groups.

Sometimes, like the forest archer, they are igures of iction. More

frequently they are historical personages. These igures are celebrated

in folklore, romanticized in the mass media, and commodiied in the

tourism and heritage industries. Outlaw heroes are often related to

powerful notions of national, ethnic, and regional identity and their

legends are familiar to all who belong to their environing groups. They

form a fundamental cultural paradigm or knowledge set crucial to the


invocation of the other elements of the outlaw hero process. Some

are well known at the national and international levels: Pancho Villa

(1878–1923), Ned Kelly (1854–1880), Sándor Rózsa (1813–1878),

Phoolan Devi (1963–2001), Stenka Razin (1630–1671) and William

Tell (traditionally early fourteenth century). Others, are mainly known

locally or regionally: Diego Corrientes of Andalusia (1757–1781),

Stefano Pelloni (1824–1851) in Romagna and Ravenna, Angelo Duca

in southern Italy (c.1757–1784), Mahdev (?–2004) in Kashmir, Grego-

rio Cortez on the Texas-Mexico border (1875–1916), Tseule Tsilo in

South Africa (?–c.1970s), Sam Bass in Texas (1851–1878) and Ben Hall

(1837–1865) in New South Wales. This study focuses on approximately

one hundred mainly historical igures who are construed as outlaw

heroes in the folk, popular, and often the high-art traditions of their

respective cultures. Their evolution depends upon the existence of

appropriate environing circumstances.

Outlaw heroes arise in historical circumstances in which one or more

social, cultural, ethnic, or religious groups believe themselves to be op-

pressed and unjustly treated by one or more other groups who wield

greater power. These power differentials cause continual underlying

tension that can lare into open conlict. There is also an important cul-

tural dimension to these socio-political and economic differences. The

oppressed group often has a fear—not necessarily made explicit—that

its sense of identity, as coded into its traditions, customs, and worldview,

is being outraged, ignored or otherwise threatened. While the speciics

of time, place, and situation are conditioned by current socio-political

and economic forces, the hero’s actions and words accord remarkably

consistently with the social bandit tradition across cultures. This similarity

is the basis of Hobsbawm’s seminal insight and formulation of the social

bandit concept. Despite many attacks on Hobsbawm’s elaboration of the

concept and his conlation of history and myth, both the perception that

there are noble robbers and the creation of mythologies4 about them

characterize many cultures over the long run.

Serious historical and anthropological studies of banditry have

appeared in China, India, Malaya, the Roman Empire, Cyprus, Cor-

sica, Sardinia, Australia, USA, Brazil, Britain, Italy, Germany, Africa,

the Ottoman Empire, Mexico, Sicily, Cuba, Java, the Philippines, and

Greece. All highlight the usually persistent ongoing and profound

nature of power conlicts. However, the tradition of the social bandit is


maintained, and even magniied, during harmonious periods through

processes associated with outlaw afterlives.

Incident

When conlict reaches the boiling point even an apparently trivial

or unremarkable incident can light the fuse that explodes into nar-

ratives about an outlaw hero or heroes. Frequently such tension re-

volves around ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, caste, or a volatile

combination of these factors. This explosion can be seen very clearly

in the histories of the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, the Mexican

national icon Pancho Villa (Katz 1998), and the Mexican-Texas border

igure of Gregorio Cortez (Mertz 1974; Paredes 1990 [1958]). Kelly’s

outlawry, for example, was precipitated by a drunken policeman’s al-

leged attempt to interfere with the women in the Kelly family home.

In Villa’s case, he believed that the haciendado (or his son) had raped

his sister. For Gregorio Cortez, a relatively minor encounter with a law-

man escalated into a full-blown conlict between Texans and Mexican

Americans, one which focused on the despised Texas Rangers (or

‘rinches,’ as the Mexicans derogated them):

Then said Gregorio Cortez,

With his pistol in his hand,

‘Don’t run you cowardly Rangers,

From a real Mexican.’ (Paredes 1990 [1958]:164)

These incidents, and many others like them, all occurred in circumstanc-

es where conlict and tensions around issues related to equity, perceived

injustice, religion, and ethnicity had a lengthy history. Because these

cultural concerns are at the core of the resistant group’s sense of self,

the values and beliefs of those in power are perceived as antagonistic to

their own values and beliefs. Such motivating incidents implicitly justify

violent deiance, especially as they are privileged and magniied in the

folklore that arises during and after the outlaw hero’s life.

