Now for something a little different Happy May Day or Beltane....or Spring...or however you would like to think of it. I read a while ago about the possibility of green men in churches being an enduring symbol of resistance secretly included by the masons and carpenters of the time. This is a particularly lovely example of a green man in Altarnun Chuch in Cornwall. . . This is a short extract from a much longer very interesting article by Paul Kingsnorth titled the old yoke. "relics of pre-Christian religions that have been incorporated into churches. I have heard, variously, that the green man represents the spirit of the greenwoods, the rebirth of nature, a rebellion against Christianity, or a symbol of the constancy of nature." ... "The Normans called the guerrilla movement that resisted them after 1066 the ‘silvatici’ — the men of the woods. The English, it is said, called them the same thing in their own language: green men. In that greenwood rebellion against unwanted masters, we perhaps see the origins of the Robin Hood legend — and of those carvings in the old churches. What would you do if you were an English stonemason in the 1070s, required to help construct an alien church by new masters you despised? How would you show your loathing of them without attracting a penalty? Perhaps you would carve the face of a green man inside the church: perhaps you would bring the spirit of the silvatici into the temple of the enemy. It could be that what adorns the roof beam of my room is not a wistful old nature spirit, but a symbol of resistance to the crushing of a people"

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