The Land of the Green Man by Carolyne Larrington

Author:Carolyne Larrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857729347
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Our journeys in this chapter have taken us through east England, over the heathland and mires of Dartmoor, to the Borders and North Yorkshire where corpses once roamed, and as far as Land’s End, where Frank tried to carry away his Nancy. But every part of the country, every crossroads, every bridge and every graveyard bears the imprint of those who lived before us: both those who sleep quietly in their graves and those whose eternal rest is troubled by dreams of what they should have done and what might still be done for them. If we see Black Shuck on our trail or glimpse the Wild Hunt careering past us on an open road, if we hear the wailing of the banshee or the baying of the ghostly Hounds running in the heavens, we should count ourselves fortunate to be given warning to put our lives in order before the light fades for us.

Death is an enigma which humans cannot solve, however preoccupied our stories are with it. Stories of the dead who do not stay where they should be but come to pester the living used to function as conundrums, inviting those left behind to find out what the undead need and to take steps to pacify and console them. With the collapse of Christian belief, the dead are perhaps more importunate; they cannot so easily be consigned to their proper places in the afterlife, and their pleading with us goes unheeded. The stories of this chapter remind us that loss is inevitable; that we cannot resist the changes wrought by time in our own lives or on the scale of history. We must come to terms with our own losses, mourn our dead decently and accept the existential conditions that we can’t change.

And the survivors must, of course, go on living. In the next chapter we’ll see how humans can work with unseen powers to make their fortunes, to make the land fertile and bountiful, and to tap the resources of the Otherworld to make this world better. We’ll also see how communities living on the edge must come to terms with the forces that threaten them; how lack can be turned into gain, and rags into riches.

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