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The Company of the Green Man |
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BOOK OF THE MONTH March 2010 |
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Jack in the green am I and master have I none for whilst there are trees upon this land the woods shall be my home. To the season’s kings I bow my head as they do bow to me, for my faces are as many as the leaves upon a tree |
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The Company of the Green Man gathers, archives and makes freely available information, images and folklore about the green man in his varied forms and supports current traditions that feature the green man and the Jack-in-the-Green worldwide. We also promote artists and writers who feature the green man in their work and assist where possible the protection and preservation of architectural images of the green man. We are in the process of creating the largest and most accurate gazetteer of green men ever produced. Membership of The Company of the Green Man is free please contact us for more details at greenman@virgin.net THE GREEN MAN For many people their first experience of the Green Man is a chance sighting of a strange stone or wooden foliate face looking down at them from high above in a church or cathedral. Just what this supposedly pagan representation of fertility and the greenwood is doing in a Christian place of worship, has puzzled people throughout the ages. Is it a subversive image placed by stone carvers as a link to a pre-Christian religion? A reminder that we all come from the earth and will one day return? A representation of Adam, or an image carefully placed by stonemasons to remind churchgoers to steer away from sin? Images of the green man are predominantly found across England, Great Britain, Europe and parts of Asia and North Africa. He may date back as far as the third millennium BC, and is still being reproduced in stone, wood, glass, metal, art, song, story and poem today. He may be found in his guise as dusty stone or wood carving looking down from pillars and ceilings in churches, cathedrals abbeys and secular buildings throughout the world. To some he is seen as a mischievous, sometimes dark figure found in Morris dances, or as the traditional Jack-in-the-Green leading or included in May Day processions each year, or bought to life in new and vibrant traditions. To others he is just a dusty stone or wooden figure brought across from the continent by French stonemasons as a personification of sin that would be seen and understood by the illiterate masses. Architectural historian Richard Hayman wrote: “There is no case for arguing that the green man is a figure of ancient or medieval pagan origin representing either fertility or some spiritual union with nature. ...the green man represents another eternal theme, about death and the vainglorious nature of human existence” But in “Wildwood A Journey Through Trees” Roger Deakin wrote after seeing the Green Man at King’s Nympton in Devon: “The leaves flow from him like poems or songs. He himself is a kind of folksong. Everyone knows it, but each singer has a different, personal version, a variation on the theme. ‘I am not elderly,’ says the Green Man in one of Jane Gardam’s enchanting stories about him; ‘I am the Green Man.’ He is the spirit of the rebirth of nature. He is the chucked pebble that ripples out into every tree ring. He is a green outlaw and he is everywhere, like a Che Guevara poster.” And the late Ronald Millar founder of The Company of the Green Man wrote: “Two millennia old or older, the Green Man is the vibrant spirit of the wild wood, of vegetation in leaf or bud, of spring, pool and river, earth and sky, indeed the totality of nature. His voice is the hiss of the high wind in ash and oak. And his profundity those sudden silences of a forest when all Nature seems to hold her breath. When we hear or feel him no more mankind will have run its course.” Whatever your view, and whatever your interest in the green man, we welcome your thoughts….please visit our regularly updated blog at http://thecompanyofthegreenman.wordpress.com |
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Top left picture of Sampford Courteney Green Man is copyright © P W Jewitt and is used with kind permission All contents of this website are copyright © 2010 The Company of the Green Man and may not be reproduced without permission |
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