The Land of the Green Man: A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles - Hardcover

Larrington, Carolyne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1780769911 ISBN 13: 9781780769912

Publisher: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

Beyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the psyches of those who inhabit them? In this sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of fantastical beings has moulded the nation’s cultural history. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o’Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee and Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes of burning coal. Ranging from Shetland to Jersey and from Ireland to East Anglia, while evoking the Wild Hunt, the ghostly bells of Lyonesse and the dread fenlands haunted by Grendel, this is a book that will captivate all those who long for the wild places: the mountains and chasms where giants lie in wait.

About this title

About the Author:

Carolyn Larrington teaches Medieval English Literature at St. John’s College, Oxford. Her previous books include The Women’s Companion to Mythology, The Poetic Edda and Magical Tales: Myth, Legend and Enchantment in Children’s books.

Review:

...a survey crammed with every myth, legend, elf, giant, and fairy tale related to the British landscape. These old stories are interwoven with references to contemporary authors who have fed British folklore into their fiction: Susan Cooper, Neil Gaiman, Alan Garner, J. K. Rowling. That the Green Man is there in the title is typical of the symbolic importance he has assumed in discussions of all things pertaining to British folklore... Larrington takes the twenty-first-century scholar’s perspective on the Green Man.

(Josephine Livingstone, The New Yorker, March 7, 2016 2016-03-07)

“In this fascinating study of Britain’s folkloric landscape, Larrington traces ancient legends to their most modern reworkings. (Folklorically, Harry Potter turns out to be quite respectable.) An enjoyable tangle of kelpies, trolls, night-riders, changelings, goblins and selkies regale us before the Green man himself grins out from the foliage.”

(The Daily Telegraph "Paperbacks" column)

About this edition

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1780769911
• ISBN 13: 9781780769912
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256