Hi friends, of all the figures associated with May Day/Beltane, the Green Man is perhaps the best well-known.
This holiday, like many in what we might call the Celtic or Pagan wheel of the year, is probably an amalgamation of many similar traditions practiced in communities across Europe, the British Isles, and into Asia.
I won’t get into May Day folklore too much as I want to focus more on the figure of the Green Man himself, but I do want to share a few of the articles & blog posts I read while researching this post.
The Folklore of May Day–Myth and Moor
Into the Woods, 5: Wild Folklore–Myth and Moor
Today’s poem is inspired by this quote from mythic scholar Daniel C. Noel, found on the Myth and Moor blog:
"Whether the Green Man, is some sort of Jungian archetype 'returning' from a primeval past, a Celtic survival in the psyche, seems not as important to me as the metaphor he constitutes for men, and for the gender-embattled culture, in the present and future.
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