GREEN TEMPLES AND THEIR RITES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 12

GREEN TEMPLES AND THEIR RITES

Tree worship, which Nature lovers Jare trying to revive on cultural and economic lines, was once a fa,ct in the lives of people—not only of the Maori people (who have given the pakeha Tane, the God of Forests) but of the English people. It now seems to be agreed that the maypole dance' is a relic of tree worship. The Christmas tree (adapted by Christianity) is another. The practice of personating a sacred tree, by dressing a human being in the branches thereof, gave rise to Jack-in-the-Green, "who was an important character in the May Day revels, and whose name survives iii the inn-sign of the Giee.n Man." But some British inns have forgotten, and picture their Green Man in a green tail-coat. The authority for this is Grace Hadow, in "The Listener." When religion had power over temporal things, it could throw a real protection over trees and birds. Before the pakeha came to New Zealand, the tohungas with their tapus could protect the pigeons in their close season. In fact, religion seems to have had a practical plan of forest protection and aviculture. From this the political system fell away, because trees and birds have not votes. But the re-education of public opinion along cultural lines, so that trees and birds may be protected for aesthetic and economic considerations, if not by tapu and superstition, is proceeding steadily, thanks to propagandist bodies.