A case in point that also demonstrates how differently the same

circumstances are viewed in the traditions of the antagonistic groups

involved in outlaw hero affairs is that of the Hassanpoulia of Cyprus. The

events that generated these traditions about this family of Turkish Cypriot

outlaw heroes began in May 1887 and continued until their killing or

capture and execution in 1896. Large rewards were offered in vain by


the British for the capture of the outlaws. In 1895 the Outlaw’s Proclama-

tion Act was passed in an attempt to limit the inluence of their activities

which, whatever the Hassanpoulia’s intent, were widely interpreted by

both Greek and Turkish Cypriots as directed against the British. This

act embodied the medieval European notion of outlawry and effectively

subverted the usual legal processes with “extraordinary powers being

given to the Executive to remove from the disturbed districts, persons

suspected of assisting and harboring the outlaws” (Bryant 2003:par 55).

Special law enforcement powers are an almost universal component of

outlaw hero incidents. Application of the act in the districts of Limassol

and Paphos involved the arrest and gaoling of the main holders of locks.

This was a direct blow against the local economy as all were made to

suffer for the actions of a few, a classic coercive tactic practiced by many

governments against those who defy them. That the outlaws eluded

capture for so long clearly indicates they were supported by the larger

populace. Furthermore, it was necessary to hold their trial elsewhere and

to bury their executed remains within the prison walls.

Beginning early in the twentieth century, two oral epics about these

events and their protagonists arose—a Greek poem of 318 verses and

Turkish work of nearly 400 verses. The Greek text acknowledges Has-

sanpoulia’s bravery, escapes, and ingenious disguises (including dressing

as women), all common features of outlaw hero traditions.

They used to ly like birds

And they used to try a different costume everyday

They used to be dressed like a Turk one day

And like a Greek the next day. (Bozkurt 2001:99)

In the Greek tradition the outlaws are described as savage rapists and

promiscuous murderers rather than revolutionaries and the Muslim

Hassanpoulias’ deaths are attributed to the curse of a Christian priest.

The same events are interpreted quite differently in the Turkish-

Cypriot epic. The kidnappings and rapes made much of in the Greek

story are rapidly passed over as everyday events. The various murders

are portrayed as justiied retribution against informers and the Has-

sanpoulia swear to die ighting rather than to surrender to the British

overlords: “I died but I did not surrender to the British,” and “Let the

British hang me, pity on me/Death is much better for me than this

outrage” (Bozkurt 2000:100–01). The Turkish version is what might

be expected of an outlaw hero tradition from almost anywhere in the


world: the brave and clever hero who is wronged, who is a friend of

his own people, and who avenges the oppressor’s injustice. To fail, he

(in this case, they) must be betrayed. The importance of female and

male honor, while often encountered in other outlaw hero traditions,

is especially intense in this culture. Defending honor is not only the

rationale for most of the criminal activities, but is also the pivotal dif-

ference between the Turkish and Greek traditions. Also, the moral

code of the outlaw hero tradition forbidding the misuse of women is

so important that the abductions of Turkish women, real or not, are

graphically highlighted in the Greek version of the epic:

She was sleeping with her husband, when

She was forcefully taken away, and

Almost her poor husband was killed.

They have their turns over her, one by one

Who is going to ask about her, who is she going to complain to

Blood is gushing from her like a fountain. (Bozkurt 2001:99)

And also in the Greek version:

Three insatiable monsters suddenly entered the house

They took her away and spent the night somewhere else

At an isolated sheep fold, at a remote cottage

They almost killed her, and tore her breasts. (Bozkurt 2001:99)

Charismatic Individual

Whether in history or myth, the outlaw hero mantle most likely will

become attached to those who display some level of wit, style, or sym-

pathy that distinguishes them from the common criminal, or simply

from the crowd. Some outlaw heroes—such as the Sicilian Salvatore

Giuliano and the Brazilian known as Antonio Silvino—were especially

handsome (Lewin 1987). The Indian Phoolan Devi was especially pre-

cocious and independent from a very young age, according to her own

authorized account (1996). In some cases, charismatic attributes are

dificult to discern. Both Billy the Kid5 and Dick Turpin6 are especially

problematic in this respect.

The processes of myth and legend swirl about real and imagined

deeds, thus producing a Steffano Pelloni (1824–1851), or a Lampião

(The Lamp) (Virgulino Ferreira da Silva [1897–1938]), as well as a

host of other Robin Hood igures around the world (Chandler 1978).


