The Green Man and his relationship to Herne the Hunter

This Green Man hangs below our grape vine.

The Green Man is probably an ancient symbol of Life and Death. Winter's death and Spring's rebirth, the perennial cycle of Spring sowing leading to the joyful harvest of Autumn and its many celebrations.Or is he the archetypal spirit of the woodland long believed to haunt the sylvan depths. This sometimes quaint or sometimes rather frightening face, surrounded with leaves which in many cases come writhing from the eyes and mouth and even from the nostrils, has been with us since pre Christian times. He is to be found in the Middle East, even as far as India, and all through Europe. He has been Pan, Baachus, and in the medieval age Robin Hood, that Green clad hero of Sherwood Forest. And what about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

The Green Man as a foliate head is to be found in many churches and cathedrals in Britain and Europe, hiding away amongst carvings on the pillars,gazing down from a high roof boss, and sometimes even among the carvings behind the altar. He is as much a part of the ancient church or cathedal as the angels. How can this be? I feel that he was almost certainly placed there by the medieval stonemasons as a protection from the possible failure of the new religion, an appeal to the old pagan gods who have never entirely left us. We have only to look at the names of our weekdays, and the name of the goddess, Eostre,still kept for the greatest Christian festival. And don't forget Yule, the pagan midwinter festival, still remaing as Yuletide or Christmas.

I can well inderstand the feelings of the people who lived their lives in a land which had large areas covered with woodland. There must have been a sense of mystery felt while walking amongst the great trees, and thoughts of possible spirit beings there are quite understandable. Was the Green Man brought to this island in ancient times when humans first crossed by the land bridge that existed then. Maybe they brought the Green Man with them and found he fitted very well into the new land.

How did the belief in this woodland spirit come to the Celtic peoples who arrived here later? How did how get to India and the Far East? I have some thoughts on this that I will carry onto the next paragraph.

It is now generally believed that the human race came into being in Africa. I am wondering if there is a possibility that the concept of a woodland spirit came into the minds of those archaic people before they split up and wandered though the world, gradually spreading through the continents, developing different characteristics as they went. In this way the Green Man would have come to many parts of the world, remaining a potent spirit to those to whom woodland was an important and dominating part of their lives, giving them food, wood for their homes, fires. and herbs and fruit, as well as meat from the wild boar and the deer. Life would have seemed impossible without woodland.

Now we come to Herne the Hunter. I understand that his first appearance in English literature is in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare. I shall place a verse here from that play as it seems so evocative of the time and place, and of the superstitious beliefs that most of the population had.

There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter,

Sometime a keeper here is Windsor forest,

Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragged horns;

And that he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle

And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain

In a hideous and dreadful manner.

From Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, spoken by Mistress Page.

There is an old myth about an expert gamekeeper, Herne, in Windsor Forest during the reign of Richard the second. The king and Herne, together with other keepers, were in the forest chasing a large and splendid stag when suddenly it turned on the king's horse, charged it, and brought it to the ground, goring the animal and giving it terrible wounds. King Richard was thrown and in mortal danger. Herne sprang from his horse and rushed to the aid of the unfortunate king.

Drawing his knife, he killed the stag and, unfortunately, was himself gored and dangerously wounded. He lay there, slowly dying, while the king called for aid. The other keepers, who were jealous of Herne, took pleasure in giving no help.

Then, out of the thicket, rode a dark and disquieting figure mounted on a handsome, black stallion. He offered help to the king. The group of keepers thought this arrival a mere poacher, but the king accepted the offer. whereupon the dark stranger dismounted and came towards the unfortunate Herne. Using Herne's knife, he cut the magnificent antlers from the head of the dead stag, These he tied to the head of the dying Herne saying that he would now be restored within a month. Herne was then placed on a stretcher of branches and carried back to his home.

Sensing the jealousy of the keepers for Herne, this hypocritical stranger offered to help them take revenge. When Herne recovered his health and strength he would no longer have his great forestry skills. This pleased the cruel keepers immensely and also caused King Richard to dismiss Herne from his service although he had been a faithful servant to the king for many years.

The distraught Herne wandered off into the forest with the antlers still attached to his head, brandishing chains in the air, shouting madly, and generally acting like one insane. Not to be wondered, you might think, after all he had gone through.

At some later time that sadly afflicted man was found by a hermit, of whom there were many in medieval times, hanging from a great and ancient oak. The hermit ran to the castle for help. When a crowd returned with him to the oak Herne had vanished. There was not a sign of the body to be found! Later that very same night the ancient oak was struck by lightning.

From this time onwards, through the years, Herne haunted Windsor Forest to the great fear of all who had to enter the forest. He put a curse on the forest they were sure. The keepers of the forest went on a wild hunt, (an ancient Germanic myth to which I refer in a later paragraph), killing many of the deer and seriously depleting their numbers in hopes of destroying the curse, but this had no effect.

