the space between: vi. The Green Man of Knowledge

19:00 (60mins)

So Jack’s hey the road, ho the road, doon the road, and he comes to a crossroads. And on one of the signposts, it says ‘To The Land of Enchantment’. And Jack says, well, here’s for it, and he's away down that road. It leads him to a place where everything is alive and nothing is certain, and into the web of magic and trickery spun by the Green Man of Knowledge.

And at the centre of the story, transforming matter and landscapes and her own body in a constant cycle of shapeshifting, we find the Green Man’s Daughter.

The Green Man of Knowledge is an epic folk tale. The version this telling is based on was told by Traveller storyteller Geordie Stewart to the folklorist Hamish Henderson in 1954. The tale type is sometimes described by scholars as Arne-Thomson-Uther type 313, ‘The Girl As Helper in the Hero’s Flight.’ The present teller may have some bones to pick with this categorisation.