How Much Folklore Has Been Forgotten? Juliet E. McKenna
When I’m starting work on a new book in my ‘Green Man’ series, I do much the same as Daniel does in these novels, when he realises there’s a new challenge to face. I hit the books and the Internet. A lot of these books are ones I remember from my childhood, when collections of folk tales sat alongside historical and fantasy stories on the school and local library bookshelves. There are interesting things about these books that I simply don’t remember. Thanks to a purchase from an online second-hand bookseller, I’ve discovered that Alan Garner edited one that I vividly recall – A Book of Goblins from Puffin.
Looking deeper into these stories as an adult, I am struck time and again by how much has been forgotten. The Green Man himself is a case in point. The foliage face motif in various forms can be found all over Europe in carvings across the centuries. I have photos of him from a museum in Zagreb. But what does this iconic face signify? We can only guess. Whatever tales were told to explain this mysterious being must have fallen out of favour, and so they’ve been lost in the mists of time. New stories are being woven by modern pagans and novelists alike these days, and I wonder which tales will endure.
This isn’t a recent phenomenon. In The Green Man’s Silence, Dan encounters a spirit of the waters of England’s Fenland. He tells Dan his name is Wade – and I am indebted to my friend Julia Cresswell for drawing my attention to this particular mythic figure. But who was Wade, and what was the significance of his boat? Geoffrey Chaucer knew, and clearly the tales were so well known in his day that he only needed to make a passing reference in The Merchant’s Tale for everyone to get the joke. An editor of Chaucer’s works in the 16th century notes that the story of Wade is long and fabulous, but he sees no need to repeat it. Modern scholars can only curse Thomas Speght for his laziness. By the 19th century, the Old English Tale of Wade was reduced to a few inexplicable manuscript fragments in the library of Peterhouse, Cambridge. There are no real clues in the various places around the country linked to his name, such as Wade’s Grave and Wade’s Causeway in Yorkshire. How do the scraps of local legends explaining standing stones and other features in the landscape relate to Wade’s wider story? Unless some lost manuscript turns up, we will never know.
Some fleeting references in folk tales say that Wade was the father of Wayland, the famous smith. He’s another mythic figure whose full story has been lost. Tradition ties him to Wayland’s Smithy high on the Wessex Downs, and local legend says that’s where the Uffington White Horse goes to get a new set of shoes once a century. The Uffington Horse is perhaps England’s most famous chalk figure, but we have no real idea of who first carved it and why, even if modern archaeological technology is helping to narrow down when. At least as much mystery, if not more, surrounds other surviving landscape figures such as Wiltshire’s other white horses, the Cerne Abbas Giant, and the Long Man of Wilmington. Then there are the carved horses and giants which have been lost, now only known from written references. Why did people go to so much effort to create such things, and to maintain them for centuries? Any number of theories have been put forward over the decades. Can we ever know who’s right? I very much doubt it.
Giants are a real curiosity in British mythology. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in the 12th century, their savage race held these islands until courageous men arrived to drive them out. Geoffrey also claims that giants built Stonehenge, and a medieval giant effigy survives in Salisbury Museum, once linked to the local Tailors’ Guild. Brief stories of local giants being killed by local heroes crop up in many of the books of regional folklore that I like to pick up whenever I can. We all know the fairy tales of Jack and the Beanstalk, and Jack the Giant Killer. But we have no idea where these stories came from, especially the ones about assorted Jacks. Scholars have traced those particular pantomime favourites back to the late 17th century, but they can find nothing to explain why they suddenly came into fashion at that time.
What does this mean for me as a novelist? Well, I find myself with references and scraps of folklore dotted all over the map. The challenge for me is joining up those dots to create a coherent story. What does this mean for Daniel, when there’s rumour of a giant roaming the beech woods and the chalk hills of Wiltshire, and the Green Man expects him to deal with the problem. He can’t find any answers in old books or posted online. That means he has to go looking for help from other spirits bound to the trees and landscapes of the Wessex Downs. The challenge for him will be convincing them that he’s a friend not a foe. If you’re curious to know how he gets on, The Green Man’s Challenge is available from Wizard’s Tower Press, or through your preferred retailer.
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