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/ Green Man bounces back, with a spring smile on his face / Paul Evans

Green Man bounces back, with a spring smile on his face

Nature watch Paul Evans

Paul Evans

Perhaps all cultures have a figure that represents the complete union of people with nature. Perhaps that figure persists in our imaginations, like a dream we want to relive, as if to convince ourselves that we are not estranged from nature.

The myth of the Green Man goes back to an origin lost in the history of Indo-European peoples. The strange face - made up of leaves and branches, bearing an expression that could be both agony and ecstasy, and with vegetation surging from his gaping mouth - stares down from cathedral corbels or peeks from wooden church pews. It's as if Christianity captured the Green Man physically, as it did the yew tree, in its holy places, and, as with other pagan symbols and celebrations, absorbed the myth into its own culture for fear it would get loose again. It did.

With a revived interest in things pagan (and pagan originally meant someone living in the countryside) the Green Man is being rehabilitated as an ecological icon, a symbol merging the human spirit with nature. In my opinion he belongs with other figures such as Jack-in-the-Green and John Barleycorn as symbols of human sacrifice - the chosen one ritually slain, his blood feeding the earth, or else buried alive.

Despite what may be a grisly heritage, the new, improved Green Man for the 21st century is popping up in all kinds of places. May Day was the time, and the village of Clun in Shropshire's Welsh Marches the place. With his cloak and long hazel wands, his face a mask of leaves and crowned with antlers, the Green Man stood on the castle mound, below the jagged ruins of the tower. In a voice like thunder he announced the nurdlin' of the hotty wortles. Eh? Pub teams competing to see who could toss a hot water bottle the furthest down the hill may not seem like deep communing with nature, but pagans always did have more fun.

Clun has reinvented its old May Day festival and reinvented the Green Man along with it. The festival began with the ringing of 10 bells from the 11th-century tower of St George's church, and as the procession crossed the bridge over the river Clun, the Green Man confronted Old Frostie, the spirit of winter. Old Frostie gave way, and with bands, morris dancers, children dancing round a horse-drawn maypole, a stilt walker and retinue of locals and visitors out for a good time, the Green Man's procession wound through the streets up to the 12th-century castle. The May Fair was on the flat-topped mound of the upper bailey, and there were stalls, a beer tent, food, music and dancing. Nurdlin' the hotty wortles apparently represents throwing out symbols of winter (the hot water bottles) to make way for summer.

The spell, if that's what it was, worked, because it was a beautiful sunny day. It was great to see people gathered together, meet old friends, and make merry in a way that has been with us for centuries. It was also great to see the people of Clun reclaim their heritage, reshape it to meet their needs and affirm their identity, their sense of place.

The river sparkling through its gallery of alder trees, the stately old black poplars, the vibrant greens of water meadows and the very stones of the castle seemed resonant with the music and laughter, as if there really were something to celebrate, and here it was, all around us.

I don't imagine the Green Man met his ritual sticky end, but this place is no stranger to bloodshed and suffering. The Green Man festival may be an eccentric, perhaps even ironic mix of traditions and wishful thinking, but the idea of new green life, rebirth and the desire to heal the rift between people and nature remained as a serious idea behind it all. Not that seriousness was allowed to spoil a good time, which is how it should be.

The Guardian Weekly 18-5-2000, page 21

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