Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 436
The Green Man
Hello Everyone
Last weekend, a whole group of us went on a family visit to Bill and Bob’s cousins.
On the way back, we were really hungry – Bill and Bob said that they were really ravenous, so l mean that was even worse!
We decided to have a pub lunch in a place that we had never stopped at before, but a place that we had often passed by.
The day was nice and we sat outside to have our meal.
The pub was called the Green Man.
Bill and Bob asked me why the man in the picture on the pub sign was green.
After all, you don’t see too many green people walking about.
l told them that the Green Man was a figure from folklore.
They asked if the man in the picture was looking at them through a bush.
l told them that no, he had leaves on his face.
Bob asked me if he had stuck them on with PVA glue.
He is such a comedian sometimes!
Anyway, l said that it was just how he looked.
He has a leafy beard and leafy hair.
The Green Man looks like that because he is a symbol of how abundant nature can be.
He is an old pagan idea, a very ancient image of the connection between man and nature.
After all, without nature providing us with food, we could not exist, so it has always been important in our lives.
Ancient peoples thought of nature as sacred.
You can imagine ancient tribes walking through vast forests thick with green leaves, hearing a rustle in the distance and thinking it was a mysterious being.
Not seeing what creature was stirring there, they might have imagined that it could be another being like them. Another being that was of the forest, a spirit overlooking the land and trees and animals that lived there.
The Green Man, they imagined, was warm-hearted and giving.
Representations of the Green Man have been carved into stone and wood to decorate churches and temples for many centuries.
Although a pagan figure (paganism was the first religion) his face can even be found represented on old Christian cathedrals. He can be found on churches going back 1,600 years.
What is interesting; is that the idea of a green man is to be found in cultures all over the world.
Some people nowadays even buy plaques with his face on from garden centres to adorn their garden walls. Sometimes, if you get one with a hole in his mouth it can be incorporated into a water feature and you can have a stream of water coming out of his mouth and into a pond.
Maybe having the Green Man image come to live in your garden might increase your harvest from your vegetable patch and give you plentiful fruits from your orchard!
The Green Man can also be called the Green Knight and Jack in the Green.
Robin Hood and Peter Pan might be thought of as more modern representations.
The Green Man is not the only mythical being to be associated with nature and the ancient forests.
There is also the Woodwose (the wild man of the woods) who is a large and hairy, wild man of the ancient forests.
Legends of wild men living in forests come from all over the world.
There are stories of people seeing Big Foot in America, Russia and Asia.
Pan is an ancient pagan god of the wild too.
He lived in the woods and pastures and mountain sides of Ancient Greece. He looked over shepherds and their flocks.
He is connected with the season of spring; when nature springs back to life.
His top half is human but has the bottom half of a goat. He has goat horns too and loves to play the flute.
You might hear people say ‘touch wood’ when they want good luck. Some people say ‘knock on wood’. This is asking Pan; or maybe some other spirits of the forest, to send some good luck their way.
Bill and Bob asked if there was a Green Man living in the Spooky Woods at the other side of the park behind their cottage and if he would help the trees that they planted to grow.
l said, “Well, you never know!”
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And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: What is a green man?
Bob: Someone who recycles?
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
After the mayor had had the idea of leaving the grass verges around town wild – that means with long grass, last week, he had another idea this week.
It all started with the letters Miss Pringle’s class wrote to the Rocky Bay Gazette really.
The children said that they wanted Rocky Bay to become as beautiful and as eco-friendly as possible.
He had a stroll about town again and decided that the pond on the green really did need some attention.
A lot of villages have ponds on a green in the centre.
A hole was formed when earth was dug out to be used to help construct the old cottages. The pond filled in with water over the years and of course Rocky Bay, like many other small towns, started out originally as a small village.
The Rocky Bay District Council sent their gardeners to sort things out but some of the people in town wanted to help too.
They all got together for a couple of days this week to get the pond well and truly tidied up.
The first thing they had to do was dredge the pond out.
That means scrape out all the weed and unwanted plants.
The people doing it had to wear waders (they are like a cross between very long wellingtons and waterproof trousers) and stout gloves to protect their hands.
