THE GREEN MAN.
- He is linked with the themes of life, death and rebirth
- He is usually presented as a protector of trees and plants
- He was originally a Pagan god, but over time he has overlapped with different stories such as Robin Hood
- He also has links with Christianity - that's why there's often sculptures of little faces with leaves around them in churches. I don't actually know what the link is though.
- He is green
That's all I managed to find out really, google wasn't very helpful.
I also checked out who the Erl-King was though, and he is a lot more interesting.
THE ERLKING.
The Erlking originated in Denmark, but the source of the more well-known version is a poem by Goethe.
The poem Erlkönigs Tochter (Elvrkonge’s Daughter), was a Danish work translated into German by Johann Gottfried Herder. The story portrays Sir Oluf riding to his marriage but being entranced by the music of the elves. An elf maiden, in Herder’s translation the Elverkonge’s daughter, appears and invites him to dance with her. He refuses and spurns her offers of gifts and gold. Angered, she strikes him and sends him on his way, deathly pale. The following morning, on the day of his wedding, his bride finds him lying dead under his scarlet cloak.Goethe was inspired by Herder's ballad, and rewrote the story with some significant changes. In Goethe's version it is the Erlking himself who is the antagonist of the story, and he preys on children rather than adults of the opposite sex. The Erlking's motives are not made clear, but he sounds like a bit of a paedophile (in the poem he tells the little boy that he loves him and is "charmed by his beauty". Ew.
The Erlking is also portrayed as an omen of death, and will only appear to a person about to die. In Goethe's poem the little kid sees the Erlking and is like "aaah daddy the erlking's here" and his Dad says "no its fine it's just a tree". It goes on like this for the whole poem (it gets a bit repetitive/boring/annoying) And then the little kid dies. So his dad should have listened really. Also, a person can tell what sort of death awaits them by the Erlking’s expression eg. a pained expression means a painful death, a happy expression means you'll get tickled to death. In Angela Carter's version, she doesn't really incorporate any of this, and her Erl-king is more like the Green Man than the traditional Erlking.
The endddddd.
