Cicely Herbert explores The Legend of the Green Man When I was nine years old, I ran away from my boarding school, leading two of my friends astray.
We spent a full twenty-four hours ‘on the loose.’ It was early Autumn and we’d been blackberry picking.
As darkness fell, we dug ourselves in to a haystack for warmth, where we felt safe in the company of the small creatures that scampered around us. There was a moon that night and the trees on the horizon took on twisted shapes of mysterious beings, in a way that was both intriguing and scary. I remembered this childhood escapade whilst researching the folklore of trees, after a recent visit to Southwell Minster, in Nottinghamshire.
This wonderful building contains many superb medieval stone carvings, and its chapterhouse has been described as ‘one of the world’s great works of art’ and, ‘more like an arboretum cut from stone than a room, ... so finely carved that you suspect the wind could make it tremble and sway.’ The term Green Man is thought to be of recent coinage, but the legend is centuries old. He has many names, as: ‘Jack in the Green’ and the ‘May King’ and he is said to represent the ‘tenacity of life.’ Images of the Green Man are to be found in early Roman art, in Persia, Greece, and Egypt, Borneo and India: indeed, almost anywhere inhabited by humans, where nature is celebrated and revered. In Scotland, the first footers of the new year traditionally carry coal and greenery into the home, and in the English springtime the wild man becomes the May King or Jack in the May. These festivities coincide with the blooming of the hawthorn (or May tree), which has, for centuries, represented ‘human nature, sexuality, reproduction and fertility.’ The strongly scented hawthorn tree flowers in April and May, and the tree has long been associated with wedding celebrations, where it was used to decorate the nuptial bedchamber.
Legend has it that staves cut from the branches of yews contain the spirit of the tree and confer magical powers on those who carry them and a fine description of the rites of Oak Apple day, is to be found in Roger Deaken’s Wild Wood, when, at dawn, he encounters a wodwo, ‘a green figure, half-tree, half-stag, enveloped in antlers of leafy oak boughs,’ who greets him with a cheery ‘Good morning!’ Tales of the wild man of the woods abound and perhaps he lives on in the legend of Robin Hood and his merry men, and very much so in Shakespeare’s plays, peopled by foolish mortals exiled to the Forest of Arden, where they learn to love one another and begin afresh. In A Midsummer Night's Dream Theseus says of the lovers, ‘No doubt they rose up early to observe the Rite of May.' I remember many productions of the play, but none more magical than that of the French Canadian director Robert Lepage, whose quarrelling quartet of lovers awake from their dreams, to bathe together at dawn, under a forest waterfall.
The Green Man has come to be associated with the essential life-force and as such, his presence is especially important to us today, when so many trees are being thoughtlessly hacked to pieces, as land is requisitioned for building, to be tarmacked and paved out of existence, and as mankind creates ever more deadly weapons of destruction. The green shoots of the weeds, the foxgloves and the buddleias that sprout from railway tracks and building sites, may be annoying to the town planners, but they remain a welcome sign of hope for humanity and the planet’s survival.
Green Man:The Archetype of our Oneness with the Earth by William Anderson Wild Wood by Roger Deacon Tree Wisdom – The Definitive Guidebook to the Myth, Folklore and Healing Power of Trees by Jacqueline Memory Paterson A Little Book of the Green Man by Mike Harding Cicely Herbert is one of the trio who founded and continue to run Poems on the Underground.She is a member of SOF.