Sometimes, merely having a gun and displaying a willingness to use it is

enough to produce an outlaw hero. When no real-life character exists

a mythical outlaw hero may sufice, although there are relatively few

such igures. In addition to Robin Hood, these mythic heroes include

Australia’s Wild Colonial Boy, the Californian gold rush invention of

Joaquin Murieta, the African-American Stagolee, and the Javanese

mythological igure Wisangenni.

Charisma, of course, expands enormously through distance, time

and, mythologization. Once individuals have been identiied as itting

receptacles of celebration, a complex combination of glamorization,

sentimentalization, sanitization, sanctiication, and commoditization

comes into play. Accordingly, the real or ictional charisma of the out-

law hero is produced and perpetuated from the consistent narrative

framework that he is enmeshed in, a framework that extends from past

to present and, through outlaw afterlives, into the future.

Narrative Framework

The outlaw hero tradition, as expressed in ballad, story, art, literary,

media, and other cultural forms, contains identiiable elements that

recur in various combinations:

The outlaw hero is forced to defy the law—or what passes for it—1.

by oppressive and unjust forces or interests (usually governments

and/or local power-holders).

The outlaw hero has sympathy and support from one or more 2.

social groups who form a resistant community.

The outlaw hero rights wrongs and perhaps settles disputes.3.

The outlaw hero kills only in self-defense or justiied retribution 4.

rather than wantonly or capriciously and does not attack or harm

women or the otherwise vulnerable.

The outlaw hero may be kind and courteous to his victims.5.

The outlaw hero distributes loot among the poor and deserving 6.

and/or is otherwise sympathetic to their plight and helpful to their

circumstances.

The outlaw hero outwits, eludes, and escapes the authorities, usu-7.

ally with lair, often in disguise.


Outlaw heroes frequently employ some form of magic that confers 8.

invulnerability, invisibility, superhuman speed, or other useful

attribute.

The outlaw hero is brave and strong or, if not strong, especially 9.

skilled in some ability useful to the outlaw life

The outlaw hero is ultimately betrayed by a member of his gang 10.

or other supporting social group.

The outlaw hero dies bravely and deiantly, whether by rope, axe, 11.

sword, or bullet.

The outlaw hero may be said to have escaped the showdown, ex-12.

ecution, or other manner of death and to have lived on elsewhere

in secure obscurity.

Because some combination of these story elements, or motifs, can be

seen operating in the lives and afterlives of all outlaw heroes does not

mean that all outlaw heroes are the same. Outlaw heroes arise from

within an ethnic, national, or other cultural group, serving the group as a

symbol of resistance to perceived oppression. The narrative framework of

individual mythologies is essentially a morphology of possible elements

combined and recombined by the singers and tellers in response to

their audiences. These narratives exist in the folkloric forms of ballads

and stories and are also found in more romanticized and moralizing

forms within mass media. The lives and legends of Australian Ned Kelly

and Slovakian Juro Janosik demonstrate the existence and operation of

these motifs in the lives and afterlives of outlaw heroes.

The Australian bushranger Ned Kelly claimed he was forced into

outlawry by the oppressive forces of the police, the local landholders,

and the government of the colony of Victoria. The considerable folk-

lore about Kelly consistently portrays him in this light—“The Governor

of Victoria was an enemy of this man,” as one ballad puts it (Meredith

and Anderson 1968:203–4). The local community of selectors, or small

farmers, shared Kelly’s sense of discrimination and oficial oppression

and provided substantial support out of sympathy for him. Kelly abides

by those elements of the narrative framework that embody the outlaw

hero’s moral code. He did not harm women, was solicitous in ensuring

those under the control of his gang were not harmed, forced one gang

member to return a watch stolen from a hapless depositor at one of the

banks they robbed, and made speeches and wrote letters declaring his

moral correctness and the wrongs visited on himself, his family, and


supporters. He portrayed his murder of three policemen as justiied

self-defense, as does subsequent folklore. Kelly and his companions

spent the proceeds of their robberies in their local community on food,

ammunition, and information. They adeptly avoided the massive police

forces deployed against them. Kelly was a strong, brave man as well

as a skilled bushman. His gang was betrayed by a trusted accomplice.

Kelly was hanged and, according to legend, uttered the deiant last

words “Such is life.” Because he was very publically executed Kelly was

not said to have mysteriously escaped his fate. This common folkloric

motif became attached to the igure of his younger brother and ac-

complice, Dan, and is still circulating in Australia, along with many

other folkloric, popular, and artistic representations of the bushranger

who has become a national icon as well as a folk hero (Seal 2001).

