The Green Man and the Dragon (review)

By Paul Broadhurst, isbn 0951323679, £12.95, illustrated (some in colour)

George, in origin a Greek name meaning 'farmer' or 'tiller of the soil',. St George was a Roman military tribune martyred at Nicomedia in 303. The dragon-killing legends were attached to his name later. His cult was brought to England from the East by returning Crusaders; he was said to come to their help under the walls of Antioch in 1089 and was then chosen as their patron by the Normans under Robert of Normandy, son of the Conqueror. There are 126 churches dedicated to him in England. But George as a christian name was slow in taking root. The earliest example noted is one George Grim at the end of the 12th century and there are occasional occurences in records of the 13th and early 14th c. Edward III had a particular devotion to St George and in 1349, on St Georges Day, founded the Order of the Garter, which he placed under his patronage and dedicated to him the chapel of the order at Windsor. From this time he was regarded as the patron saint of England.'

The above is the subject matter of Paul Broadhurst's solid tome, although taken from The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names (ed E G Withycombe), not quoted in Broadhurst's bibliograpy unlike many a lesser source.

Of course when you examine the early part of the myth - the trail soon runs cold and one is left with the unsatifactory conclusion that there must have been more than one 'holy Geo' - or is he some sort of god in disguise? The saint in roman armour is precisely the form than late images of the god Horus take on in Roman Egypt. This last fact has led many to suppose that the glyph of St George and the Dragon, is a cypher for the Contending of Horus & Seth, a theme explored in one of the many chapters in Broadhurst's book.

After his migration to England, St George is soon embroiled in the spirit of Beltain, into whose season his feastday on 23rd April falls. I wasn't sure how to take some of the more technical arguments in this book, especially those around calendar reform. One often does hear grumblings about the use of modern (Gregorian) dates, but to me the previous dates derived from the Julian calendar seem just as arbritrary and divorced from any natural cycle? In parts the narrative could be a little clearer and I personally could do without some of the more wacky linguistic arguments (shades of Kenneth Grant here). For example is the name really the trisyllable 'Ge - Or - Ge'. 'Or' cannot be the root of the name Horus - whose name is spelt 'HR' in Middle Egyptian. Egyptian vowels are largely a mystery - the 'O' just a publishers convention with no historical significance. But these and other quibles aside - this book presents all the pertinent facts in a stimulating manner and is a welcome addition to the literature on the topic. [Mogg].