What he is: a force of nature, a melding of man and foliage, potentially Pan or Osiris, someone who has appeared cross-culturally, throughout history, and nearly universally. He's the green man, often depicted with leaves and shoots sprouting vigorously from every facial orifice. These shoots can bear flowers or fruit.
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He is readily found in architecture as a carving and in both secular and religious institutions - including Christian ones - though his appearance is very much that of something pagan, something ancient, something that speaks of the interconnected, symbiotic relationship of man and nature. He is male, unlike Gaia, though much rarer green women and green beasts exist.
Certainly he's old-school. But interest in him is resurging at a time when how humans relate to nature and how mankind impacts upon the natural world is on people's minds.
The green man - or, one kind of manifestation of him - is to be revived in Canberra at the National Folk Festival. There will be the reprisal of a performance called The Green Man Cycle, last seen at the ''folkie'' in 2010.
The show features the folk-singing and spoken-word vocals of Cloudstreet folk musicians John Thompson and Nicole Murray and a young dancer and gymnast, Marcus Ditzel, bedecked in green, with ribbons in his hair, leaping about in his role of the green man.
Thompson is a rare creature: a barrister turned folk muso. The Brisbane-based performer for close to a decade is reviving the green man show by popular demand. As Thompson explains it, the green man rose to prominence because of a 700-year architectural fad, predominantly in Britain.
As for how the green man came to captivate a folk festival crowd to the extent that he was urged to come back, Thompson says: ''The persistent strangeness of the green man just resonates at different times.
''In the last 30 years or so, the green man has come to have links in people's thinking with the environmental movement.
''Not just because of the name, but because of the symbolism of the enmeshing of human forms and natural forms.
''He's like a human-plant, or a plant-human.''
At a time when climate change is at the centre of a lot of debate, the green man's re-emergence was an interesting phenomenon.
Here, Thompson quotes noted psychologist Carl Jung who theorised that archetypes were revived when an emotional or psychological need for them emerged.
''And as people have become more conscious of human impact on the planet, a re-examination of how that relationship can work and how it's meant to work has become prominent,'' he says.
''The green man is an embodiment of that relationship.''
The green man was so changeable in nature and so widely assimilated that Thompson had even found images of a green Christ, which he understood to be someone's experiment with symbolism.
Regardless of one's own beliefs, the green man has a message for us all, Thompson believes.
''Whatever philosophical or religious perspective people come from, they can't help but benefit from at least looking at the green man and seeing what he represents for them.''
The show's producer, Brisbane-based Ian Redpath, says the performance tells the tale of the cycle of the life and death of the green man. It begins before his birth in winter and carries through until his death in autumn.
Redpath explains that the ancient tale would be relatable to modern audiences because of people's interest in old traditions, the need to respect the cycle of the seasons and the forces of nature, and the way that ''in modern times we run rampant over so many of them and are starting to suffer the consequences of that''.
''The green man represents wildness and wilderness and leaving things untouched by order, concrete and modernism.
''I think we have this idea we can just abandon all the traditions we have, but it seems to me if we do that we become increasingly hollow and more concerned with what Lady Gaga is wearing than we should be.''
The man who will depict the green man is Marcus Ditzel, from Devon, England, and now based on the Gold Coast.
Ditzel is a high school teacher by day and fire-twirler by night. He has taken up Morris dancing for a hobby. This kind of English folk dance, with its symbolism of life, growth and renewal, has similar connotations to the green man.
Ditzel's green man will be happy and energetic in spring and will, towards his death, show himself becoming decrepit and old. There will be a promise the green man will come again. He is to be costumed in green, with an ivy-patterned waistcoat, and green ribbons and artificial flowers in his hair.
The archetype of the green man has particular appeal for Ditzel. He had worked with a friend to create a horror video game based on the green man myth. In this case, the green man was a vengeful spirit of nature wreaking havoc because a town had opened a coal mine and plundered a forest in this Victorian fantasy.
''I really like the idea of the symbol,'' Ditzel says as he gets ready to dance a dance that promises greener times will always come again.
■ The Green Man Cycle is to be performed at the National Folk Festival at Exhibition Park in Canberra tomorrow from 4pm. The festival concludes Monday.