Kelly is not said to have had supernatural powers, although he was

sometimes portrayed by the media of the time in saturnine mode. He

also did not settle disputes as some other outlaw heroes did. However,

he was certainly convinced that he was righting wrongs, as were the

many residents who supported him. Thirty thousand or so residents of

Melbourne signed a futile petition against his execution. The absence

of these two motifs (supernatural powers and arbitrating disputes)

arises from the speciic nature of late nineteenth-century Australian

pioneering rural society, including local, regional, and rural-urban

power struggles.

A contrasting case relies on the same menu of motifs. Janosik is the

great hero of the Slovak people. Born around 1688 to poor parents in

the politically unsettled region of Northern Slovakia, the young Janosik

fought in one of the peasant rebellions of Rakoczy II (1703–1711).

Janosik later became a soldier in the Imperial army. By 1711 Janosik

had left the Imperial army and was drafted into a brigand gang. He

was soon elected their leader. His exploits, especially robbing the ar-

istocracy, earned him the approval and support of many disaffected

people in the region and beyond. Janoisk’s headquarters were in thick

pine forests in the mountainous area known as King’s Plateau, but he

operated throughout eastern Slovakia and into neighboring Moravia,

Silesia, Poland, and Hungary. Despite little historical evidence that

Janosik gave to the poor, there is a strong tradition that he gave jewels

stolen from Lord Skalka to the ladies of Tarchova. He was also said to

possess a number of magical objects, including a belt that made him


invincible, a shirt that made him invulnerable to bullets, and a general

ability to carry out superhuman feats.

In spite of these useful skills and amulets, Janosik was captured in

1712. However, like many outlaw heroes, he managed to escape and

made his already established legend stronger. His recapture also it

the outlaw hero tradition. Betrayed either by one of his gang or by his

girlfriend, he was captured in 1713. At his trial, Janosik was keen to

clear his name of violent or ungallant crimes he did not commit. He

admitted to those crimes he had perpetrated, none of which involved

killing. He also revealed the names, although not the whereabouts, of

his comrades and the location of his treasure. The defense appealed

for leniency, but Janosik was condemned to a double punishment: he

was irst to be stretched on the rack for his lesser crimes, then hanged

for his greater ones. The sentence was carried out quickly and the

great robber, already a national hero, was hanged in front of a vast

crowd. According to tradition he died bravely and deiantly, perform-

ing a lively folk dance in his shackles four times around the gallows,

beneath which he was buried.

One tradition states that Janosik’s body, buried in the crypt of the

church in St. Mikulas, would be completely preserved until the day

when a new Janosik would arise and strike down the oppressors of

his people (see also Hobsbawm 2000:47). Janosik is far more than

just a robber. He is the very model of the noble thief, robbing the

rich, helping the poor, harming none, righting wrongs, and being

“gallant, generous, honest, and honorable with his people.” He has

been celebrated in poetry, novels, drama, art, art song, folk ballads,

place names, ilm, popular iconography, and a continuing repertoire

of legends about his deeds, his treasure, and his heroic status. Writing

in 1929, Cyprian Tkacik observed that Janosik’s home country “and

many other regions in the Pohron and Malohont districts, abound

even today in folk songs, ballads, and stories of his exploits on behalf

of the poor and the oppressed” (1929:part 2).

If we were to use the narrative framework above to assign scores to

the legends of Kelly and Janosik, in the manner of Johan Georg von

Hahn, Lord Raglan (Segal 1990) or Jan de Vries (1963), both outlaws

would rank highly. Analyses of the lives and legends of other outlaw

heroes demonstrate the presence and variable deployment of the same

set of narrative elements (Seal 1996).


Moral Code

As well as creating a narrative framework for telling and retelling outlaw

tales, narrative elements 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 11 also constitute a moral

code. The moral code is a set of informal guidelines for approved and

disapproved actions. Because outlaw heroes are part of cultural traditions

they are aware of behavioral norms. This knowledge does not mean that

they will always behave accordingly, but those who do so, or are seen as

doing so, are likely to become and remain the heroes of their people

and to be mythologized. Acting honorably is not only important for the

image of the outlaw, it is also vitally important to ensure the support

and sympathy of his social group. Without these essentials the outlaw is

deprived of safe havens, supplies of food and weapons, intelligence of

police movements, and the many possibilities for spreading disinforma-

tion and confusion among those who hunt him. The need to be seen

as having a just cause and to be pursuing it honorably is one reason

why outlaw heroes are often proliic communicators, whether through

speech, letter, or electronic means. A selection includes Ned Kelly, Jesse

James, Frank Gardiner, Salvatore Giuliano, Mathew Brady, a nineteenth-

century Tasmanian bushranger, and Osama bin Laden.