Then the pile of green mush that they pulled out was left at the side of the pond overnight so that any little creatures caught up in it had a chance to crawl out again and slip back into the water.
Would you believe there was some rubbish in there too?
Some people come on holiday to Rocky Bay because it is such a lovely place – and then mess it up.
I think some silly tourists threw some cans and bottles in the water while they were walking by at some point.
At least there were no shopping trolleys in there!
Then the banks of the pond were dug away somewhat so that the pond could be enlarged. They had dissolved a bit over the years where heavy rain had flooded the pond and pushed water up onto the grass around it during bad winter weather.
The banks were then stabilized with some new plants that were put at the edges of the water. These plants are called marginal plants.
You have margins on your paper at school. They are at the edge of the page.
Some people in Rocky Bay donated the plants from their own gardens.
Some pond plants like irises can be divided up at the roots so the gardeners could keep their plants and donate just part of them to the project.
A hose pipe was run out from one of the houses to add a little extra water to the pond.
Then three willows were planted on the grass around the green. They will look very stately when they are full-grown. Willows need lots of room to grow and spread their roots out. They will have enough room by the pond.
They should help soak up water with their roots so that the new pond will not flood so badly in winter if it rains heavily.
The whole green looks really pretty now.
A lot of the plants around the pond have flowers on them.
With the pond, now more like a small lake, being clean and tidy it will be a lovely place for wildlife. There is even a little wooden slope put at each end for wildlife to walk into the water – or crawl out if it falls in by accident!
Of course the minute the work was finished, some water birds came to have a look at the new improved environment. The first to arrive were some ducks.
Ducks always seem to fly in, in no time at all, when a new lake appears.
You will find ducks everywhere there is a bit of water to swim on.
There are even ducks in the fountains in Trafalgar Square sometimes!
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Quick Quiz
Draw a column of boxes 3 across and 9 down
Put the 3 letter answers to these questions across inside the boxes
The first letters of the answers will spell a word
- a precious jewel
- a prime colour
- to hear with
- a long, thin fish
- scoring nothing
- to come first in a contest
- the first number
- a night bird
- where a lion lives
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A CRAYON BAG AND A SHOE BAG FOR A BOY
You should, to create a perfect piece of knitting, twist your yarns at the back of your work when you carry yarn behind your stitches in any kind of ‘Fair Isle style pattern’ so that you don’t have big loops at the back. But this is not easy to do.
If the square pattern is too fiddly for you to do, make squares 4 by 4 instead of 16 by 16 stitches.
These bags look very smart to carry your things in.
You could knit the bags in blue and have a red and white square pattern or knit the bag in red and have a black and white square pattern.
CRAYON BAG (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and bottle green dk yarn cast on 22 stitches
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Knit 4 rows of stocking stitch
PATTERN
Change to white dk yarn
Knit 5, change to red dk yarn knit 4, change to white knit 4, change to red knit 4, change to white knit 5
Purl 5, change to red dk yarn purl 4, change to white purl 4, change to red purl 4, change to white purl 5
Repeat the last 2 rows once
Repeat the last 4 pattern rows swapping the colours over
Knit 20 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Using over-sew stitching and with right sides together sew bottom and side seams
Crochet 60 chains into a length of yarn to match the bag and thread this cord into the lower channel at the top of the bag
SHOE BAG (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and bottle green dk yarn cast on 36 stitches
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Knit 10 rows of stocking stitch
INSERT PATTERN
Knit 60 rows of stocking stitch
Knit 8 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Using over-sew stitching and with right sides together sew bottom and side seams
Crochet 180 chains into a length of yarn to match the bag and thread this cord into the lower channel at the top of the bag
Knot the ends
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- a precious jewel – gem
- a prime colour – red
- to hear with – ear
- a long, thin fish – eel
- scoring nothing – nil
- to come first in a contest – win
- the first number – one
- a night bird – owl
- where a lion lives – den
Answer – greenwood – a wood in summer
Love your blog. It is very useful and entertaining.
Thank you very much Ruthie!
So much info here! Great blog! So entertaining too. Nothing else like it!
Thank you very much too Flying Champ.