The king, feeling desperate about this trouble, went with his keepers to the desolate remains of the oak. Herne came forth from the trees pointing an accusing finger at the men who had destroyed him. Their terror was indescribable. Richard had every one of them hanged from a remaining branch of the oak. From that time, until the end of Richard's reign, Herne was never seen again.

However, that was not the end of Herne. He has been seen as an omen of coming times of trouble. At such times, up to this very day, he is to be seen roaming Windsor Forest, complete with his splendid great antlers, a terrifying yet fascinating figure.

The Victorian author, Harrison Ainsworth, brought Herne into his novel "Windsor Castle", a story of the time of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary. This was a favourite of mine when I was around fourteen years old. Herne the Hunter became a fascinating figure from that time.

Now I have to see if there is a connection to be found between Herne and the Green Man. Where are the similarities,if any? Both have to be associated with the woods. The Green Man's leaves can have no other meaning surely,and Hernes's antlers relate him to the deer and hunting which in turn lead us to the woodland connections.

The idea of the foliate heads found in the churches and cathedrals must have come down through the ages from former pagan beliefs and maybe they were placed there from a fear of letting the old beliefs go. There must have been a feeling of unease at leaving them behind,and bringing something from the past into the present could possibly ease that fear.

When we come to consider the legend of Herne the Hunter what do we find? Herne himself seems to belong to Windsor forest and the question is, how far back in time does that connection reach? As I said before, the first written connection is by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, but, of course, this does not mean that he did not exist before then. There are many examples of horned gods going back to the most ancient of times. To the prehistoris artists of the drawings in the French caves the animals they were portraying must have seemed god-like creatures. Among the horned gods we can find an ancient Celtic god called Cernunnos, and of course, there was Pan. The animals killed while hunting were always respected by the huntsmen.

An old Germanic belief was The Wild Hunt. This hunt was supposedly led by Woden, and it was believed to be taking place whenever there was a particularly stormy night. The huntsmen rode shrieking through the night with Woden riding at their head on his magical, eight-legged horse. To have seen the Wild Hunt would have been particularly terrifying. Herne the Hunter would seem to belong to this belief.

So was Herne connected to the horned gods of the ancient past? Was he one of the huntsmen of that Wild Hunt who at some point in time became part of the Windsor Forest myth, becoming Herne the Hunter ( I understand that Herne in and old word for horn)? This seems possible. I must research further.

So how does that myth connect with The Green Man? I feel myself that he does not belong to any myth of the hunt. He is much more likely to be a spirit of the trees. Maybe he was believed to protect the woodland, thus indirectly helping the humans who needed the wood for so many parts of their lives. The leafy faces we see today can surely be a concept of tree spirits, beings to be respected and sometimes feared. As I have read of the Bamberg Man in the cathedral in that town in Germany,

The most you could hope for in any dealings with the Green man of Bamberg is that he should be on your side.......

The ferocity of his expression is one of warning against neglect of the Natural Law.

From "Green Man, The Archetype of Oneness With the Earth."

By William Anderson.

So have I reached the end of my thoughts on the relationship of the Green Man and Herne the Hunter believing that there is no relationship between them ? Historians with far more knowledge than I appear think there is a connection, but I still feel that any relationship must be in the far distant past, long before we can have any true knowledge, and that as the centuries passed the spirit of the woods and the hunt divided and became the Green Man and the horned god.

Until I came across more information that is where I shall leave this essay.

Since I wrote this essay I have been to Bamberg and seen the Bamberg Man in the cathedral. He is certainly a fine and formidable Green Man.

I seem to have got a space here that I did not intend. I should like to put a picture of the Bamberg Man here but it refuses to be copied into this position. Maybe I'll sort it out later.

I am wondering when it was that I started to take an interest in The Green Man. It is quite a number of years ago. I have loved woodland since I was a child so that was a starter I suppose. The idea of a spirit of the woods fascinated me, therefore the Green Man must be fascinating.

I am now going to insert a verse from Puck's Song by Rudyard Kipling.

She is not any common Earth,

Water or wood or air,

But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye*,

Where you and I will fare.

* Gramarye is magic. "She", of course is England.

Surely such a magical place must be a home to the Green Man!

The Blue Pool


The Blue Pool was green today,
Not blue at all
But as green as grass.
By reason of the atmosphere
The notice said
As we went in.
Strange it seemed
That the Blue Pool
Should be green,
And that we should stand
On the sandy bank,
Admiring the weedy green water,
Famed for its blueness.
The sun it shone
And the sky was blue,
But still was the water
Greenly shining
And greenly still.

I wrote this some time ago about a true happening. It seems to fit in with the green atmosphere. Maybe the Green Man had been working his magic!!