As demonstrated above, Ned Kelly adhered closely to the moral

code of the outlaw hero in the late-nineteenth century. In the mid-

twentieth century the Sicilian Salvatore Giuliano likewise went to con-

siderable, if not always successful, lengths to maintain his noble robber

image. On one occasion when Giuliano may have had an opportunity

to ravage, the bandit instead merely stole a Duchesses’ valuables and

her book, which was subsequently returned with a note of thanks. In

this incident, Giuliano meets the outlaw code requirement for kind and

courteous behavior. In accordance with his Robin Hood aura, Giuliano

was said to have redistributed some of his considerable spoils to the

poor. His operations were almost exclusively within a very restricted

region and this pact ensured that money for food, drink, accommo-

dation, arms, and the other expensive necessities of outlaw living was

spent in the area, enriching the many impoverished locals. In a letter

to one of Palermo’s newspapers in August 1946, Guiliano asserted he

was not a “common and brutal delinquent” but one who would “take

a bit of money from the rich to give to the poor” (Chandler 1988:82).

In the same letter Guiliano appealed to his enemies, the Carabienieri,

to acknowledge their real comrades:


Carabienieri, you are also of us, you also live in misery and want. And do

you know why you are sent to ight against your brothers? To defend the

rich, who reduce you to starvation. . . . To protect those who, while you

and we shed our blood on the ields of battle, starve our families and

show no pity for our mothers who cry and pray still. (p. 82)

Many tales were told of Giuliano’s assistance to the poor, including the

execution of anyone, including his own men, who made the mistake of

robbing a needy person. One of his men stole two barrels of wine from

an elderly peasant with an ailing wife. The man was found dead with a

note pinned to his body: “Giuliano does not rob the poor” (Maxwell

1972:93). While Giuliano practiced severe and rapid execution of those

who betrayed or otherwise offended him, these disciplinary acts seem

to have been performed as quickly and cleanly as possible. He did not

practice some of the more horriic forms of torture and dismember-

ment that sometimes feature in outlaw history, if not in folklore about

outlaws. In outlaw tradition informers must be punished for their

treachery and supporters must be rewarded for their assistance and

silence. In another story, a young man unwise enough to represent

himself as Giuliano while extorting those who Giuliano protected is

killed. The outlaw cannot afford to have dangerous entrepreneurs

debase his reputation as the friend of the poor.

Cultural Script

The history and the mythology of outlaw heroes coalesce into a cultural

script in which the heroes, their antagonists, and their sympathizers, la-

beled by cultural critic Stephen Knight as a resistant community, appear

to move through a series of almost premeditated actions with largely

predictable consequences (1994:58). A strong element of ostension

exists here in the process by which the motifs of traditional narrative ap-

pear to work themselves out in real life (Fine 1991:179–81). As Ameríco

Paredes observed about the Texas-Mexican outlaw Gregorio Cortez:

one of the most striking things about Gregorio Cortez is the way the ac-

tual facts of his life conformed to pre-existing legend. In his free, careless

youth, in the reasons for his going outside the law, in his betrayal, his im-

prisonment, and release and even in the somewhat cloudy circumstances

surrounding his death—the actual facts of Cortez’s life (so far as we know

them) follow the Border-hero tradition that was already well established

before Cortez made his celebrated ride. (1990 [1958]:125).


Paredes goes on to describe how the facts of Cortez’s life it the out-

law hero legend, and vice versa, “It was as if the Border people had

dreamed Gregorio Cortez before producing him, and had sung his

life and deeds before he was born” (p. 125).

Considering the corrido tradition of Costa Chica, John H. McDowell

invokes Victor Turner’s productive formulation of the social drama, a

form of cultural script related to social conlict, to illuminate the struc-

tural relationship between narratives of violence and violent reality:

“Costa Chica corridos are expressive and artistic renderings of social

dramas . . . But corridos are not merely artistic relections of social pro-

cess; they are instruments or forms of social process as well” (McDowell

2000:209–10). Outlaw hero tradition provides a graphic demonstration

of conditioned agency: a restraining of individual action by the bounds

of tradition. This occurs time and time again, in place after place, as indi-

viduals and groups who feel oppressed grasp for structures, precedents,

and forms through which to articulate and mobilize their resistance.

