“An echo of the archaic fertility rites is . . . found in the European spring festival of the first of May, when the May Queen and the Green Man used to be named and the May pole set up and decorated with ribbons and flowers. . . . The May pole, a tree sometimes 60 feet tall, was carried in a cart drawn by oxen, while the May Queen followed in a car, or chariot, drawn by young men and women. Her partner or “consort”, the Green Man . . . also called “the Green One”, was clothed in leaves. In some parts of Europe the couple were “married”. . . . All over Europe traces of the Green Man may still be discovered, and he is even found in the name of many British pubs. In Arthurian legend the Green Knight, who rides into Arthur’s court demanding that one of Arthur’s knights should strike his head from his shoulders, personifies the ancient sacrificed year god, whose rites lead into the deeper mysteries of life and death. How ever often he lost his head, or his life, he could never die.”

—Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, from The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, 2005.