AH Shropshire Event : The GreenMan of Clun Festival.

Vickie AOR | May 5, 2010 | 0 Comments

Report for AH Shropshire. The GreenMan of Clun Festival. May 3rd 2010.
By Alwyn.AOR

The morning of May 3rd, was warm and sunny as we headed off to Clun via “ The Secret Hills” Shuttle bus. Which took us out of Shrewsbury and through the lovely rolling hills of Shropshire.
We arrived in time to see “The Iron Men & Severn Gilders” Morris dancing in The Square, before heading down to the Bridge to watch the Battle between The Frost Queen and The GreenMan…
There were so many Folk there that I knew the children would never see, so we politely snuck through the crowd to the river bed, removed our socks and shoes, rolled up our trousers and crossed through the shallow stream, to a small pebbly island in the middle…This seemed to be the best view and a few others joined us!
Jack the Jester entertained us with stories, jokes and poetry and introduced the Flame thrower/ Fire eater…
From one end of the bridge, The GreenMan of Clun soon joined us on the bridge with some encouragement , from the other end of the Bridge The Frost Queen entered! Back and forth the argument went on to who owned the right of Summer and to defeat Winter…The GreenMan and Frost Queen finally met in the middle of the Bridge to defeat each other… The GreenMan won and he introduced us to The Beautiful May Queen of Summer (Sif). The Crowed “Hailed “ The May Queen and they moved off into the Fair Ground…Where The GreenMan was on the hill with the Fire breather and Drumming display on top of the hill fort.
The Children and I then slowly followed into the fair ground and looked around at all the stalls. There were lovely stalls of Crafts and New age Clothing and Jewellery.
Jardel and Alfie found a really nice staff/walking stick that had been carved, that we bought and will carve our own Runes onto them.
There was a Re-enactment Arena where we watched battle re-enactments with Swords of Chivarly.
Exotic pets arena, which gave the children a chance to hold several species of snakes and a Tarantula. Even though she was a young one, to me it was very big! Jardel asked me to hold her and I did, but to my embaressment I cried out of fear…Afterwards when I had time to recover I realised just how soft and gentle she was and I was really pleased that both Jardel and Alfie had begged me to hold her!
The Maypole Dancing was performed by the Primary School of Clun and it was beautiful to watch them dance in and out of each other! A wonderful site that I myself have not seen scince I was eight years old! My Children have never seen a true Maypole or May Day celebrated and it was wonderful for them to finally see something that is truly mesmorising! Afterwards I was lucky enough to meet the Head Teacher and I congratulated her for how wonderful the School children were and for not allowing our Herritage to die out. I also found out that they were still using the original Maypole dated back to 100 years ago! And that they still have photo’s of it!
There was Duck racing and all four children chose a Duck to race…All day long we had seen signs saying “ Do not feed the Ducks, Duck racing going on!” The Ducks turned out to be plastic yellow ones with numbers on, so we were a little disappointed as they were not real ones! But it was fun all the same…Neither of them won, but it was really funny to take part and they enjoyed it!
The day finished off with watching Bethany have a go at making a Clay pot on the potters wheel! She has done a really nice job and because she made it, we will now use it as our Trygill on our Altar.
The Day had stayed Dry and very Sunny and as we headed off to get our Shuttle bus, you could see the sky was started to cloud over…As we journeyed back through the wonderful country side, we were blessed at seeing some natural wild life, Partridges, Pheasants, Rabbits etc…
The day was very wonderful and next when we go back I will be taking the Video camera so that I can catch the whole Battle of The Frost Queen speech!