The outcomes of their actions may be as much beyond their control as

causes, but the narrative framework allows them to explain their percep-

tion of events and to shape their responses.

Afterlife

When outlaw heroes meet their usually bloody ends, the mytholo-

gization intensiies. Folklore, newspapers, artists, dramatists, poets,

and ilmmakers do their work, creating an ongoing afterlife. Over

the course of time, through this amalgam of history and mythology,

the individual’s reported life and death increasingly conform to the

prescribed pattern. In this way the outlaw hero tradition continually

regenerates and reinforces itself, feeds back into its environing com-

munity, and becomes a resource that is available if the need for a Robin

Hood igure comes again.

The afterlives of those who have become outlaw heroes need to be

carefully studied as the primary site of mythologisation. Characters such

as Robin Hood, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Ned Kelly, and Dick Turpin,

among others, have been the subject of large and intensive literatures

by both historians and folklorists (Kooistra 1989; Meyer 1980; Seal 2001;

Steckmesser 1965, 1966; White 1981). Regardless of their disciplinary

perspective, these scholars all demonstrate the extent to which folk tradi-

tions interact with media and high-art representations to create gloriied,


if ambivalent, personas. Such igures are the object of intense cultural

reprocessing through newspapers, songs, ictions, oral traditions, ilm,

television, art, advertising, tourism, and scholarship. Each may inlect

the motifs differently, but they are nevertheless present.

The recently departed outlaw hero, Veerappan, “The Jungle Cat,”

provides a useful example of this cultural reprocessing. Koose Mu-

niswamy Veerappan (1952–2004) was known as “India’s most wanted

bandit,” with a price on his head of 20 million rupees (approximately

one-half million US dollars). In October 2004 he was gunned down in

an hour-long battle with police, who were tipped off by an informer.

Veerappan had led authorities on the traditional merry outlaw’s dance

for four decades, smuggling sandalwood and ivory, allegedly commit-

ting well over a hundred murders, and conducting the traditional

business of the dacoit (kidnapping politicians and celebrities). His

nickname, “The Jungle Cat,” was a linguistic acknowledgement of his

ability to elude the large numbers of police and troops sent to ind him

in his jungle hideaways in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu,

Karanataka, and Kerala. Veerappan was said to have the sympathy of

the poor, a fact that made it dificult for the authorities to obtain reli-

able information about his activities and whereabouts.

Reporting Veerappan’s demise, the press lapsed immediately into

the ambivalent intertextual rhetoric always associated with such igures.

According to The Times, he was “an Indian Osama bin Laden and Robin

Hood rolled into one: endlessly elusive, apparently uncatchable, evad-

ing troops sent to search for him even as he mocked them from his

jungle lair” (quoted in The Weekend Australian, Oct 23–24, 2004:24). The

Independent suggested India had a love-hate relationship with Veerap-

pan similar to that of America with Billy the Kid:

If Veerappan was India’s blackest villain to some, to others he was a hero.

He inspired at least two Bollywood ilms. He was able to survive in the

jungle because villagers brought him and his men food, motivated by

the mixture of respect and fear that characterizes outlaw heroes. In his

own heartlands he was seen as a modern-day Robin Hood. (quoted in

The Weekend Australian, Oct 23–24, 2004:24)

Indian newspapers were more condemnatory. The Telegraph of Cal-

cutta quoted a former hostage who said he was glad that the outlaw

was dead because he was a “cruel animal and vermin of the gutter.” The

Indian Express referred to Veerappan’s “evil little empire” and wondered


how he was able “to mock the law for so long.” Elsewhere in India, the

press portrayed the dead bandit more in the manner of the outlaw hero.

The New Indian Express quoted Veerappan’s aged mother, who implied

that poverty had driven her son to outlawry, although the article also

suggested that he commanded support more by fear than by sympathy

(all quoted in The Weekend Australian, Oct 23–24, 2004:24).

Veerappans’ afterlife began almost before his body was cold. The di-

rector of the 1995 ilm biography boasted that Veerappan had approved

the script and retitled the ilm Veerappan: The Original. He was reportedly

responding to news that a rival director was preparing a new ilm pro-

duction to be titled Let’s Kill Veerappan (The Indian Express, quoted in The

Weekend Australian Oct 23–24, 2004:25). Cut down in newsprint and reborn

in celluloid, another outlaw hero passed out of history and into myth.

