Insane Beard,

I don't know what you mean by "vague notions" of the green man as a pageant figure. They aren't vague at all, but very well described in stage directions from the 1570s on. The earliest of these suggests that everyone will know what a Green Man looks like, the later ones describe the costume more fully, and the latest suggests that the term Green Man is going out of vogue, replaced by woudmen or wild-men, except among sign-makers. This suggests that the term has some currency before 1578:

"Two men, apparrelled, lyke greene men at the Mayors feast, with clubbes of fyre worke." (1578)

"Comes there a Pageant by, Ile stand out of the greene mens way for burning my vestment" (1594)

"Two disguised, called Greene-men, their habit Embroydred and Stitch'd on with Ivie-leaves with blacke-side, having hanging to their shoulders, a huge black shaggie Hayre, Savage-like, with Ivie Garlands upon their heads, bearing Herculian Clubbes in their hands" (1610)

"men in greene leaves set with work upon their other habet with black heare & black beards very owgly to behould, and garlands upon their heads with great clubs in their hands with fireworks to scatter abroad to maintaine way for the rest of the show" (1610) [describing the same pageant as the above stage direction, hence referring to a character explicitly called Green Man]

"In the front of all before these, twenty Savages or Green Men, with Squibs and Fire-works, to sweep the Streets, and keep off the Crowd" (1686)


"They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou' at thes day we in ye signe [trade] call them Green Men, couered with grene boues: and are used for singes by stiflers of strong watters." (late 17th century)

It's clear that by this time, the Green Man is perceived to be the very same figure sometimes called Wild Man, Wodemen, or Wodewose, as the above makes clear. This was apparently not always true, but it was true by the late seventeenth century.

Now, this figure is also certainly the same as one of the two folkloric figures Lady Raglan talked about, the Green Man of the inn sign; indeed by the seventeenth century, as we see from the quote above, it was primarily in the sign trade that the figure was called Green Man, and it was used mostly to represent liquor, hence it was a natural sign for both distillers and pubs.

The question as to whether this character in renaissance and restoration pageantry is closely related to the leaf-colored figures of later English folk drama (the ones Lady Raglan observed) is an open one. Your assertion that the one has "little (or nothing) to do with" the other doesn't make it so. It is often the case that a familiar element of earlier folklore and popular culture is retained and adapted in later years. (e.g. Pulcinella of 17th Century Neapolitan Commedia becoming Punch of early twentieth century English puppet theatre.) Were the leaf-covered figures of early twentieth century folk drama derived from the leaf-covered figures of earlier English drama? Many people think so, both within the scholarly world and outside it. You may disagree, but you shouldn't present your guess as an established fact.

Finally, your assertion that the link is "very fine" because it requires "a notion that links the Green Man to the wild-man carvings" is more or less nonsensical, as the quotation above shows pretty clearly that many people understood "the Green Man" and "the Wild Man" to be two different names for the same character--the hairy man with leaves and a club. This is exactly the character depicted in the "wild-man carvings" you mention. "Wild-man carvings" is of course a name imposed on these carvings later; they might just as likely have been called "green-man carvings" in 1534 when they were made. We simply don't know. Whatever the case, the "wild-man" carvings depict two figures that were already by 1578 called "Green Men," and they are emerging from the ears of the Foliate Head.

This link to the Green Man may not be the primary meaning of the Foliate Head, but it is there all the same, creeping uncomfortably out of the cracks in your certainty.