_Robin Hood
and His Merry Men._

Wilson, C. D., _Story of the Cid for Young People_.

SECTION X. ROMANCE CYCLES AND LEGEND

INTRODUCTORY

_The material included._ The heading adopted for this section is used
somewhat loosely to include those many and varied collections of stories
which have with the passage of time been gradually brought together into
so-called cycles, unified around some central figure, or by means of
some kind of framework. It would thus bring into its scope the series of
stories which make up the Greek _Odyssey_, the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_,
the Finnish _Kalevala_, and other national epics. It would include the
stories centering around King Arthur, Siegfried, Roland, the Cid,
Alexander, Charlemagne, Robin Hood, and Reynard the Fox. Besides all
these cycles and others like them, there is a great body of separate
legends of persons and places, exemplified by "The Proud King," that
seem almost to constitute a work by themselves. The extended body of
eastern stories known as _The Arabian Nights_ are also placed here, as
is Cervantes' _Don Quixote_. The last inclusion may seem to violate even
the wide range of the heading, as _Don Quixote_ is distinctly one of the
world's great modern masterpieces, and is by a known author. But that
book is after all a cycle of adventures with a central figure not unlike
the romance cycles, and, since it is popularly supposed to have had its
origin in the purpose of humorously satirizing the romances of chivalry,
it may be allowed to stand in connection with them.

_The place for such stories._ The developing child soon passes out of
the period where the old fairy stories and their modern analogues
satisfy his needs. He comes into a period of hero-worship where he
demands not only courage and prowess of magnificent proportions, but
also a sinking of self in as equally magnificent and disinterested
service of great causes. To the child's mind there is nothing
fantastical about the chivalric ideas of courtesy, and friendship, and
all high personal ideals. It is the natural food of his mind. He will
allow nothing mean or unclean. It seems, roughly speaking, that the time
of greatest appeal for such stories is about the fourth, fifth, and
sixth grades. By the end of that period he is already well along toward
an interest in the real men and women of history, toward a more
realistic and practical conception of the problems of human life.

_The problems of