Given a nice, simple XML structure, XmlSlurper() can allow me to read values from it very easily. def xml = "" def html = new XmlSlurper().parseText(xml) println html.head.title Is there a way to make this simple tree navigation possible for generic (type-based, etc) XML. Ideally, in the snippet of code below, I'd like to walk the values by their *name* attribute, but instead, I have to do all this searching: def genxml = """ groovy java xml """ def doc = new XmlSlurper().parseText(genxml) println doc.lst.find { it.@name == "head" }.str.find { it.@name == "title" } Is there a way to walk this just as: println doc.head.title