Robin Hood: The Complete Story Of The Legend of the Outlaw of Sherwood Forest | English Folklore for Sleep

Robin Hood: The Complete Story Of The Legend of the Outlaw of Sherwood Forest | English Folklore for SleepA slow, quiet retelling of the Robin Hood legend, from the earliest ballads onward, made for falling asleep to.The whole story of the outlaw of Sherwood, told at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end.He didn't arrive fully formed. The oldest surviving versions are ballads sung in taverns and marketplaces, and the man in them is rougher than the one people picture now — a yeoman rather than a lost nobleman, quick to violence, devoted to the Virgin Mary, and not yet in the business of giving anything to the poor. That part came later, and so did the king, and the crusade, and the woman. What follows is the whole shape of it: the men who joined him one by one, usually after losing a fight to him first, the quarterstaff on the bridge, the long-running war with a sheriff over a forest that belonged to the crown and to nobody else, the archery contest that was so obviously a trap, and the ending in a priory that is the saddest part of the legend and the part fewest people know. Along the way, the story of how an ordinary outlaw slowly became the one everybody kept.But the point of this recording isn't really the legend. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface.That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere early in the forest and wake up much later, in the middle of something you've missed the start of, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, English folklore and old stories from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.