Three for Friday
What does Green mean?
There is so much lore and literature around the Green Knight and his near relative, the Green Man, that I was hard put to choose some reading suggestions for you this week. In recent years the word ‘green’ has been supercharged with an eco-political significance and urgency. So perhaps it’s timely to tease out some of its early symbolic meanings.
For our story I have gone with the ancient Celtic tale of ‘Bricriu’s Feast’. I offer it in two parts. The first is a funny account of how Bricriu of the Bitter Tongue, having failed to start a quarrel between the men of Ulster, stirred up trouble between the women.
The second part features a beheading challenge similar to the one in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Both stories come from Lady Augusta Gregory’s fascinating collection of Irish mythology.
Testament to the enduring fascination of the fourteenth century poem I give you a selection of further reading and some listening.
First up is a review (for The Irish Times) by Seamus Heaney of a 2006 translation of the poem by his friend, Bernard O’Donoghue.
Seamus Heaney Review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Bernard O'Donoghue
Next is British poet, Simon Armitage’s web page relating to his 2009 version of the poem. There are links here to his Oxford lecture on the poem and to an interesting BBC radio discussion of it, hosted by Melvyn Bragg. |There is also a BBC documentary about the poem.
Simon Armitage and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Finally an excellent essay on Iris Murdoch’s The Green Knight published in 1995 by Milada Frankova.
There are many stories attaching to the Green Man, whose foliate head appears in Gothic churches in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe. He is said to be a manifestation of the Greek god, Dionysos, he has shown up in Iraq, and is associated with the Celtic pagan tradition of a nature god, or wild man, residing in the wildwood.
The Green Man also features in fifteenth and sixteenth century plays, clearing the way for the players, heralding their arrival in town, a figure who persisted into the eighteenth century. Some regard him as a symbol of growth and renewal, others as the devil. Indeed, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we are told that the Green Chapel could be Satan’s haunt.
In his review Heaney comments on the symbolic timing of the poem at the turn of the year, out with the old, in with the new. In David Lowery’s film, the lady of the castle delivers a long speech describing green as a colour of both growth and death, the latter seen in mould and verdigris.
Here are two poems by Justin Quinn from his 2006 collection, Waves and Trees, which see art, music and literature, as an extension of nature, fusing them in sensual celebration of life. The cover of Quinn’s book bears the image of the Green Man from Norwich Cathedral.
Beech Section Each tree is like a mast and rises out of sight to air crossed by the flight of kestrels, bright and vast; the leaves so spread and massed that down here it is quiet; this underwater light half green, half shadow cast. Have you read all the books and still got time? How long? enough to take a stave, lean in and hear what hooks on it. Time for a song made out of wood and wave.
Flowers and Leaves Blue-grey auroral murk. The bedroom’s furniture returns out of the dark: mirror, table, chair. The sun rises and hauls a flock of pigeons’ shadows across the whitewashed walls in rippling close strettos. The birds fly out of view and probably dissolve into the massive blue. Silverfish nod off amidst the carpets, papers, panels and old cloth, in dark dead-ends, close neighbours to the drowsing moth. Flowers and leaves twine round the different forms of wood like shoots cut from the ground and carefully brought inside. Flesh rises into this and and marries here and there. It sings large songs and these go wandering through the air: They met and loved by times And from them came a son. Lives stream out like rhymes for river, tree and sun.
As for the Green Man in Christian churches, this is probably an example of syncretism, pagan imagery being included to attract new converts. The leafy man also appears in many pub signs in England. So make of him what you will!
Thank you for being here. Don’t forget to share your thoughts on green matters, here: