The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #104331   Message #2148009
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
13-Sep-07 - 02:55 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: The Green Man
Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
Sounds interesting, Wilfried - is there any way you could send me a picture?

Also, regarding the story of Adam and the Three Seeds, have a look at The Life of Adam which comes from The Golden Legend (Aurea Legenda) by Jacobus de Voragine from 1275, as referenced by Kathleen Basford in her seminal work, The Green Man (1978).

Here's the relevant passage anyway:

And in the end of his life when he should die, it is said, but of none authority, that he sent Seth his son into Paradise for to fetch the oil of mercy, where he received certain grains of the fruit of the tree of mercy by an angel. And when he came again he found his father Adam yet alive and told him what he had done. And then Adam laughed first and then died. And then he laid the grains or kernels under his father's tongue and buried him in the vale of Hebron; and out of his mouth grew three trees of the three grains, of which trees the cross that our Lord suffered his passion on was made, by virtue of which he gat very mercy, and was brought out of darkness into very light of heaven. To the which he bring us that liveth and reigneth God, world without end.