The Green Man

By Mike Harding from Northern Earth 61

I'm working on a long-term research project looking at the Green Man as a magical, mythic and prototypical figure. As part of this I'm trying to build up a database of locations/books/articles/ songs/references to Him. I would be really grateful for an,, help and will share the information with anybody interested. I have the Basford and Anderson books and a little current journalism, but so much remains to be discovered. Location references should be Country/County/Building (Church/old house/etc.) and Site (font/corbel/'arch/etc.). Literary references should be Author/Book?Journal (Title & No.) and perhaps a line about content? I know it's a lot to ask, but like I say I am prepared to share the database when it gets somewhere near completion.

The ultimate aim is a map of the Green Man and perhaps later on another of the Sile na Giogh/Sheela-na-gig. At the moment I have found not one single Green Man in Ireland, yet an abundance of siles. Was the Green Man Romano-Celtic (Sylvanus/Barley/Corn God/etc.), while Ireland, remaining purely Celtic, stayed under the protection of Sile, a.k.a. Brid the Earth Mother? I know Brid appears all over Britain* (particularly, it seems to me, in the North), which would indicate the longevity of Celtic worship here, but the apparent absence of the Green Man in Ireland would indicate some break in worship perhaps. It might be explained by the fact that the great periods of church building in England from the 12-17th centuries, which produced the vast number of Green Men in our churches and cathedrals didn't happen in Ireland because of the oppression and genocide in that country so that as an image he never gained a hold on the imagination there.

Another thing: the Green Man seems to be found most frequently on the edge of the old woodlands - Sherwood (Southwell), Pendle (Whalley), Somerset (Crowcombe), etc. Does this link Him directly with the dwellers in the woodlands to whom the Green Man had a greater significance? Why are there so few Green Men in Scotland? [The absence of the Green Man in Ireland and Scotland suggests that, as Jorge Andersen indicated, the Green Man per se was not a Celtic deity, but one originating in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Despite obvious precursors like their familiar artistic depiction of a head among foliage-like decoration, there is no good evidence for the Green Man as we know him as a conscious symbolic figure among the Celts - Ed].

There is so much to find out and I would be grateful for any help at all.

Anyone wishing to contact ,Mike Harding re the Green Man project are invited in the first instance to write to him c/o the 'Northern Earth' address; we will forward all such letters so addressed.

* This would seem a good point to remind readers of our own Bride Project (see NE 53 & 57), in which we are asking for locations of 'bride' and related (Brigit, Old Wife, etc.) dedications, place-names. etc., together with short site descriptions, grid references and so on where possible. This ongoing project aims to create a map and geography of the goddess Bride in the British Isles, and will be publicly available.

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