In the facts and the ictions of Veerappan’s life and death the recur-

ring elements of the outlaw hero tradition are invoked. He was forced

into a life of crime by circumstances. He had the support and sympathy

of his social group. He preyed mostly, if not totally, on the rich and

powerful; he was betrayed and he died bravely and deiantly.

Although these representations of Veerappan’s deeds and death were

created in the twenty-irst century, the utilization of outlaw heroes in

their afterlives is nothing new. The posthumous treatment outlaw heroes

receive involves their condemnation, celebration, and straightforward

selling by a variety of political, media, touristic, and other business inter-

ests. Veerappan’s life and legend link the older style of outlaw hero to

more modern criminals who have understood the tradition and sought

to bend it to their own ends, including Hungary’s “Whisky Robber,”

Australia’s “Chopper” Read and, perhaps, America’s Ellie Nesler (Frank

2000). The mythologizing of the outlaw hero in his afterlife feeds into

the existing tradition, adding another glamorous but doomed character

to the existing pantheon. This tradition may be so powerful that subse-

quent outlaws and those who celebrate them will frequently refer back

to the real or imagined deeds and to principles of their predecessors

as justiication and as exemplars for their own actions.

The Outlaw Hero Cycle and the Robin Hood Principle

After isolating the structural aspects of the lives and legends of outlaw

heroes across the world, we can now see the generation and perpetua-

tion of social bandits as a cycle in which the cultural elements identiied


are serially invoked and motivated. An outlaw hero tradition exists

within a culture. A set of social, political, and economic circumstances

involving conlict between one or more social groups develops—almost

always over access to resources, wealth, and power—and combines with

a charismatic individual perceived as being on the side of an oppressed

group. Some usually trivial incident impels the charismatic individual

from antagonism to armed deiance. When this occurs the tradition

comes into action almost immediately, using the narrative framework

and its embedded moral code to produce songs and stories about the

outlaw hero and his (very rarely her) exploits (Hobsbawm 2000:Ap-

pendix). These elements then play out in the form of an ostensive

cultural script in which the outlaw hero almost invariably is betrayed

and comes to a violent end. These combined factual and ictional

elements continue to be reprocessed through the outlaw’s afterlife,

thus becoming another chapter in a shorter or longer tradition and

thus available to be invoked again at some future time when circum-

stances dictate the need. This is the outlaw hero cycle observable, in

one variation or another, across time and space.

From these considerations of the history and mythology of the

outlaw hero and the cultural processes involved, it is possible to distil

a simple but widely applicable cultural principle: Wherever and whenever

signiicant numbers of people believe they are the victims of inequity, injustice,

and oppression, historical and/or ictional outlaw heroes will appear and

continue to be celebrated after their deaths.

This principle appears to be valid across time and space up until the

present period. By considering the facts and folklore of outlaw heroism

across the globe, from the Roman Empire to the present, it is evident

that a consistent set of cultural elements is invoked whenever appro-

priate circumstances arise. These elements are expressed in folklore

and media and guide the behavior of those involved. They are a set of

instructions for resisting, sympathizing, supporting, living, and dying

in circumstances deemed oppressive and unjust (Scott 1990). Many of

those celebrated may be undeserving of the honor, a reality that further

suggests how important it is to have a cultural space for such heroes.

Historians, political scientists, and sociologists often dismiss the

outlaw hero as merely symbolic. Some scholars cite studies to show

there is little connection between oppressed groups and outlaws, even

those celebrated as friends of the poor; other scholars argue that dacoits,

bandidos, bushrangers, and the like are usually found to be in collusion


with ruling elites against the interests of the poor and weak (Crummey

1986; Slatta 1987). The existence of these cultural expressions over

time and space, as well as the universality (Brown 1991) of the need

for justice, equity, and freedom from oppression is given little or no

credence in understanding the social dynamics of outlawry. Although

many who have been heroized have been undeserving of celebration,

the myth of the good robber who protects and assists his own people

is immensely powerful, widespread, and long lasting.

Hobsbawm is undoubtedly correct in identifying outlaw heroes as

a different and special form of criminal, regardless of how many other

studies strive to prove that many such igures are just common thugs.

