SOURCES:
The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman (1979)

DESCRIPTION: "The branches of the big fallen-down oak made a fire redder and hotter than a furnace, but deep in amongst them, in the very fiery heart of the business, lay wedged another shape ... It seemed to have arms and legs, and the hair all over it was a-burning grass ... Sure enough, there'd been talk about him. About what he really was, how he might have been that old man by the name of Gibb, changed by death into something nasty and scrambly ...”(The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman)

NOTE: The faery creature known as the Man in the Oak is taken from English folklore. Wellman makes him evil though in folk tales he seems more neutral. The English believed that the last piece of fruit on the tree should always be left for the tree's guardian spirit.

HISTORY: The Man in the Oak is one of several English creatures that Wellman wrote about (another was the Kelpie).
 

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