William Lawes
"a Green Man made of music"
The Search for the
Green Man.
I turned the radio on, mid-sentence. A distant voice from the BBC World Service was describing something very strange - a face made out of leaves, a pagan carved image found in Christian cathedrals, a descendant of the horned god of the woods, the spirit of nature, lover of the Goddess.
And yet, perhaps strangest of all, was the feeling that, as the programme unfolded, I had the increasing sensation that this image - the Green Man - was not unfamiliar to me. It even seemed perfectly natural, as if I had always known about it. Yet I had never knowingly seen or heard of the Green Man before.
After a while, I remembered Greanvine, who features in Russell Hoban's novel set in Canterbury, "Riddley Walker" - a carved head with leaves coming from its mouth which the main character incorporates into his divinatory, post-apocalyptic Punch and Judy show. And I remembered how I had associated this figure with an oddly affecting carving on a bench end found in the church at Charing, a cat-like human head with vine leaves sprouting from its mouth. It was as if I were remembering a thought I'd never had. The Green Man was coming back to me.
The radio programme I had heard tied-in with the book "The Green Man" by William Anderson. It was this book (and its accompanying BBC TV "Omnibus" programme) which inspired so many others to search for and see the Green Man as part of our cultural heritage, part of our spirituality, part of ourselves. Ten years ago, with the publication of Anderson and Hicks' book, the Green Man was coming back to everyone.
The Green Man is one of the commonest decorative motifs which we can put a
name to, yet there is very little indication of its meaning. We know what an angel
is; we know what a mermaid and a dragon are but we know almost nothing about
the face made out of leaves.
(Text and photographs by Nigel Rushbrook.)