While this distinction may well be true, the crucial point overlooked

is that large numbers of local people have considered such individuals

to be Robin Hoods, both during and after their lifetimes. A demon-

strable cultural imperative to identify individuals (even those who are

totally undeserving) as good and on the side of the group or groups

perceiving themselves to be oppressed is as important to understand

as the history of outlaws. Even if the Robin Hood igures of the Phil-

ippines Nardong Putik (Sidel 1999) or the peasant robbers of Kedah

(Cheah 1988) are not really deserving of their image as heroes, the

fact that they are seen as heroes in folk tradition highlights the power

of the Robin Hood principle and the profound need humans have to

celebrate or invent such igures. It is mythology rather than history

that validates Hobsbawm’s hypothesis.

Why large numbers of people in different times and places have

been—and still are—prepared to engage with one or more of these out-

law hero manifestations is a question unlikely to be answered through

archival research. Scholars of outlaw heroes must consider folklore

forms, as well as the oficial forms of high and popular culture, and to

attempt—as Hobsbawm does—to understand them, rather than to sim-

ply ignore them or deprecate them as trivial, irrelevant, or inaccurate.

To fully comprehend the large and perhaps increasingly important

topic of banditry, resistance, and discontent we need to comprehend

all its dimensions and understand how the folkloric operates in con-

junction with the historical, the political, and the economic.

The outlaw hero tradition is now part of a new process in which

outlaw hero traditions are played out on an international scale. The

interpretation of Islamic fundamentalism by some as a heroic form of

resistance to unjust oppression demonstrates that expressive culture


can motivate serious violence. There are two main reasons for this

globalization of the outlaw hero. First, because the tradition is already

widespread there is a pre-existing tendency to interpret the actions

by outsiders to any given group in such a way. Secondly, the Internet

and other electronic communication have accelerated globalization

and the trans-cultural diffusion of the cultural construct of the outlaw

hero tradition from the local, regional, and national to the global.

This process can already be discerned in relation to Osama bin Laden

and other Islamic fundamentalist igures (Khan 2005; Seal 2005).

Thus, whenever and wherever the appropriate set of social, cultural,

political, and economic circumstances arises it is highly probable that

one or more igures will emerge who wear the mantle of the outlaw

hero. Around such igures outlaw hero lore will collect as well as the

discontents, prejudices, and perceptions of those who are sympathetic.

Folklore and history intertwine to produce and perpetuate representa-

tion of the outlaw hero, impelled by the Robin Hood principle.

Curtin University of Technology

Perth, Western Australia

Notes

1. In Africa, for example, scholars have tested the social bandit concept in a variety of historical and anthropological modes, some scholars inding it useful, but others less so (Crummey 1986).

2. Hobsbawm continued to argue for the concept of a social bandit linked to resis-tance and revolution in the 2000 edition of Bandits and he also directly responded to his critics in his Postscript (2000:167–99).

3. For example, Wagner critiques Hobsbawm’s conceptualization and argument by demonstrating that “thuggee was a type of banditry entirely devoid of any trace of social protest,” although Hobsbawm does not include thuggee in his study (Wagner 2007:372).

4. The terms “mythology” and “myth” are used here to indicate what is believed to be true about the past and thus what validates attitudes and actions in the present. In relation to outlaw heroes, the bearers of myth are identiiable communities of sympathizers and supporters. For these social collectivities myth provides structure (through narratives of hero/es and villain/s, “right” and “wrong,” victory and defeat); it provides precedent in the celebrated deeds, real or not, of previous outlaws; and it provides hope in circumstances where its bearers feel oppressed, dispossessed, or otherwise aggrieved. As argued, myth also provides the cultural script and its embed-ded moral code by which outlaw hero action in the present should be conducted. The processes through which these beliefs arise and through which they are perpetuated


and actuated involve dynamic interaction over time and space of any and all forms of cultural expression. These include, but are not restricted to, legend, literature, art, and mass media. These processes are here referred to as “mythologisation” and are briely exempliied in the article.

5. See Dykes 1952; Page 1991; Steckmesser 1965; Tatum 1982; and Wallis 2007.6. See Barlow 1973; Hayward 1735:57, 111–12, 425–7, 513; Hibbert 1967; Sharpe

2004; Smith 1719; and Spraggs 2001.

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GRAHAM SEAL is the author of a number of works on outlaw heroes

as well as other forms of mythologization. He is Professor of Folklore

at Curtin University of Technology where he directs the Centre for

Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia, and the Paciic. (G.Seal@email

.curtin.edu.au)

the robin hood principle_folklore, history, and the social bandit_seal

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