Sunday 28 February 2021

Searching for The Green Man


In the days when I would occasionally employ masons to help me with a particularly heavy workload, if his C.V. proudly displayed a single photo of a 'Green Man', I would send him away without a second thought. Every budding carver feels he has to make at least one Green Man early in his career, and showing it to an old cynic like me is the equivalent of admitting that you once had a child part in 'Oliver' to a theatrical casting director. I did employ some female masons and carvers, but they were all wise enough not to show me their Green Men.

I looked up in Queen Square yesterday to see the arse of a Green Man shamelessly poking through a hole in a large tree for all to see, and I cannot tell you how refreshing it was to be treated with such disrespect by the wild and Pagan spirit of Springtime. Any mason carving one of these would have instantly got the job.

One of the presenters of Country File visited the workshop of a retired old geezer who did a little woodcarving in his spare time, and was given a mallet and chisel to try his hand on some very two-dimensional oak leaves emanating from the mouth of one of the many Green Men littering the shed. All this man carves are Green Men, and I can honestly say that I have never seen worse ones. 

This sounds a bit harsh, but in the unlikely event of him ever reading this I am not trying to hurt his feelings but it has to be said. There are plenty of very good Green Men hidden away in the rafters of medieval churches, but you have to look hard for them. Unlike the modern versions, they are discreet to the point of secrecy. 

In the tiny hamlet of Conkwell near Bradford on Avon, there is a small and ancient spring which issues from the foot of the steep hill, and it has been known as 'The Green Man' for hundreds of years. It was the only spring which was not poisoned by Oliver Cromwell's troops when they were camped nearby, and is still surreptitiously regarded as sacred by most of the locals.

There is a running joke attached to it which is probably almost as old as the spring itself. Long ago in the past, the mischievous locals put out the rumour that 'The Green Man' is a pub in Conkwell, but failed to mention that it only serves Adam's Ale.

Even when I lived there in the 1980s, we would still get confused visitors searching for the pub and being shown the bright, sparkling spring of clear water instead. The old ones are the best ones.


33 comments:

  1. When I was looking into the Flemish weavers coming to Norwich from Flanders the other day I found that there is a wood carving of a Green Man in the Cathedral here done by one of the Flemish artisans. However at that time, 1437 ish, it was not called a Green Man and this name only came come later. These foliate carvings, as they were known, happily sat alongside religious carvings and were common in the Low countries,

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    1. The masons of old would also carve caricatures of their masters, high up in the roof. Foliate also applies to many different architectural and decorative features, as I'm sure you knew. I have always thought that the Green Man referred back to a time when Christianity and Paganism overlapped.

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    2. There is a story that the Pagan Norse (?) would bury their dead with an acorn in the mouth and an oak would sprout from it - hopefully.

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    3. I only know a bit about them because of my research last week and the name Green Man is a relatively modern term used to describe them which has no truth about folk lore in it. I agree with you about caricatures and they were accepted in good spirit by the church and the people.

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  2. Oh dear - I have always harboured a wish that one day - having 'found yourself in the area' you would ring my doorbell and pay me a visit. Now I am not so sure. A green man sits on the wall to the left of my front door - he has moved with me every time I have moved.

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    1. I like them Weave, I just get fed up with every beginner carver aspiring toward them. They have become a cliché in the world of stone.

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  3. It wasn't the best Green Man carver they could have found.
    I love the Green Man on the big outside doors to the cathedral close in Canterbury. Keeping both sides happy?

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    1. We're all on the same side, no matter what the Archbishop may say.

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  4. The photo did not remind me of an arse but of a vulva, and in combination with your header I found it interesting. When I googled "Green Man" and read your text, I saw my spontaneous association was wrong, though at second thought I might be right too, they look a bit heathen, those Green Men, like fauns.

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    1. Beauty in the eye of the beholder. In John's eyes, it isn't a vulva.

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  5. Funnily enough, I've just written a post about a stream that appears out of the ground near here (only to vanish again). Blog synchronicity. Sadly. it has no name.

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    1. I live in a town where the hot spring has been constant for thousands of years. It never dries.

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  6. There is lots of variation on The Green Man. Something for everybody. It is also said, he is the ancient guardian of the forest.

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    1. Is there a Green Woman equivalent?

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    2. Yes some in Germany and France, and beasts like cats or lions and also like Avus said.

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  7. Tom, Tom! This has been a lovely flight of fancy, but to my eye that is either the tree's effort to repair, or an arborist's work to patch a wound and save the tree from infection. In either case, your lovely arse crack is the wood or the repair shifting.

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    1. I refuse to live in a world where romance is removed by the appliance of science.

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  8. Excellent imagination, Tom. Some ancient church carvings also depict a "sheila-na-gig" which would have appealed to Britta (above)

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    1. Yes indeed. Hidden away in some old churches are carvings of men baring their arses and women doing something similar. People just cannot resist it.

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  9. For those who would try to steal the magic from your life, Tom. https://www.sadanduseless.com/funny-tree-gallery/

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  10. Abson Church on the way to Pucklechurch has a male 'sheila-na-gig high up at the back on the exterior East wall. Think it is Saxon but no one has ever given a reasonable explanation about the 'Green Man' or why you find him in churches.

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    1. The Church has always tried to force our minds onto higher things, but it cannot stop schoolboys from drifting back down to earth during a boring sermon. There are things which cannot be ignored.

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  11. This is a test on my phone. Someone seems to have stolen my TS email address.

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    1. This is a problem for me. I will not be able to post until I have sorted it out. My email address has been stolen and they have changed the password.

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  12. I wonder if Cromwell's crimes were transposed to Australian colonial history, re the poisoning of waterholes?

    It's the 1st time I've read of this. Maybe I'm late to the story. V. common in Australian history.

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    1. I think it was common everywhere.

      The strange thing is that I can access my blog on my phone but not the computer. This ought to tell me something.

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    2. It tells you it's a device recognition problem. On your phone go to your Google Account and open Security and see what devices are listed and see if your computer is still there.

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    3. I use my Stephenson account for everything. This was supposed to be a security device but it got the better of me.

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