BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: On the Trail of Jack-In-The-Green
Hellebore No.15: ‘The Green Issue’
Available from Bookbuster, £7.99
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
In 1977 Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull penned his classic song Jack-In-The-Green. His ‘Jack’ ‘quietly sits under every tree’, ‘with his long tail hanging down’. Worse, he sings that ‘It’s no fun being Jack-In-The-Green; No place to dance, no time for song’. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song but those who attended Hastings’ own ‘Jack-In-The-Green’ last weekend will know that our Jack is certainly not quiet, nor does he miss out on a bit of outrageous festival, albeit a bit tired and battered by the end of the day!
Somewhat more on point is XTC’s Green Man, which brings the festival mood – ‘Please to dance round for the one called the Greenman; Dressed in the fruits of the wild’.
Our best-selling occult zine, Hellebore, has arrived in its fifteenth edition, and this time is dedicated to the greening of Spring, and our British folklore traditions that herald the season. This issue kicks off with an essay by Katy Soar titled On the Trail of the Green Man. She exhumes the folkloric roots of ‘the green man’, finding his modern incarnation to date from the 1930s, and folklorist Lady Raglan. Of course she looks further back as well to, for example, Tudor pageantry where the green man was taken from older mediaeval myths of the Wild Man of the woods. This was ‘in turn based on ancient stereotypes, a primitive race of strong, hairy forest-dwelling humans who wore leaf crowns and wielded clubs or branches as weapons’. The essay has much more to tell, ranging from pub signs, through the Green Knight and Robin Hood. Missing is our own hairy human, Keith Leach, co-architect of the Hastings Jack-In-The-Green.
RICH WITH WOODCUTS AND TINTED GRANULATED PHOTOGRAPHY
The next piece brings in Pan, the arcadian god. Paul Robichaud brings him to us through Peter Pan & Wendy, titling his article The Piper at the Gates of Neverland – which gives me the excuse to promote The Piper in Norman Road, named by its owner, Chris, after the Pink Floyd album Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Paul gives a fascinating and detailed account of the relationship between Barrie’s ‘Peter’ and the Greek god Pan, refracted through a lens of Jungian unconscious and the collective psyche.
Following this is the folklore of flowers penned by the zine’s editor, Maria J Pérez Cuervo. This, like all the writing herein, is copiously illustrated, one of the great selling points of the zine. As always, it is rich with woodcuts and tinted granulated photography.
Nick Freeman takes on a journey through Songs from the Witchwoods, which encompasses Arnold Bax and Ralph Vaughan Williams, through to the Strawbs and, yes, Jethro Tull. Along the way a few literary connections are made, not least to Kentish author Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood series (the best of which, in my opinion, is Lavondyss), and Algernon Blackwood whose works are back in print.
FAIRIES, ELVES AND TREE WORSHIP
Ally Wilkes is next, with a fascinating piece on plants and consciousness. She ranges from Brazilian folklore, through Darwin, Wells, and M Knight Shyamalan, to Hildegard von Bingen and Merlin Pendragon.
Verity Holloway brings us the Roots of the Jack-In-The-Green, which of course brings in May festivals – Of which Hastings Jack-In-The-Green is one. Verity says the contemporary view of the Green Man as ‘an ancient pagan rite of fertility’ in fact obscures its roots in the industrial revolution. This latter element is still apparent in our festival, with the chimney sweep drummers for example. The plight of working people and of child labourers, especially Black Peter and his fellow sweep assistants, not to mention milkmaids, are here seen as a more genuine root of our modern ‘paganism’.
The Green Issue is rounded off with a feature on fairies and elves in fiction of the last century, and their antecedents in older mythologies. Who Dwells within these Trees is brought to us by Oxford historian Francis Young. He brings us Roman cults of early tree worship, Scottish ‘clootie trees’, ‘unholy trees’, and Shakespeare’s reference to Herne the hunter, who walks ‘round about an oak, with great ragg’d horns’.
The last page is given over to credits for the artwork. In such a lovely publication this cannot be ignored, for the art is a large part of Hellebore’s perennial attraction – it remains the king of British folklore zines!
As a bonus, last year Hellebore published its first short story collection, Tales of Occult Britain, also available at Bookbuster for £15.
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