An outlaw hero is a figure either from history or legend (often a combination of both) who accomplishes his celebrated feats by illegal means. “He” is almost always a man, especially in American folklore. There are two absolute prerequisites for the production of an outlaw hero. First, there must be a severe structural or systematic societal inequality. This inequality, though it must be severe, does not necessarily need to be viewed widely as undeserved or unjust to those outside the hero’s world, such as the way Reconstruction was viewed by white Southerners like Jesse James. Second, the hero must adhere to some code of morality, usually a higher law, such as a religion, custom, “rightness,” justice, equity, or, in cases where the oppression results primarily from a corruption of the official law, the hero can simply be devoted to the restoration of the status quo ante. That his ends are just—in adherence to a higher law—and also justified—that the structural inequity circumscribes options for accomplishing this justice in a normatively good manner—alleviates the opposition with which his unlawful, and often violent, means would generally be met. At the heart of the outlaw hero is a paradox, which explains why he is never universally embraced, even by those who are oppressed and on whose behalf he ostensibly performs his service; he must violate important social norms on behalf of those very norms. One of the most remarkable aspects of the outlaw hero archetype is its geographic and historical scope and its narrative uniformity.
Stretching back to the Roman Empire, the figure of Spartacus provides an enduring mythos; but also there exists the earlier Viriatus, who turned against the empire because of the massacre of his people, as well as the much later Bulla Felix (“Lucky Charm”) and his band of runaway slaves (205–207 CE). Across the globe, in the twelfth century, Song Jiang led a band of famous Chinese outlaws, and Chinese literature celebrates the life of Lu Da, the tattooed monk turned gang leader. In England, Robin Hood provides the popular archetype of the outlaw hero, and many cultures claim their own charming economic redistributors. These include the Japanese Ishikawa Goemon from the end of the fourteenth century, Slovakian Juraj Jánošík (ca. 1688–1713), the Ukranian Ustym Karmaliuk (1787–1835), the German Johannes “Schinderhannes” Bückler (ca. 1778–1803), and from the nineteenth century, men like Estonian Rummu Jüri and Argentinian Juan Moreira, said to never have unsaddled his horse, just in case. Specifically American outlaw heroes include John Brown, Jesse James, Railroad Bill, Joaquín Murrieta, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Billy the Kid.
In folklore across the world, outlaws feature as heroes in remarkably consistent ways. Not only do the stories share common elements, but there are almost identical “floating” tales that cluster around such figures, despite vast historical differences between heroes. The basic elements can be divided into three categories, all of which overlap; they are the hero’s charisma, his goodness, and his power. Charisma comes from traits shared with trickster archetypes, such as audacity or outrageousness of exploits, and extreme cleverness as demonstrated through schemes, cons, disguises, great escapes, and hustles. One floating tale involves the hero buying a drink for the lawman pursuing him; sometimes this ends with the lawman realizing it was the hero (by a note, for example) only after he left, or sometimes it ends with a shootout from which the hero escapes. Whereas a trickster figure is often viewed as amoral, self-interested, or chaotic, hustling friends as well as foes, the outlaw hero’s goodness distinguishes him. The most common demonstration of this is the Robin Hood motif; he steals from the rich to give to the poor, but there are other traits frequently attributed to the hero. For instance, he is described as kind-hearted even to his victims, good-natured, a loyal friend, polite, and sometimes pious. He uses violence only when necessary and never excessively, and is protective of women and children.
A typical floating story around the outlaw hero’s kindness is a scene of assistance to a widow. For Robin Hood, this involves feudal tax collection, and in the story of Jesse James, it is the bank’s foreclosure on a house. In either case, the hero gives the widow money to pay off her debt and then steals it back from the bank/tax collector/lord. His goodness is also demonstrated implicitly by the popular sympathy and support he receives from the people he champions, and by the inciting incident motif, where his first crime was committed only under extreme provocation by those he then targets, frequently involving the dishonoring/threat/rape/murder of a family member, usually a woman.
After the inciting incident, the hero’s extraordinary power is demonstrated by some combination of strength, bravery, and a signature ability or talent, like sharpshooting or archery, or in some cases, a supernatural skill, like Jánošík’s invincibility belt. The combination of charisma, power, and goodness means that enormous effort must be put into capturing the hero, and he is rarely captured without the betrayal of someone close (also known as the Judas motif). After the outlaw hero’s death, it is frequently believed that he is not actually dead and that he faked or cheated death; there may be “sightings” or people claiming to be the hero.
Railroad Bill
Popularly remembered as the “Robin Hood of Alabama,” Railroad Bill is commonly believed to be the nom de guerre of one Morris Slater, an erstwhile turpentiner from Escambia County, Alabama. A gun-toting, rail-riding fugitive from justice, the Railroad Bill of story and song is based on historical events beginning in 1895, in which Alabama and Florida authorities attempted to hunt down the killer of a sheriff’s deputy. Although the manhunt climaxed in the killing of an African American man identified by some as Bill McCoy, accounts conflict regarding whether the man slain was, in fact, Railroad Bill. In any case, as an African American who gained folkloric status as an outlaw hero at the height of the Jim Crow era, Railroad Bill is remembered as something of a trickster figure, a shape-shifter who could steal from the rich, give to the poor, and then disappear completely, sometimes in the form of a great dog.
C. Fee
The mixture of fact and fiction that defines the myth of the outlaw hero (and also explains its consistency across time and space) is what complicates its study. Though some research focuses on demythologizing specific outlaws (e.g., see Crummey or Slatta) or debunking the idea of the “noble robber,” much of current research takes Eric Hobsbawm’s seminal 1959 work Primitive Rebels as a starting point. Bridging the gap between history and folklore, Hobsbawm’s thesis—which he later refined, but never abandoned—was that outlaw heroes or social bandits were a kind of proto–social movement or protest that arose during specific periods of intense conflict and crisis. This places the character not as a revolutionary who desired a new structural form, but as a milder antagonist who asked for a restoration of certain principles and conditions: more fairness, less poverty, more equity, less law. A further complication to analysis, Graham Seal posits, is the new phenomenon of the Internet and the globalization of the archetype, as in the figure of Osama bin Laden as outlaw hero for radicalized groups of Muslims in Europe, Southeast Asia, and throughout the world.
Meredith Wallis
See also Bonney, William “Billy the Kid”; Bonnie and Clyde; Dillinger, John; Floyd, Charles “Pretty Boy”; James, Jesse; Murrieta, Joaquín; Parker, Robert Leroy “Butch Cassidy”; Villa, Pancho
Further Reading
Crummey, Donald. 1986. Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa. London: James Currey.
Roberts, John Willie. 1990. From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Seal, Graham. 2009. “The Robin Hood Principle: Folklore, History, and the Social Bandit.” Journal of Folklore Research 46 (1): 67–89.
Seal, Graham. 2011. Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History. New York: Anthem Press.
Slatta, Richard, ed. 1987. Bandidos: The Varieties of Latin American Banditry. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Steckmesser, Kent. 1965. The Western Hero in History and Legend. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.